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Occupy Archive Digital Exhibits: Spring 2020 CWRU Grievances of the 99% At its roots, the Occupy Wall Street Movement was an anti-capitalist, anti-corporation movement composed of people angered by the selfish and greedy financial practices of the country’s upper class. Proponents of Occupy thought the American Dream was no longer possible and protested the stifling lack of opportunity available to non-privileged citizens. As a result of the Great Recession beginning in 2008, the 99%, the people paying the price for the actions of the country's elites, advocated for regulation and oversight of this corrupt 1%. The Occupy Movement rooted their activism in an understanding that an economic system exclusively benefiting the top 1% at the expense of everyone else is unsustainable and antithetical to the idea of democracy.

Black Women Matter by Kyle Jones

Occupy is held as the tipping point for various contemporary social movements--in this instance I am writing about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Images and media coverage of police shooting of Black people, often young and unarmed, alongside a hashtag and social undercurrent that asked the question 'why are Black Lives made not to matter?'. Primarily derived from the discourse of young people, the issue of responsiveness came up in the literature frequently. In Howie and Campbell's Crisis and Terror in the Age of Anxiety, a respondent describes their idea of how social justice efforts exist in our daily lives:

Responsiveness for participants was not just about going to a protest on one day, or caring about racial equality or engaging with social justice causes sporadically. The challenge of responsiveness ... was to give shape to a political self or identity ... through the discourses of the movements ... that they could imagine sustaining and practicing in the future.

In so doing, social media practices and media consumption play a critical role in the outcomes and potential change of various social movements. The key idea is seeing how Occupy and Black Lives Matter share similar movement tactics, for instance:

This "do-it yourself" form of activism involves circumventing mainstream political channels, which the movement [Occupy in this instance] believes are closed to them, and realizing their claims through direct action. (Gautney 2013)

Therefore, these tactics often took on forms outside of normal political action spheres. While there was a great deal of protests and other typical actions, a significant task that social movements have is telling a story. The stories told by individuals have the power to bring people into the movement, to send a message to the world, or to explain the background behind their actions. The object on this page is a zine which shares the stories of victims of police brutality.

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Black Women Matter