Rant: Occupy Wall Street - seriously?!

"The occupation of Liberty Square is a symbol of the growing international movement fighting against neoliberal economic practices, the crimes of Wall Street and the resulting income inequality, unemployment, and oppression of people at the front lines of the economic crisis." (http://occupywallst.org/).

This is how the official website of the Occupy Wall Street movement starts off describing their "mission". The people who have been sitting and occupying the Zuccotti Park in the NYC financial district since mid-September have inspired a considerable amount of imitation events all around the globe and have garnered extensive international media coverage.


I do realise that banks and especially investment bankers have been showing questionable ethics and using business practices which have contributed to the global financial crisis and I think that such behavior has to be punished and regulated. But to me, the Occupy Wall Street movement just comes across as a childish, uninformed temper tantrum of people who have an image of The Big Bad Bankers in their heads. The above stated goal of "fighting against (...) unemployment" is a good example for the point I'm trying to make here - seriously guys, you're not going to "fight unemployment" by camping overnight in the financial district.


On the Occupy Wall Street website the organisers state that they "are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants", which makes me downright mad. Arab Spring was an uprising of people who had been oppressed by undemocratic regimes. They did not have democratic means of bringing their views and opinions forward. The people in the US have these means. The case of the Zurich Occupy Wall Street movement makes me even more angry - Switzerland has the most direct democracy in the world, everyone can run for parliament and easily initiate a referendum or a public initiative. But instead of organising themselves in a serious fashion and trying to bring about the much-needed changes through political means, they sit around, chant words that make them sound imbecile or uninformed and hope for a wonder to happen (a "revolution"). I can't take these people seriously and I'm sure, politicians around the world can't, either.


Dear protesters, you have valid claims and democratic means of expressing and possibly enforcing them. If you really want to bring about change, then do it in an informed way that honours the freedoms you enjoy as citizens of western democracies.