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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.

Class Conflict by Tianyi Zhang

The Occupy movement which started in 2011, refers to a series of protests against social inequality in a number of sectors, such as education (Gautney, 2013). One of the broadest appeals was related to the 99 percent, “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). Aiming to ameliorate the influence of corporate and financial interest on governmental institutions, the occupy movement soon gain recognition in a worldwide fashion. Below is a protest poster created by Molly Crabapple, who considered the occupy movement as an opportunity to engage her art with politics, and John Leavitt, a writer.

The poster presents class conflicts between the 1% and the 99% with the comparison between mice and cat's possession of cookies, symbolizing that the 1% holds an abundant amount of resources when the rest of the society shares the remaining resources. The power dynamic between the different groups was also demonstrated by the size difference between the mouses and the cat. The artist, Crabapple, utilized common objects and analogies such as cat and mouse to better illustrate the starking contrast between the 1% and the 99%.

The main message of the poster is "we are all in this together, we are the 99%", indicated at the bottom of the poster. The tactics that Crabapple and Leavitt utilized was to mobilize grievances to recruit participants and further mobilize resources. Both Crabapple and Leavitt would consider that grievances and political context are given, therefore, they are only required to recruit and mobilize. The other message of this poster is a quote from Jay Gould: "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other" which displays the amount of control and power the 1% has and the gap between the two classes. Yet, this poster does not illustrate those manipulated directly by the 1% as it mainly portraits the power dynamic between the 1% and the 99%.

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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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99% comic