"Occupy Protesters: Professional and Well Educated"

[applegrove]

Occupy Protesters: Professional and Well Educated

By Natasha Lennard at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/occupy_protesters_professional_and_well_educated/

"SNIP..........................................


When Occupy Wall Street protests were their most buoyant, from fall 2011 to May 2012, rarely would a street march go by in New York without some suited onlooker shouting “Get a job!” to the careening crowds. As participants were well aware at the time — and as a brand-new study affirms — most participants had jobs. “I have three!” I recall one public school teacher retorting as a march snaked through Lower Manhattan.

A new study from CUNY’s Joseph A. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, based largely on a sample of protesters interviewed during a mass May Day rally last year, found that the majority of participants were white and well-educated (76 percent of respondents had a four-year degree). Two-thirds of Occupy protesters had professional jobs, the sociology study found, with nearly a third living in households with incomes of $100,000 or more. Meanwhile, nearly a third of the protesters had been laid off or lost a job and a similar number said they had more than $1,000 in credit card or student loan debt. A significant number of respondents were precariously or underemployed and 10 percent of respondents were unemployed and seeking work.

That Occupy Wall Street was disproportionately constituted by white, young, highly educated individuals in New York will come as no surprise to anyone marginally involved. Indeed, significant energy during assemblies and action planning meetings went into challenging white, male privilege and assumptions of expertise based on elite educations. Leftisit economist and journalist Doug Henwood commented via Facebook on the study that while “some will spin this as the complaints of the privileged,” he sees it as, “you know, solidarity.” Admirably, thousands of young, middle-class and affluent students and graduates sought to challenge the conditions for their own privilege.

Predictably, the New York Post, which regularly delivered the print equivalent of a “Get a job!” slur during Zuccotti Park’s heyday, has jumped on the study. “It seems those Occupy Wall Streeters were a lot closer to the 1 percent than they would like to admit,” noted the Post Tuesday. The message underpinning such criticism is glaring: Whether you’re jobless, underemployed, professional, middle-class, poor, under- or over-educated, if you dissent and fight the current conditions for yourself and those around you, you’ll be told to stop. No one, according to such New York Post logic, is the right subject to revolt.


..........................................SNIP"

[limpyhobbler]

1. Co-Author of New Occupy Study: Media Misled by Harping on Household Salaries

by Allison Kilkenny in The Nation on January 30, 2013 - 12:37 PM ET

...Setting aside the fact that this was a damned if they do, damned if they don't moment for Occupy—they're either poor, dirty hippies or the sons and daughters of the wealthy elite, but never, ever Americans exercising their First Amendment rights—the narrative constructed by the media simply isn't true.

Even one of the study's co-authors takes issue with how the media is interpreting the study.

Professor Stephanie Luce emphasizes emphatically that the data represents household income—not individual income, an important distinction to keep in mind because the data skews higher than real income for Occupiers.

"The problem was we did not end up reporting on individual income. About a quarter of our respondents earned less than $15,000 a year, but since many of them were students, we weren't sure if that would be misleading and if that would be a level of detail that would take a lot to go into describing those households," says Luce...

from http://www.thenation.com/node/172531

Also the sample was taken at just one rally in 2012. That rally wasn't necessarily representative of the whole "movement". And the sample group wasn't even necessarily representative of the whole rally. Incomes in New York City are not representative of incomes in the rest of the country.

[rhett o rick]

2. It was obvious that the elite can not tolerate anything that looks like rebellion.

That's why they were so brutal. Nip it in the bud at all costs. Their tactics wont work forever. The greedy should enjoy their gluttony while they can.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

3. So many of these writers have no clue.

Last edited Sat Feb 2, 2013, 03:10 PM - Edit history (1)

I will use myself as an example.

I have a BA in Communication. I have worked in something since I got my GED. Yet here I am praying that a fast food job will call soon. I am educated, I could do the job of those writers at the New Your Post, more than likely better. People that see my diploma, see my resume can't understand why I am not making a lot of money. Yet here I am, I am nowhere near being of the 1% and I back Occupy.

Some of those of OWS may be closer to them of the 1%, however they see the inequality that is happening. And it is the fact that some of those that are closer to the 1% are backing and standing with Occupy that scares the upper echelon.

[Kalidurga]

4. In Minneapolis nearly all that were over 18 were in college...

Some were in college and working one or two jobs. I myself didn't meet too many that were making more than 30,000 a year. Some were connected to people that were fairly well off and we traded stories about them. We did get a lot of people honking at us yelling get a job. I was working at the time, not a great job but it paid the bills. The reason I started going was because of income equality. The reason I kept going was I saw a lot of violations of the first amendment on the local level. The police it seemed were not our friends.

[zbdent]

5. "No one is the right subject to revolt"

No one is allowed to revolt ... unless it's against a Dem, of course ... then you get your own web site, tv show, radio show, 3 books published, and the "liberally-biased media"'s blessing.

Witness ... "TEA Party" vs "Occupy" ... which one got the most "liberally-biased media" coverage?

Edited to add:

Sorry, which one got the most POSITIVE "liberally-biased media" coverage?

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. If OWSers were portrayed correctly from the beginning, the movement would have grown.

They came up with the "get a job, dirty stinky hippies" tagline to purposely demonize the movement and limit its perceived appeal. Who wants to go join scary people, no matter how correct they may be?

And from where would such trash talk originate? From our own government!

Peter King: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Are 'Losers'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/peter-king-occupy-wall-street-protesters-losers_n_1098425.html

"First of all, you try to listen to them and they make almost no sense," King said. "These are people who were living in dirt, these were people who were involved with drugs, there was violence, there was rape. You're talking about a small number of people -- you could probably get more people in a Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Sunday than you've got in Zuccotti Park."

Congressman Peter King Calls Occupy Protesters "Angry Losers! Living In Their Own Filth"

[applegrove]

7. Occupy appealed to over 50 % of the population. That included many moderates and these

professionals. Then the next occupy events were more in tune with the left wing gripes. They were not only about inequality and the rich buying government anymore. They were anti trade and anti capitalist. That is why they lost support. Thankfully Obama made room for the moderates in the democratic party so they had a place to go if you liked a mixed market system of economics but didn't want plutocrats to get undue power. Occupy shut these moderates out.

[Fire Walk With Me]

8. Abuse of capitalism resulted in the income inequality OWS fights. It's getting to the heart of the

matter...?

[applegrove]

10. My point exactly. Abuse of capitalism. But that is not what it said on Occupy's

signs in Chicago I think. It said "Capitalism" or "Trade". It was the left wing's pov. They lost the moderates.

[DBoon]

9. The sans-culottes of the French Revolution were not abjectly poor

instead, the most radical leaders of the French Revolution were educated middle class who were frozen out of the aristocracy, and supported a new vision of society.