With the Occupy Boston movement heading into its fourth week at Dewey Square, the passion and outrage that has led many participants to leave their homes and schools for flimsy tents and cardboard signs does not seem to be wavering, even as temperatures drop and police attitudes get hostile. According to protestors, they plan to stay there until the problem gets fixed, even if it takes 10 years. But what exactly is the problem for these students, teachers, musicians, artists, and various others who make up the self proclaimed 99%?
For University of Vermont senior Devon Pendelton, coming to Occupy Boston meant taking an incomplete for the semester and spending his twentieth birthday in a tent. With a $160,000 college debt, Pendelton feels like this is where he needs to be to fight for his right to make a living. For him, the big issues are our “corporatic,” corporate-run, government and debt soaked economy based on infinite growth. What this means to Pendelton is our government is protecting big business interests over its own citizens and is trying to sustain an economic system that is virtually unsustainable.
According to Business Insider, the protestors are responding to an unemployment rate that has not been seen since the Depression, while corporate profits are at an all time high. 14 million Americans who want to work can’t find a job, making the unemployment rate skyrocket to nearly seventeen percent, including those who have part-time jobs but want full-time or those who haven’t looked for a job in over 6 months. Meanwhile, CEO pay is now three hundred and fifty times the average worker’s.
Like many who find themselves on the outside of the Occupy movements springing up all over the world, Boston University sophomore Rose Kreditor was drawn to Dewey Square because of her curiosity.
“If you look form the outside, you don’t know what’s going on. You have to be inside the madness,” Kreditor said.
Kreditor describes the movement as more of an experiment than a protest, kind of like a “music festival of philosophers.” After spending multiple days helping out in the kitchen and one night in a tent, she said there is more than enough doing but not enough organization.
“There are a lot of chiefs and not enough Indians,” Kreditor said. “But we’re just succumbing to the state of nature. It gives clarity into what we’re fighting: the government is human too. The problems we’re having in society is a human thing. But can we fight it? Can we overcome our natural problems, like being a chief and becoming an Indian?”
According to 28 year-old Richard Anthony “Kansas” Dunlop, “The 99% is not how much you make per year but who is in control of things and making laws.”
Pendelton says for this to change we must spread the word. “I agree that we are the ninety nine percent for now, but in reality we are one hundred percent.”
Works Cited
Blodget, Henry. "CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About..." Business Insider. 11 Oct. 2011. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. <http://www.businessinsider.
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