Occupy movement

Occupy movement are an international protest group which are directed against social or economic inequality. The movement model itself after the New York City based movement network Occupy Wall Street. These protests were ongoing all across the world in 2011.

In Portland, Maine

Goals

In the first few weeks, many news outlets criticized the Occupy movement for not having clear goals. On 7 October 2011, Kalle Lasn, co-founder of Adbusters, said the lack of clear demands was actually a "mysterious part" of the movement that helped it grow quickly. By the end of October, Adbusters had started pushing for one clear goal: the creation of a Robin Hood tax—a small tax on financial transactions. They even planned a global march in support of the idea on 29 October.

However, not everyone agreed that the movement lacked goals. Naomi Wolf, a writer and activist, said the protesters had very clear goals. She explained that they wanted to end the corrupting power of money in politics.

The magazine The New Yorker reported that both Kalle Lasn and Micah M. White had listed very specific demands, such as:

• Stricter rules for banks
• A ban on high-frequency trading (a type of rapid stock trading)
• The arrest of people responsible for the 2008 financial crash
• A special government commission to investigate and punish political corruption

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the protesters also wanted:

• More and better jobs
• Fairer income distribution
• Changes to the banking system
• Less control of politics by large corporations

Many people described the movement as generally anticapitalist because it questioned the current global economic system.

Some writers and thinkers, like David Graeber and Judith Butler, said that making a list of demands might be a bad idea. They believed that giving demands to politicians would give power to the same political system that the Occupy movement was trying to challenge. They argued that the movement should focus on building a new kind of politics instead.

In late November, protesters from Occupy London made their first clear statement against large corporations. They called for strong actions to stop tax evasion by wealthy companies. They said the delay in making demands happened because they used participatory democracy, a method where everyone gets a voice, which can take time to reach decisions.

By the end of 2011, Occupy London Stock Exchange, a part of the movement, said they were working on a global project to connect with other Occupy groups around the world. Their goal was to reflect the many different voices of global protests.

Some people called the global Occupy movement a "reinvention of politics", and even compared it to a revolution or utopia for the 21st century.