Similarities Between Occupy Wall Street Movement And Civil Rights Movement

This political study will define the similarities between the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) and the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th Century. The evolution of the Civil Rights movement sought to use “creative” methods of direct non-violent action to dramatize the social, racial, and economic inequalities through the Martin Luther King’s method of Civil Rights protest. The OWS follows the same creative non-violent path by occupying physical spaces, such as Wall Street, to protest the financialization of the American economy and the oppression of the American citizen through the financial sector. The slow dissolution of civic protest is part of the blatant trends of oligarchic power emanating through Wall Street and the government in …show more content…
This new mode of political protest relied heavily on the power of non-violent protests as a part of direct action against the financial power of Wall Street executives that have taken control of speculative trading, but more importantly, have taken control of the American government. This creative method defines the use of Martin Luther King’s direct action method that sought to use marches, sit-ins, and busing protests to bring racism to the attention of a greater portion of the American …show more content…
This “long litany” of tragedies in American political life show a change in the way that powerful corporate and banking elites sought to use economic power to control and oppress the ordinary citizen. These are important aspects of the similarities of the Civil Rights Movement and the OWS, which seek to counter the oppression of the American oligarchy by bringing attention to them through protesting. Surely, the OWS defines a new and creative application of the King’s direct action methods that had appeared to be lost until the post-2008 economic crisis had devastated the American economy and way of