Occupy Wall Street: An Inefficient Protest

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In America, protest has been used throughout history as a vehicle to change. Protests bring attention to issues that would or could be overlooked or ignored. A current protest receiving national attention in our media is the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest. The Occupy Wall Street protest, along with other Occupy branch protests are essentially ineffective protests. When compared to successful protests in the past, they are not having as much success gaining public support. There are many reasons this could be the case. There is no clearly defined goal or a specified outcome resulting from the protests. They are managing their funds inefficiently and in many cities they are creating more problems than they are solving. The occupy protests are ineffective protests because there is no clearly defined goal or a specified outcome for their cause. They are using unfocused and prolonged public live-ins rather than a mass protest to attain specific goals through the political system. Another part of this is that no one knows what they want. In a survey about the Occupy Movement, "26 percent of those polled said they were supporters of the Occupy movement, while 19 percent identified as opponents, and 52 percent said they neither supported nor opposed it (Zernike). At the start of the Tea Party movement, there was also a large percentage that did not know much about it. If we look at the Tea Party there were similar numbers when it started. 22 percent said they were supporters of the Tea Party, 27 percent said they were opponents, and 47 percent said they were neither. But the large majority said they did not know enough about the Occupy goals to say whether they approved or disapproved (Zernike). The Occupy movement wants to use pol... ... middle of paper ... ...upy-movement/index.html>. "Occupy Wall Street Protesters Receive $435,000 in Donations | Syracuse.com." Syracuse NY Local News, Breaking News, Sports & Weather - Syracuse.com. Web. 26 Nov. 2011. . Barr, Meghan, and Ryan J. Foley. "Occupy Protests Cost Nation's Cities at Least $13M." News from The Associated Press. Web. 04 Dec. 2011. . Zernike, Kate. "Wall St. Protest Isn’t Like Ours, Tea Party Says." The New York TImes 21 Oct. 2011. n. pag. Print. Linsky, Marty. "Occupy Wall Street Is Going Nowhere without Leadership - CNN." Featured Articles from CNN. 27 Oct. 2011. Web. 04 Dec. 2011. .

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