Occupy Wall Street

Thanks to Dan Patterson on Flickr

The past several weeks have seen a modern American revolution of sorts in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Average citizens have taken to the streets to protest commercialism, mass-corporatization, capitalism in general, and a whole mess of other issues. The protests have been fairly peaceful but has seen the usual police oppression and over-reaction to public, non-violent, peaceful protesting. Perhaps they're all paid off to suppress the rights of the people, or maybe the cops are just ignorant of the rights that the protesters, and every person, ought to have.

The success of the Occupy Wall Street, and the broader NYC General Assembly, have inspired similar protests in other cities across the country, as well as additional movements to join this one. It is possible that everything in the other cities were planned in cooperation with what's happening in NYC, but whatever the case may be, it is really exciting and I hope a lot of change and progress will come of this. We all know that the government is incapable of catalyzing such change, so the people must stand up and fight the man.

This all reminds me of the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, the Battle in Seattle, where very well planned protests shut down the WTO world meetings in 1999 in the name of fairness, equality, and ending oppressive capitalism.