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Did the Arab Spring spark the 'Occupy' movement?
Where have Occupy protests drawn from?
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Kai Ryssdal: The first organized protests in Cairo, in Tahrir Square -- what would eventually become Egypt's Arab Spring -- started a year ago tomorrow. Egyptians took to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, inspired by the overthrow of the dictator in Tunisia right next door.
We'll be starting a series of stories tomorrow about Egypt's post-revolutionary economy called One Year On. But the protests didn't end in Egypt. They spread to Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Israel, to Asia and Europe and eventually here with Occupy Wall Street. On the face of it a lot of the protests look the same: Take over a public square, set up tents, refuse to leave, demand change.
We asked Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman, who was in Cairo a year ago, to explore whether their Arab Spring became our Occupy.
Mitchell Hartman: Just after the Egyptians had their revolution, I made my way through Cairo, along streets that were still littered with paving stones. They were the stones that protesters had pried up from Tahrir Square, and thrown at police in the final battles before Mubarak fell. Marches and demos were popping up everywhere. Half a million people in the square demanding free elections. And small groups on street corners.
I met Maged Ghorab holding a picket sign outside a big Cairo newspaper. Thirty-two, with a university education, Ghorab had been at the paper for six years. But he was still considered a "temp" and was making less than $200 a month -- not enough to get married or set up on his own. Ghorab complained that in Egypt, you can’t get ahead in life without connections.
Maged Ghorab (English translation): He said, the daughter of the editor-in-chief -- his daughter -- just got employed here after two months of when she graduated from her university. Why don’t they treat us like their own sons or daughters?
Ghorab had helped overthrow a dictator. Now he was demanding a real job, and a raise.
Fast-forward nine months -- to an Occupy protest in downtown Portland, Ore. Max Miller and Brian Shaylor are in their early 20s. They’re trying to finish college and find jobs in media or the music industry. When Occupy set up tents and started marching, they joined right away.
Max Miller: I mean, it’s a matter of numbers. There are more of us that are impoverished, than there are people with all of the money.
Brian Shaylor: The problem is that all these college grads are getting out of school and realizing that they’ve been saddled with a hundred-thousand-plus dollars of debt, and they spend the next four decades of their lives paying off debt. Like, the disappearing middle class is a real thing.
Young people feeling squeezed, demanding better opportunities and a fair deal. The issues sound similar -- from Maged in Cairo, to Max and Brian in Portland.
But in the end, these movements are worlds apart, says U.C. Irvine sociologist David Meyer.
David Meyer: Arab Spring was about regime change. The Occupy movement includes some people who want regime change and want to rebuild the world from the ground up. But it includes other people who have a concern about inequality, that believe that you could have substantial positive change without burning the Constitution. So there are big differences.
Still, Occupiers tell me it was watching the Arab rebellions on YouTube that got them off their couches and computers, and into the streets. Some Occupy organizers, meanwhile, were watching a rebellion closer to home.
ABC News anchor: The debate over state budget deficits has led to chaos in Wisconsin, with protesters hanging over balconies in the state house, and lawmakers going AWOL.
A few weeks after the Egyptian revolution, thousands of public employees and their supporters had massed in the Wisconsin capitol. They were trying to block Republican Gov. Scott Walker from taking away union benefits and collective bargaining rights. The governor got his bill in the end. But David Meyer says the occupation provided a powerful example.
Meyer: People camped out in the cold, marched through the streets. And I think that sparked the imagination of people on the left and younger people in the United States that we could do something besides conventional politics.
And by September, unconventional Occupy was everywhere. The colorful tent camps, the rowdy demonstrations and messy mic-check democracy.
The Occupiers took their lead from the Arab uprisings. They borrowed tactics from Tahrir and the labor organizers in Madison. And they managed to launch an unexpected uprising in America to demand economic justice and restore middle-class prosperity.
I’m Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
Ryssdal: There's a timeline of the past year in global economic protests. And Mitchell's Reporter's Notebook about tent-camp protests in Israel that didn't get a lot of press.
They are the Whiny One Per Cent
They whine and obstruct progress, but they have no solutions. They have no understanding of the nations problems; so they misdirect our focus, and impede our progress. They are full of empty words and slogans, which offer fodder for the rhetoric of politicians, while allowing those same politicians to ignore the real issues. They have a working political system; the tools to accomplish something. But since they have no goals and no strategy, they accomplish nothing. They also have no perseverance. And they are loosing support; because they offer nothing, and because things are already getting better, in spite of them, through the efforts of the hard working 98%.
To compare the Arab spring with our whiny one per cent is obscene: The former is a movement born out of desperation at a lack of political tools, lead by thoughtful educated motivated visionaries, willing to give up their lives to achieve their goals. The later is a movement of unorganized ignorant short sighted whiners, with no goals or solutions, who are unwilling to make the political effort to actually change things.
Sitting on your butt in a public place is not enough. If you want something to change you have to work for it.
On the one hand, it’s unbelievable to me that listener’s can dismiss the Occupy crowd with such ignorance and complacency; on the other hand, ignorance, arrogance, indifference, and complacency are the currency of unrestrained capitalism. Ignorance, inasmuch as people are inclined to ignore socioeconomic problems and instead attribute all failure to personal shortcomings; arrogance, in that it encourages people to imagine that they are superior to others by weight of their financial standing—embracing social Darwinism and the myth that America is a meritocracy; indifference, by way of support for a libertarian ideal that leaves corporations, businesses, high finance, and governments free to embrace volunteered slavery, then adding insult to injury by declaring the deliberately disenfranchised whiners; complacency, because proponents can’t imagine the same ever happening to them. It is also incredible that a majority of these same individuals have the temerity to call themselves Christian, when they would certainly nail Jesus’ ass to the cross faster than you can say “Ronald Reagan is my hero” for suggesting that they sell everything they have and give to the poor. There isn’t enough space to go into all the reasons why people are occupying are streets in protest of a country that has become a plutocracy and budding oligarchy. If you don’t know by now, you’re never going to and you don’t care about legitimate grievances anyway. Suffice it to say that the only difference between the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring is this: The Arab Spring began when a young man with a college degree took his own life because a push cart he purchased to make a living was confiscated for not having proper licensing. In America, radical right-wingers would celebrate such an extreme statement as the loss of another potential drain on our “welfare state,” and at least privately, if not publicly, be glad that his soul would burn in Hell for it, rather than take to the streets in protest at the inhumanity of such a system. Furthermore, the mass exoduses we’re seeing from failed states are from those that have adopted economic neoliberalism as their model; I don’t see anyone seeking to flee to the U.S. from Sweden or Norway.
The whole attempt of Market Place to keep the "Occupy fill in the blank" alive and relevant is particularly sad. It opens the whole program to questions on its bias. The "Occupy Movement" had some things to say and perhaps made a few people think about the economic state of the country. But most of it was whining about how things are unfair and that the rich should pay more. The same occupiers who complained about the bankers and Wall Street brokerage firms bypassed the same 1 percenters who happen to bloviate in favor of their own goals but do not pair what is termed their "fair share" in taxes. Will someone at Marketplace actually do the math and understand how income taxes are paid in this country. The 1% pay a far larger chunk than the bottom 40% ever will.
Worse than this sad attempt to keep Occupy alive long after the Mayors of the various cities (many of them Democrats) forced these illegal and un-hygienic tent cities to close. Did the protests in the Middle East spark these protests? Perhaps. But to couple them together I find insulting to compare the citizens of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria who were and still are trying for a better life with the spoiled Americans who are whining about large student loans. Give me a break. No one has forced these students to go to expensive colleges and sign large loans to finance it. College is about LEARNING and not job TRAINING.
One of the reasons why the Occupy Movement has only briefly captured anyone's imagination is they never had any solid goals or purposes. Many who were ignored were ignored because they said stupid things that made no sense to the ordinary person who works for a living. Abolish Debt? Do we want to return to the barter system? Capitalism is evil? How many of the tech gadgets these brats have to have were invented in Soviet Russia, North Korea or Cuba? There are reasons why people are trying to leave oppressive socialistic countries for the more liberal countries of the west.
"inequality"??? Say Max works hard and earns a GPA of 4.0. Brian likes to party and his GPA is 2.0. That is an "inequality" of 2.0 GPA points. Brian then bemoans the "unfairness" of the "inequality" of his GPA compared to Max's and wants the government to artificially prop up his GPA or, worse, take a point from Max and give it to him in the name of "equality". Rather than put in the effort to plan his career, plan his success, pay his dues and make something of himself, he wants "success" handed to him. And, rather than getting the scholarships and grants to pay for his education, Brian racks up a large student loan by paying, not only for tuition and books, but also living expenses and other nonessentials not realizing that Congress has dictated that a student loan is the only loan he can't be forgiven through bankruptcy. Surprise!
I'm trying to keep an open mind regarding the "occupy" movement but struggle to do so when I read about individuals like Max and Brian. These guys are not yet finished with school and want to work in media or the music industry. It seems as though everyone wants to be associated with the entertainment industry in some way. The fame! They want their dream jobs without "paying their dues". I worked many menial, very unglamorous jobs through my teens and into my twenties as I finished college, and even then I didn't graduate and get my dream job. That's okay. That's life. Oh and btw, I'm doing fine these days but only recently aquired a smart phone. I just love how many of the occupiers are toting around their expensive gadgets as they kick back, camp out & demand their school loans be forgiven.
