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omar matiano
Professor Koning
English 113 B
April, 5 2014
Occupy Movement: Our Right to Move Up Social Statues
The Occupy Movement demonstrates the awareness of social classes among huge
corporations who are classified as the 1 % through raising awareness. Bell hooks writes in
Where We Stand: Class Matters, “We are not in a 99 percent world. We are in a world with
serious class complexes.” Social classes are getting harder to move up in society. People are
clinging to the idea that if we work hard we can make it to the top, which Hooks believes is not
true, although some people would disagree. Hooks points are still relevant today because the cost
of education has risen through the roof, greed has made banks and businesses richer, and through
promoting self-interest.
To better understand the Occupy Movement we need a visual understanding of what the
streets looked like. The streets are filled with people of all ethnicities with loud roars and chants
of people against corporations classified as the 1 percent. The only weapon that the protestors try
to use is their voice. Along with them are posters, each of them with different types of demands
they wish to enlighten to the public. One of the photos captured by ABC news catches a furious
woman protesting against her clause. Her sign says “The whole world is going bankrupt to who?
Debt=Slavery.” They are expressing their anger at the greed of companies feeding off of money
who cannot just seem to get enough of. As I was researching and learning more I began to
wonder how the people that had been camping out for weeks, where surviving? If it is one that
that these people do have, is a heart. People are united as family, sharing food and shelter among
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themselves. They talk to one another, try to cheer each other up and play live music. Along the
sound waves of the music tempo is the smell of food going through their nostrils, like walking
through Downtown Los Angeles suddenly getting the smell of a $2 hot dog at a corner. The
police are surrounding around the premise like if the people were some type of criminals. They
try to contain the people by barricading the streets with metal fences and lines of motorcycled
police men forming a road block. With them the police men are armed with tear gas, pellet guns,
and batons. Some people are being arrested; unfortunately some broke the law by using force and
vandalizing property.
Who can afford to do these movements? The people that can afford to do these kinds of
protest are not necessarily the poor but the middle class leaning more towards the rich. It did not
make any sense because to me I would think that they are well enough to be able to live
comfortably and the poor would be the ones protesting. One of the reasons the poor cannot
protest is that they can’t afford to take a day off because they can easily get replaced and left
without a job. The working classes have families to take care of when they get home. Just like
hooks father who worked day and night. “Our daddy, a working man, left early and came home
late” (Hooks 12). So who were the people attending these protests? According to the Huffington
Post, “A report surveyed the participants at a joint Occupy-labor movement May Day rally in
New York City and found two-thirds of those who described themselves as ‘actively involved’ in
Occupy Wall street were white, while 80 percent had a bachelor’s degree or higher.” Many of
these activists claiming to represent the 99 percent were drawn to the Occupy movement after
the financial crisis left them underemployed with student loan debt. The survey found that while
80 percent of respondents said they had a job, about one-third said their employment was
“precarious, which meant that their job was not stable and could possibly soon be out of work.
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Although, I am aware that people have a different view of things. Many people believe
that if you work hard enough you can make it to the top. When we are young we are often told to
chase our dreams and often hear this quote, “you can do anything you set your mind to do.”
When I was growing up my father always told me to set my priorities on education but I wanted
to play professional soccer. I saw the soccer players on the field and believed that if I trained
every day that I would be as good as them and join my favorite team. One of the supporters is an
MBA graduate Will Coetsee, quoting for an article my Gross Mount College, who was raised
believing he could peruse anything he wanted, “My parents taught us to be independent thinkers,
to take responsibilities for our actions and to realize that we can achieve anything that we set our
minds to.” There are people that believe that college is not the only way that they can get cross
class boundaries, after all some of these people are protesting because on the lack of
employment. Caroline Bird writes in College is a Waste of Time and Money, that students should
not be forced to sit in class and fail every test. Hooks seems to have a different view point.
Bell Hooks points out in her introduction, “Although their frag-ile hold on economic selfsufficient is slipping, they still cling to the dream of a class-free society where everyone can
make it to the top. They are afraid to face the significance of dwindling resources, the high cost
of education, housing, and health case. They are afraid to think too deeply about class” (Hooks
6). Unfortunately, most of these people will never make it to the top. Among those people that
are protesting are college students. But, why would college students need to be protesting? Well
when we are young most of our parents, teachers, mentors tell us that going to college is the best
way to get ahead in life. We are enlightened with the possibility of living the luxury life having a
big house with the white picket fence, a nice car, and even a dog. We work and work for it till we
get accepted to the college we want to attend. But as the economy is getting tougher, the tuition
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of college is increasing leading to more student loans. According to MSNBC “Our nations
combined student loans have totaled an average $1 trillion college loan debt. That averages out
to $24,000 per student.” Many of these college graduates are outraged at the fact that they cannot
find any jobs. Tim Welding is a Michigan State University graduate with an economics degree
who attended the Occupy Wall Street protest who is outraged at the amount of student loan that
he is in. Welding says, “What is the point of going to school if A. you cannot get a job and B.
you cannot pay back your student loans.” After all, this is all that the majority of the people
continue going to school for, to get their dream job and earn money to be able to afford a nice
house and live comfortably. Starting salaries are also beginning to plummet.
Furthermore, Hooks has had an experience where her parents had to choose the college
she went to “When I was choosing a college to attend, the issue of money surfaced and had to be
talked about. Mama urged me to attend a college nearby that offered financial aid” (Hooks 25).
So many students like I would not be able to afford college without the aid that we receive. “It
would have been easier for my family had I chosen to go to a state college near home where I
might be awarded a full scholarship, where dorms were cheap, and required books could be
checked out of libraries. I wanted to go to a fancy private college” (Hooks). I have seen so many
people drop out of college because they could not afford it anymore. One of my close friends in
high school was accepted to a fairly good college which was UC Irvine. He was so excited and
dreamt about all of the opportunities that it would have opened for him. He was going to be a 1st
one in his family to attend college. But then just like Hooks says, “The issue of money[..] had to
be talked about.” Tuition is an estimate of 29 thousand for Irvine students. His family would be
considered part of the working class. Now where were they going to get 29 grand from? Sure he
could have got student loans but he questioned whether he was likely to find a job after college.
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Many students dream about going into prestige colleges like Yale or Stanford. The
unfortunate student can already forget about applying to them because it would be way out of
their budget. According to the Huffington post the inflation-adjusted price for undergraduate
tuition, room, and board at public institutions rose 42 percent between the 2000-2001 academic
year and 2010-2011, according to federal data. It also showed that above 80% of the students
entering schools like Yale or Stanford where fortunate and was in the rich class which again
supports the idea of the reproduction of privilege. That people born into rich family will be more
likely to succeed due to the chances that they have like hiring tutors. Being poor does not
necessarily mean that you are not smart enough to get into prestige schools, it would be just
harder for you to get into them for multiple reasons like not having enough money to pay for
tuition or maybe because the poor do not get the same level of education that a more privileged
student would have like going to a private school. So why is the notion that anyone can make it
to the top always being emphasized, when we know that this is not true. “Opportunities for class
mobility created by radical political movements for social justice, civil rights, and women’s
liberation, especially in the workforce, meant that there were individuals who could serve as
examples of the popular truism that anyone can make it big in America” (Hooks 65). Those
where the initial meanings of climbing to the top. The media till this day promotes the endless
opportunity where the working class can make their way through the chain and reach the top.
. This idea of moving up in society is beginning to diminish. Bell Hooks knows the
struggle of being at the bottom class of society but also at the top. Bell Hooks says “Subversion
requires strategy.” Subversion refers to an attempt to transform the established social order and
its structures of power, authority and hierarchy. So what are these people on Wall Street
protesting? They are protesting inequality, the lack of representation in the government. It is
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social class warfare among the rich, middle and poor. The Occupy Movement is related to an
Eros Effect which refers to moments where dozens of people flow into the street and refuse to
leave and return to their everyday lives until significant change have been made in social order.
George Katsiaficas, author of “The Supervisions of Politics” says “In these moments, the
Eros Effect is reconstructed by thousands of people who change their everyday lives and instead
of values like patriotism, hierarchy or competition being the dominant values people construct
new values of solidarity of humanity and of love for each other.” They are there to bring
awareness that the rich are getting richer, the middle is barely hanging on and the poor are
getting poorer. Their famous slogan is “We are the 99%.” But who are the 1%? Through the
IRS, the 1% is the people that are earning $380,354 or more. You would assume that because
they constitute less of the population that they would hold less power. But, that is where we are
wrong. The 1% holds an approximate 36% of the Nation’s Wealth as provided by the IRS. Some
of the people that are included into this 1% are people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who are
Billionaires. We get the sense of greed when we hear their names.
For example, a good analogy that Hooks uses to explain the present greed of the banks
and corporations is children. “Most children experience greed in relation to food—endless
longing for sweets, longings that lead to hoarding, stealing, or some combination of these.
Excessive indulgence in favorite foods, especially sweet ones, by children often leads to
sickness” (Hooks 63) In this case; the reference to sickness would be greed. Children soon
assimilate and learn that greed is bad. But, in today’s tough economy the way of thinking we
were once taught is beginning to diminish. Hook says, “These childhood imprints lose power in
today’s hedonistic consumer culture where the good life has come to be seen as the life where
one can have whatever one wants, where no desire is seen as excessive.” People who were born
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with privileged backgrounds who had wanted to interfere on oppressive capitalism later in life
because adults that were determined to keep their place at the top of the chain. “Many folks with
economic privilege, whether progressive or not, have begun to critically question consumer
capitalism, both the ethic of greed it encourages and the obsession with getting that it rewards
(Hooks 159). As long as they get revenue, and a lot of it, then they are fine with it.
Furthermore, Bell Hooks quotes “More than any other group in the nation’s history, this
group was and is willing to forego allegiance to race or gender to promote their class interest. If
they could make a fortune promoting and selling a product to any group, they were willing to
play and prey upon any need or vulnerability that would aid in their accumulation of wealth”
(Hooks 65). Corporations like Apple are catering to all types of people. A great example of this
is that they try to make society feel like they need these types of products to function in society.
They cost a lot yet you see poor people with them. “Everyone who grows up in a household
where there is a lack of material resources knows what it feels like to want things you cannot
have, to want what money can buy when there is no money to spare”(Hooks 50). As a kid I
would always tell my parents that I wanted the latest iPod on the market because I would see
other people with them.
Most of these big corporations do not know the real value of a dollar, and what I mean by
that is that they have not been poor enough to know what it is like to struggle economically
because some of these millionaires or billionaires were raised privileged, which supports the idea
of the reproduction of privilege. Although, I can say they do know how to manage money.
Hooks says, “Crossing class boundaries, entering worlds of class privilege, was one way that I
learned different attitudes toward money than the ones I was raised with.” In other words they
know how to keep accounts. Some of elite people are blaming the poor for their poor
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performance of achieving success but, “The truth is that the working class and working poor
work hard but the money that they make is not enough to provide them with the means to attain
economic self-sufficiency” (Hooks 154)
In conclusion, the high cost of education is affecting students across the nation. As bell
hooks points out, education is extremely important if you want to be able to progress but being
able to cross boundaries is beginning to diminish. The greed in banks and companies has caused
uproar in an effort to bring awareness to the population. We have learned that they will do
whatever it takes to get richer while we get poorer. It is up to us to do something about it, we can
both stand and watch these banks and companies fill their pockets up with cash or we can join
the “99 percent” in an effort to bring awareness to the people. Now who do you classify yourself
as? The “99 percent” or the “1 percent.?”
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Work Cited
“A Postmodern Protest? Occupy Wall Street as Effective Social Resistance”. The Feminist
Mother. 5 October 2011. Web 22 March 2014.Work Cited
Ambika, Kandasam “Social Justice Groups Engage Occupy Wall Steet”. New America Media
Organization. 10 November 2011. Web. 1 April 2014
Berman, Jillian “Occupy Wall Street Actually Not At All Representative Of The 99 Percent,
Report Finds” Huffingtonpost. 29 January 2013. Web. 27 March 2014
Kadlec, Charles. “Social Justice, Greed and the Occupy Wall Street Movement” Forbes. 21
November 2011.Web. 22 March 2014