Occupy Wall Street

I wasn't assigned to write a blog post on this topic, nor does it have anything to do with living in Copenhagen, but Occupy Wall Street is a powerful new movement that I want to spread awareness about.  Occupy Wall Street was recently started, when a Vancouver company encouraged people to occupy Wall Street and protest the economic inequalities in the United States.  Since mid-September, the Occupy Wall Street movement, now referred to as Occupy, as spread to over seventy cities across the nation.  People are gathering to show that they disagree with the governments economic actions, giving tax breaks to the wealthy and bailing out the banking industry, to name a couple.

Occupy has sparked interest in me because it is the first time I can remember in my lifetime seeing the American people come together to peacefully show that we are done with inequality and are ready to see some change.  I have been thinking a lot about the way the Arab Spring has impacted recent social movements, and I believe that we are only beginning to see the ways that social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) can be used to organize change.  These tools are crucial in connecting people that care about similar political initiatives and actually want to do something about them.

I am living in Copenhagen, thousands of miles away from where the streets are being occupied.  I don't know where that leaves me in the realm of this movement, but for now I will continue to read articles, follow blogs, engage in discussions, and hope to see some positive change.