A decade ago, Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan was packed with tents, sleeping bags and colorful protest placards against income inequality and the financial industry. The Occupy Wall Street movement drew thousands to this tiny park, just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange. But at a 10-year anniversary rally on Friday, just a small crowd gathered to commemorate the protests.
While community organizers at the event praised the way protests have continued to push the needle on income inequality and other social issues, demonstrators past and present admitted they aren’t fully satisfied with the results of their mobilization.
“I would not say that we’ve been heading in a positive direction,” said Dan Weingarten, one of the many activists at the park ten years ago. “I would say the power of the corporate, imperial state has grown, and I would say inequality has gotten worse.”
Since the “Occupy” movement began a decade ago, the wealth gap has in fact widened between upper-income and middle-to-lower income Americans, according to a 2020 Pew Research study. Mark Anthony Moses, a former construction worker from Brooklyn, blames the rising wealth disparity on elected officials.
“Everything around us is worse than it was 10 years ago,” Moses said. “People lived better then than now, and I don’t understand it. People get voted in and they’re supposed to be helping ‘the people’, but they’re destroying ‘the people’.”
Inspired by the Arab Spring of the same year, Occupy Wall Street took shape in 2011 when thousands of people rallied in the area around Wall Street to protest political corruption and corporate influence over government—popularizing the slogan “we are the 99%.”
Their furor would only grow, with rallies and marches taking place each day around the city for two months before activists camping in Zuccotti Park were forced out in a late-night raid by the NYPD. Still, the leaderless movement sparked continued demonstrations across the country and the world. A tally at the time estimated that nearly 6,000 arrests were made in over a hundred cities across the U.S. in connection to the “Occupy” movement.
"Occupy" protestors returned to the steps of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan for the ten-year anniversary.
Joseph GedeonDaniel Burke, a demonstrator at Zuccotti Park a decade ago who now works in politics, believes the movement didn’t go far enough, and that more regulation is needed over the financial industry.
“It’s not time to ‘Occupy Wall Street’, it’s time to eradicate it,” Burke said. “We really have to take the opportunity to look back 10 years and change course.”
Although some demonstrators are discouraged by how little seems to have changed over the past ten years, many agree the protests fostered a new generation of socially-conscious activists ready to continue their efforts.
“The rich are still getting richer, especially with the pandemic,” said 24-year-old computer programmer Sarah Boulos. “I think one of the biggest things that Occupy Wall Street did was show that when we’re talking about economics and about the working class, that united everyone across the country.”
Joseph Gedeon reported this story for the Gothamist/WNYC’s Race & Justice Unit. If you have a tip, some data, or a story idea, email him at jgedeon@wnyc.org or reach out on Twitter @JGedeon1.
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