ENGL 1101: Fire, Disease, Disaster: Catastrophe and the Shaping of Urban Public Space

Sorry for the late post, my internet was down at the dorm but is now working again.

After the speech that we listened to in class last week, the Wall Street protest has been consistently on my mind. Ive been trying to listen to both sides ( the 1% and the 99%) and I’ve been trying to make sense of it all. The problem with it is that there is so much information needed to be understood to have, in my opinion, a valid point to make on the situation.

The arguments from the protesters all seem to make good sense to me, and I fully understand why they are protesting. What I’m not sure about is exactly why nothing has been changed previously and why nothing is being changed now. Is it because what we ask for is just impossible? or perhaps unrealistic?

To me the answer to that question is yes they are impossible and unfortunately unrealistic. But, that being said, what we ask for is not realistic in the state that our government is in right now. If the way things are run where to change however, your demands would be quite possible. Our biggest problem in my opinion is how the government seems to be run by 1% and not the 100% that should it should be run by according to the constitution.  The first thing to do is to crack down on corruption and increase the punishment for taking bribes. I feel like it is now common knowledge that senators are bribed by lobbyists, which to me, is ridiculous. Money is given to banks by the government as Bailouts, but then banks give some of that money to politicians to pass laws, which in the end means that politicians are stealing from the government.

As I said earlier in the post, my education on the subject is currently limited and there for I don’t know if what i say is accurate or not. With that being said, this is what I make of the whole situation.

The Occupy Wallstreet protest has gone massive in the media. Everyone and their children has an opinion on it. It takes tedious work to find someone who is reliable when everyone claims to know what they’re saying. This is also a pet peeve of mine. When an event like this takes place most everyone decides to voice their opinion even when they understand very little about it.

occupywallst.org

this blog is all about occupy wallstreet. there’s plenty of posts calling out to people to come and join and support and be a part of this movement. The blog is created by a group committed to help resistance movements. According to the blog this movement is the first to go international. it is also the first large scale movement since the civil rights movement more than 50 years ago. They have several blogposts asking calling out to people to help support them and bring medical supplies and food. but naturally, every blogpost has its comment section where veryone else can voice theyre opinion. The blog creator hasnt made any sort of argument as to what they really are protesting about. curious to know exactly what is going on in order to make my own educated opinion, i have yet to find anything concrete about what theyre saying. the comments do give me some insight and like them i do agree that the blogposts are blown very out of proportion. they claim to have ran out of their medical supplies. this implies that people are getting hurt. on and on the blog goes on to say they are the 99% and we need to stand together. they never touch upon a valid argument or explain what exactly is going on. their own blog comments critisize this.

Today the Occupy Wall street protestors have been moved out of Zucccotti Park by the Mayor Order. Around 1pm the police department warned the protestor about the cleaning of the park, by 3pm the protestors had to pack there tents and clear out the entire park . The majority of the people did fallow the police orders and move out but more a dozen opposed and form a human chain ,which led to arrests. According to the mayor , the reasons for the order to remove all the protestors with their tents was because, the protestors in Zuccotti Park were disturbing the neighborhood and pedestrians, the quality of life and sanitation was deplorable and that some of the protestor were breaking some laws. After the park was clear the sanitation department removed all of the tents that were left and started the cleaning process of the entire park. But the Occupy Wall street protest is not over, because as they were removed from Zuccotti Park they moved on to the front gates of City Hall, were the mayor its going to make press conference later in the day.

I agree with the occupation of wall street all the way. The reason i do agree with this occupation is because i have a strong hate for our government. The reason i feel like that towards our leaders is because they think they are smarter/slicker then everyone else. They portray a massive amount of corruption but format in legal terms. For example as i have said before right when this occupation started and people started to protest outside of chase banks through out the tristate area Chase randomly donated 4.6million dollars to the New York City police department. Why did they donate so much money? Its obvious; for protection from society. The police took very vulgar actions towards the people (especially women). I experienced a group of 500+ people walk down the middle of the streets screaming whose streets our streets F the police and hundreds of riot cops following them. The general statement of poverty and job loss is enough in my eyes for the government to take action. They know what they are doing wrong but they want specific guide lines on what should be fixed hoping that we the people wont mention everything on that corruption list that the government has been going by. Our leaders are more concerned with improving their own careers then improving our surroundings.