By Greg Mcinerney
Some reporters have drawn comparisons between Occupy Wall Street and the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Even the protesters themselves list Arab Spring revolutions as inspiration on their website. With the Occupy movements in their seventh week, the comparison continues to gain significant backing.
Asmaa Mahfouz, a key figure in the April 6 movement in Egypt, visited the Occupy Wall Street protests last week.
“I am here to be in solidarity and support the Wall Street Occupy protesters, to say to them ‘the power to the people,’ and to keep it on and on, and they will succeed in the end,” she said during a speech given at Occupy Wall Street last week.
However, not all voices from the Middle East are endorsing the comparison. Nasser Weddady, blogger, activist and Civil Rights Outreach director at the American Islamic Congress, told Voice of America Oct. 12 that while he is sympathetic with American protesters, he does not believe they are aware of the intricacies of the Arab Spring revolutions.
“They don’t know that it was an evolutionary process, the result of decades of work, trial and error, and eventual breakthroughs,” Weddady said. “These people went out in the streets out of shared desperation after all other means had been exhausted. And they knew full well that they could die for it.”
The idea that Occupy protesters have had it easy in contrast to their Middle Eastern counterparts is shared by Huffington Post columnist Robert Barrett.
“It is geopolitically and culturally insensitive to link the Wall Street protests to those in which the protesters enjoy no such right of assembly, are prohibited from voting, lack any freedom of expression, and are persecuted, jailed, or worse, for any manner of artificially-prescribed social deviance — from the way they dress to their sexual orientation,” he said a column titled “Occupy Wall Street Is Not The Arab Spring” published Oct. 18.
Yet there are certain similarities in the two movements’ protest tactics. In places like Egypt and Tunisia, blogging and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter played a crucial role in allowing protesters to communicate and arrange assemblies, similar to the Occupy movements.
“People who shared interest in democracy built extensive social networks and organized political action. Social media became a critical part of the toolkit for greater freedom,” Philip Howard, associate professor of communications at the University of Washington, said in an online interview with Tgdaily.com.
The Occupy movement was born out of the world of blogging and forums and continues to use the Internet as its main source of outreach. Each city’s movement has their own separate website, which allow them to post press releases, arrange demonstrations and communicate their message to the public.
Occupy organizers have also used the Internet as a fundraising tool. The Associated Press reported in mid-October that the New York movement has raised over $300,000 via its Internet presence.
A focus on young people is another similarity. Both movements share a foundation built around the plight of young workers. The Wall Street Journal estimates the unemployment rate of Egyptians with graduate degrees under the age of 30 to be around 30 percent. Two weeks ago, the Financial Times reported unemployment rates of nearly 15 percent for people ages 20 to 24 in America, which is higher than the overall 9.1 percent rate for the country.
The issues of college fees and exorbitant graduate debt levels are instrumental in the broad agenda of the Occupy movement. In Egypt, the large population of unemployed graduates provided the spark for the entire social revolution.
The Occupy movement has also seemingly adopted the leaderless hierarchical blueprint displayed during the Arab Spring.
In a recent interview with CNN Journalist Anderson Cooper, social activist and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore was asked who was leading the protests.
“People keep asking me that, and I keep pointing them towards anyone and everyone here,” he said.
Yet in both cases, certain figureheads have emerged.
Esraa Abdel Fattah, a young Egyptian woman held for 18 days in custody by the Mubarak regime, became a poster girl for the eastern uprisings and has since been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
For the Occupy movement, Scott Olsen, a protester at Occupy Oakland, has emerged as a figure of importance. Olsen, a 24-year-old Iraqi war veteran, suffered a fractured skull when he was allegedly struck by a police projectile last Tuesday at a protest in Oakland, Calif. Internet videos of the incident have prompted a police investigation as well as an increased media focus on how forces across the country have handled the protests.
The Occupy movement is much maligned by certain sections of the media for what they see as a lack of direction and specific aims. The New York Daily News published an article entitled “Occupy Wall Street protesters are behaving like a bunch of spoiled brats.” The article went on to deride the protesters as “dumb and obnoxious.”
This accusation of a lack of a coherent message is not one that bothers Occupy Boston member and unemployed engineer Ryan Walls.
“The media thinks that because there is no brutal dictator to overthrow there is no problem,” he said. “We are targeting evils that can’t be embodied by one person, they just don’t get it.”
The Occupy movement’s rise to prominence has been rapid, evidenced by both its growth in support and emerging political importance. According to the Occupy Wall Street website, the movement has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities.
In a recent interview with ABC news, Barack Obama declared, “we are on their side.”
Despite this increase in support and notoriety, Robert Barrett of the Huffington Post remains skeptical as to their Arab Spring credentials.
“They should use their voices to improve the system, not to tear it down,” he said. “This is not their Arab Spring.”
