For the past 10 days, Occupy Wall Street, a loosely strewn together movement, has protested corporate greed in Lower Manhattan. Sadly, its nonviolent protests have turned ugly in the form of pepper spray, nets and general police misconduct.
Yes, the group is unorganized, but their conduct has not been dangerous nor violent. And while they don’t have a permit to protest, and have been walking through traffic on their march from the financial district up to Union Square, we feel the aggressive response from the New York Police Department is unwarranted and disconcerting.
News coverage of the protest has been limited thus far, but reports from several protestors indicated that they were confined to overstuffed police vans for hours at a time, rounded up by nets, temporary blinded by pepper spray and unjustly treated for their protest acts. It’s a scene we’re used to seeing at G-20 or other international summits, and taken to the extreme, in recent protests that have rocked austerity-stricken Europe and especially the democracy-starved Middle East.
But it’s happening here, and the call and response of protestor and police officer is frightening, especially considering the circumstances of the protest. Why have authorities reacted the way they have?
These protests directly challenge authority and establishment, and the authorities have responded inappropriately, as if to confirm the misgivings of those whom they seek to silence.
It should be especially haunting for our generation. The ideas that fuel these protests apply to us directly. The gap between the rich and the poor is alarming and getting worse, youth unemployment increases while the pay for what work is available stagnates, and we all stand to suffer as the American middle class shrivels.
So if there comes a time when Brooklyn hipsters aren’t the only people looking to stand up to Wall Street and Washington, will we rise to the occasion? The infringement upon the constitutional rights of members of the Occupy Wall Street Movement is uninspiring. It’s one thing for our generation to blatantly be apathetic about social issues, it’s another thing when such events discourage us from fighting for said issues.
That said, as the current economic climate grows colder, more protests like these will start popping up, not just in New York, but across the country. When the time comes, many of us might be a part of them. We hope authorities recognize the legitimate anger of young people who feel that their economic future is being swept out beneath them.
Or at least pass on the pepper spray.