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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.

Fuck the Police

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Fuck the Police by Darnelle Crenshaw El Not just an NWA song but a motif of the struggles of specific underserved communities against a state authority that protects the interest of the 99%. This would be how those in the Occupy Movement would feel about the police.

The Occupy movement is all about the 99% against the 1% who own a vast amount of the United States wealth while everyone else does not. This fuck the police mantra does not completely reflect the 99% ideology. Instead of just being a class issue between the extremely wealthy and everyone else, this issue is racialized and classed. Meaning that the movements against police brutality are largely an intersectional issue.

The pages pictured here are from Oakland, California. This Northern California area across the bridge would be the same area that Colin Kaepernick would take his knee against police brutality. But years before that protest he made in 2016, the city of Oakland had its own recent history with troubling killings of black men by the police. Oscar Grant, Lovelle Mixon, Kenneth Harding, and Alan Bleuford were all killed by Oakland Police between the years 2009-2011. After the verdict in the Oscar Grant case which deemed officer Johannes Mehserle not guilty; a riot/revolt occurred in Oakland resulting in many people being arrested and businesses vandalized.

The Occupy movement represented a general response to the overall failures of capitalism after the recession and the bailing of the banks in President Obama’s stimulus package. But different segments of the populations that made up the movement had different areas that they sought to respond to directly. One of those things was the excessive use of force and unjust killings of African Americans by the state and the lack of justice afterward. The Oscar Grant case is the most famous of the cases in Oakland, a movie was even made years later. Grant was unarmed and restrained when officer Mehserle shot him in the back. This story and other killings of unarmed black people by people who represent the interests of the elites (as the occupy movement would probably phrase it) infuriated many and several movements spurred in response like Black Lives Matters.