Lesson: What is Occupy Wall Street (and how will it be remembered)?/ExerciseL1

Listening Exercise

The Occupy movement

suddenly and sustained longer than was first imagined. But now that the Occupy movement is shutting

for the winter, what will it be

for? One of their main rallying cries is "we are the 99%". It's a reference to this fact. Taking the entire population of the U.S. you will find that merely 1% own nearly 50% of all our wealth and with wealth comes power and more

. In fact you will see that the wealthiest 1% of

over the last 40 years have grown increasingly wealthier and wealthier, while the remaining 99% stay relatively stagnant. And while the 1% have been gaining more power they haven't always used it for the good of society.

Okay then, regardless if you see this as a problem or not, what remains

for some people and plain frustrating to others is that

knows what Occupiers really want. Even the Occupiers

seem to have different

for occupying, making people think that they're just being immature. Movements should have a very clear goal like "let's elect this president" or "let's create these new laws". But the Occupy movement is

. It seems to be saying things like "let's

attention to this issue", "let's have a conversation", "let's listen to each other, especially the marginalized, and see how we can agree." It doesn't have one charismatic

but is decentralized. It doesn't have one plain agenda but thousands and thousands of voices

together. It is much like the difference between a typical model of top-down power in the way the Internet works. So it seems that Occupy Wall Street is an Internet era movement. You see what most people don't

is that Occupy Wall Street is not acting like 20th century politics, but instead it seems to be prototyping something

and we will continue to see how it evolves.