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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.

Comic panel 6

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Young People of Occupy by Maria Fallavollita
A great deal of the the Occupy movement focused on income inequality and a lack of opportunities for economic advancement. One specific subgroup of people who had economic grievances during this movement were young people, who often had grown up with promises of economic prosperity, only to be let down by economic downturns and limited opportunities for professional jobs. Much of the spirit of Occupy revolved around individuals working to take back--to occupy--spaces that they believed they should be a part of (Gautney 2013). For young people, one of these spaces was the labor market. Some of the specific challenges that young people wanted to address are outlined in the third comic from a series of mini comics entitled “We are the 99%.” Published in 2012, this comic draws attention to the struggles of the younger portion of the the 99% involved in the Occupy movement. All of the stories portrayed are true accounts from posts on the tumblr page "We are the 99%." The themes of this comic stress young people’s issues pursuing education, finding jobs within their fields, and earning a living.
One of the most prominent struggles for youth in the Occupy movement was a disenchantment from the American dream. For many generations, Americans retained the belief that hard work would lead to prosperity. Though this was not necessarily an accurate belief, especially for marginalized groups, the notion of the American dream has persisted throughout American history. For example, the second panel of the comic describes an individual who did what they could to follow the dreams that society encouraged, but could not find work in their desired field and ended up with a great deal of debt. The third panel also describes an individual seeing through the veil of the American dream for which their parents immigrated, blaming their inability to succeed on corporate greed that limits opportunities for individual advancement.During the Occupy movement, young people began to notice that hard work, including the pursuit of higher education, was not the only thing holding them back from success. Rather, a lack of opportunities for work in professional careers was stifling the ability of young people to gain employment. The sixth panel illustrates a case of an individual who put extraordinary effort into making themself a good applicant for a job. However, regardless of the number of applications submitted or experience gained from volunteering and internships, there were no opportunities for a full time job. This poses additional problems for the younger generations by limiting benefits and the ability to build wealth throughout their careers.
This comic addresses just some of the grievances that young people brought up during the Occupy movement. It is possible that the specific experiences of young people were isolated in their own comic because they had difficulty gaining representation among other groups in Occupy. For example, in her article on leadership discrimination in the Occupy movement, Hurwitz (2019) noted that minority leadership throughout the movement faced harassment, male-dominance, and other barriers that ensured that leadership was predominantly white and male. Along the same lines, just as gender and racial minorities experienced discriminatory resistance in leadership that limited their voices, it is possible that young people in the age minority similarly struggled to gain representation in Occupy. As a result, in order to make their viewpoints known, the young people of Occupy may have created media specific to their generation--like this comic--to foster a sense of collective identity and achieve mobilization within the movement.