On September 30, more than 20000 Americans marched in New York City, crying out slogans like "People, not profit" in a sudden escalation of the Occupy Wall Street protest that started on September 17 with just 1000 pairs of walking feet and 200-odd people staying overnight in the city's Zuccotti Park, ironically more well known as Liberty Plaza Park. By October 9, protests spread to over 70 US cities including Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Denver, Kansas City, Boston etc.
America has witnessed larger protests against the Iraq War in recent history and the Vietnam War in the late 60s. But if those protests could be discounted for having been engineered by angry no and transcendent yes people with no clear political direction, the Occupy Wall Street protests have questioned not only the role of finance capital, the basic unit of a debt-ridden global capitalist system, but also the disconnect the average American has with the political decision-making process in that country which is dictated by lobbies loaded with money and the promise of new business.
The participants at this protest are mainly protesting against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government. Adbusters, the Canadian group which first gave the call for such a protest, states that, "Beginning from one simple demand – a presidential commission to separate money from politics – we start setting the agenda for a new America."
Till the late 40s, till the US adopted the Truman Doctrine and its successor in the form of Marshall Plan, the US government used to realise $1.50 in taxes on businesses for every dollar in taxes on individuals. Now, it raises less than a quarter of a dollar on businesses for every dollar of individual taxes. The federal income tax rate on the richest individuals fell from 91 per cent to the current 35 per cent. Appeasement of industries was fundamental to them supplying Europe with wares to stop "Soviet aggression."
Officially out of recession for two years now, the US has seen its citizens' income dip by 10 per cent over the last two years. Thousands of working people lost their jobs, homes. Some even lost retirement savings and pension funds. Consumer spending, the driving force of the economy, fell and growth slowed down.
And while the American people were required to endure all the hardship for the sake of their country, they saw billions of dollars from the government's bailout package go into paying the fat salaries and fatter bonuses of Wall Street CEOs and fund managers.
The mainstream US media, as if representing a monolith, has been quick to rubbish any similarity with the waves of protest that swept the Arab world. But the fact remains that a large number of American people are disgusted with the policies of their government that invariably shifts the burden of tough times from businesses to people, that treats welfare as a prerogative of the corporate entities than that of the citizens, a White House-Senate-Congress combine that restricts people's access to social security and affordable & quality healthcare.
The people taking to the streets in Haight-Ashbury and those who picketed at Tahrir Square both share the same feeling of being betrayed by their governments. The fact that the American people handpicked the government that would put corporate interest before that of themselves should make their experience all the more bitter. And they are targeting nothing less than Wall Street, the symbol of the hegemony of US finance capital.
However, the role of media in US should not come as a surprise as they have always been active collaborators along with the political and corporate sectors in the manufacture of consent, a consent which many Americans are no longer readily agreeing to.
Liberal commentator and filmmaker Michael Moore has suggested that this protest represents a variety of demands with a common statement about government corruption and the excessive influence of big business and the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans on US laws and policies.
Demands such as raising taxes on the rich, raising taxes on corporations, ending corporate welfare, support for trade unionism, and protecting medicare and social security in their traditional forms are expressed by some participants. Occupy Maine, a participating group, is asking for an investment in public transportation infrastructure. Other protesters are calling for an audit or elimination of the Federal Reserve, affordable healthcare, dismantling the military-industrial complex and an end to all wars.
People in India can probably relate to the mood of the people out on the streets in New York. But there is a crucial difference. In India, the ire of the middle class was directed against politicians, the government, administrative officials and surprisingly not the Indian corporate entities which benefited from many of the scams indicting the UPA government.
In US, somehow, the protesters have hit the nail on the head of the problem, the collusion of money and politics, the convergence of corporate and political interest. Political activists like Lawrence Lessig say that as both Democrats and Republicans depend on Wall Street money to fund their campaigns, they will not dare to cross the interests of Wall Street. Apart from that, Wall Street symbolises US economic might. Clipping its wings will be tantamount to a symbolic defeat for the system long espoused by US.
The protesters include persons of a variety of political orientations, including liberals, political independents, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, trade unionists and Greens.
For ideas which had predicted an End of History and the unrestricted reign of finance capital, the recent developments in US and Muslim countries in Africa and West Asia would lead to serious rethink. Is it the resurgence of a new Left that we are witnessing? Are we witnessing the beginning of the "Sundown on the Union?" It's too early to make these guesses though I am tempted to read these signs as a premonition of a larger bust.
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