2011 will be remembered as a year when people got fed up with the status quo and asked for change. That same change that was promised by Obama, but not yet delivered.
Nevertheless, just by putting hope and change back in the public debate, Obama may have triggered the wave of change that is sweeping the world these days, from Cairo to Madrid, and from Palestine to New York.
What’s happening in New York right now, is just an expression of that same feeling that got into Mohamed Bouazizi’s head and ultimately pushed him to set himself on fire, starting the Arab Spring and affecting directly the lives of millions of people.
It is the same feeling that fueled the Spanish “Indignados” movement and the London disturbs. It’s a feeling that we all have experienced, a feeling of disgust and anger, a feeling that arises when we see greed and impunity walking together.
The problem with the #OccupyWallStreet movement is its absence of concrete goals. That’s the problem with most of left-inspired social movements, they are full of ideology, but empty of politics. Till today, they are just a bunch of (mostly young) people, camping at a park near Wall Street complaining for the greed of bankers and the complicity of government, but little more.
But the feeling is there, just as it was there when Mohamed Bouazizi burned himself without having any concrete political objective when he did it. Politicians and intellectuals have already been seen in the streets, trying to join the movement and maybe give it some kind of political form.
The #OccupyWallStreet movement, if anything else, is a long-due response to the right-wing assault on the American public debate via the Fox network and the Tea Party. One of the most moving parts of the protests, the We Are The 99 Percent collection of testimonials, is playing the role that the incendiary talk shows of the right play: getting the message delivered. Judging by the growth of the movement to many cities in the United States, the message of being "fed up" is getting to the people.
At the end of the day, the mainstream media had to cover the protests, not for the movement itself, but for the wrong reasons as you can see in the video below. The content of the video is embarrasing for the NYPD, but it might have been the best thing to happen for the movement, as #OccupyWallStreet finally got the attention of the country.
