Lauren Berg
WGS 410
11/10/11
Occupy Wall Street
During my attendance of the Occupy Wall Street: Facilitated, I was
delighted to listen to the very interesting and informative presentations given
by Dr. Dreiling and Dr. Burris. I attended the Occupy Eugene protest march a
few weeks ago, and I am planning to get more involved with the movement in the
future. I knew the main ideas behind the protest, but my feminist curiosity was
searching for more information on the subject. I found that the Occupy Wall Street: Facilitated Discussion was
very informative and helped me answer my questions and gain a better
understanding of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The first presenter was associate
professor Michael Dreiling of the UO sociology department. He gave a PowerPoint
presentation on why and how the Occupy Wall Street movement was started and how
it grew so quickly. I had already known about most general of the information
that he present, but there were a lot of details that I learned from him. An
interesting fact that he shared with us was that the Occupy Wall Street
movement is actually not new at all; it “has roots going back to a long time
ago”. Activists have been fighting for the movements cause for many years, and
have spent a lot of time planning and structuring the protests.
The next speaker, Dr. Val Burris of
the sociology department, went in depth about how Eugene became a city of
activists. He explained that the
migration into Oregon during the 60’s and 70’s had a great effect on the how
Eugene became a political activist hub.
During the question and answer section
of the presentation, the most interesting point that I heard was that Dr.
Burris believes the only time that United States social movements ever really
change policy is when people are willing to really stand up to the cause by
protesting, breaking the law, and disturbing daily life for an extended amount
of time. Politicians may be willing to change laws that are not important
without such large disruptions, but it takes the disruptions to really change
the important laws. He said that during the next thirty years, he does not
think that even half of the wrong doings done by Wall Street and the big corporations
during the past thirty years, can be rectified. He believes that if there is
going to be great change, it will take a very long time to make it happen.
Many of the people in the audience
were very passionate advocates for Occupy Wall Street, and really hoped that
their agency would make a difference in helping the 99% of the United States people
who are being oppressed by the wealthy 1%. Our government system is difficult
to change, but I hope that the passionate voices of the 99% will prevail and
that the Occupy Wall Street will meet its goals.
