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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.

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Follow the Money by Avi Horwitz
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One year after the the Occupy Movement began, organizers issued a call to action for “education, celebration and resistance to economic injustice" in the New York City's Financial District. The flyer and accompanying artwork for the event offers a deep representation of how "the 99 percent to an incompatible economic systems’ driving forces and the immense organizing potential of identifying a common foe. However, the flyer offers perspective on how the movement's failure to create an intersectional foundation dashed any hopes for a sustained, all-inclusive coalition.

The interwoven streets used to illustrate the deeply rooted connections between a multitude of societal inequalities effectively illustrated the movement's slogan that, "The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%"(Gautney, 2013). Centering protest not around a single issue, but a deeply corrupt system was key to building an initial mass of occupiers. By framing their grievances in this way, communities all across the country, and eventually world, were brought together in a coalition of protest against various forms of greed and corruption everywhere. (Gautney, 2013).

While the flyer's artwork does display the interconnected nature of the various inequalities, including racism's connection to mass incarceration and environmental destruction, it fails to explicitly recognize the how the those among the 99% do not equally feel the burden of Wall Street and Capitalism on their lives. Emphasizing the commonality between the 99% may led to successful initial mobilization, but failed to emphasize the disproportionate consequences for systematically marginalized communities such as women, LGBTQ+ individuals, people of color, indigenous communities, etc, a core aspect of their cause.

The United States of America is a county that was been built on the systematic inequalities. As a result, even the united "we" of the 99% have deeply rooted values such a racism and sexism. This flyer is evidence of the failure to explicitly recognize the social differences within the umbrella of the 99%, An examination of the role of Gender and Race in the Occupy Movement by Heather McKee Hurwitz concludes that, "Followers who are guided by gendered and racial prejudices fall back on and recreate traditional gender and racial hierarchies" (Hurwitz, 2019). The lack of an intentional effort to reflect on overlapping discriminatory systems manifested itself in intolerance for leadership from members of many minority communities (Hurwitz, 2019).

Gautney, Heather. 2013. “Occupy Wall Street movement.” The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, Blackwell Publishing.

Heather McKee Hurwitz. 2019. "Gender and Race in the Occupy Movement: Relational Leadership and Discriminatory Resistance." Mobilization: An International Quarterly: June 2019, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 157-176.