Being an unemployed Tufts alumnus, I cannot help but find the Occupy Wall Street movement appealing and even attractive. After all, the protests that have flared up in downtown Manhattan and now Boston and elsewhere typify everything Tufts students love: active citizenship, exploiting the right to protest and bringing people together for the sake of progress. But as much as I want to spend my otherwise pathetic, purposeless days camping out near the center of world finance with a sign that expresses my outrage at corporate greed in a costume that mocks the hypocrisy of our synthesis of capitalism and democracy, I cannot bring myself to do it.
When the people of Egypt took to the streets of Tahrir Square in January, emulating their Tunisian counterparts in mass dissent against tyranny, they had a simple, unified message. Indeed, the architects and participants of the so-called "Arab Spring" were not pleading for the destruction of Israel (though some of them certainly desire it), neither were they marching in the name of Islam, nor human rights, nor female equality. Though all of these things were in some way a part of the movement, the Arab Spring, as manifested in the Middle East over the past nine months, had a much clearer goal: the ouster of the states' respective tyrannical dictators and corrupt regimes.
In Egypt the protesters' chants were concise, repetitive and straightforward — "the people want to bring down the regime" — but in downtown Manhattan, the chants are much more nuanced, in many cases restrictively so. Many of the posters represent the middle and lower classes claiming, "We are the 99%." Others call for the shutdown of Wall Street, heavier tax burdens on the rich, the expulsion of money from politics, the blocking of cuts to "entitlement" programs, an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I, like many of you reading, agree with a lot of these things, and while I don't think protests are required to have a singular message, I struggle to understand how this movement can lead to anything positive without a more succinct goal. It took millions of Egyptians 18 days to bring down one of the longest-standing, most corrupt regimes in recent history. By most standards, it was an exceptionally fast revolution, but reaching a critical mass here in the United States will be just as exceptionally difficult given the convoluted nature of the movement and the nuanced demands. This is not to mention the complacency of the American public that unfortunately wins out over its anger toward, what I readily concede, is a crime that resulted in financial catastrophe three years ago. Nor does this take into account the surprisingly limited attention given to these protests by mainstream media, despite the allegedly unprovoked police brutality and more than 700 arrests that occurred this past weekend in New York.
Some of these protesters are partially nude, some wear Guy Fawkes masks mimicking the rebellion seen in the film "V for Vendetta" (2006), others are plain-dressed Americans and some are more patriotically garbed. A wide range of individuals can be found in the crowd. Those that fault government and those that fault Wall Street bankers march alongside. Unity, bipartisanship, and people coming together from all walks of life for a cause are great things. We should take pride in the freedoms we do have, and we should exploit them for the greater good. Yet, I have to agree with recent "occupation" passerby Susan Sarandon, who expressed her support for the movement, but called on those involved to develop clearer goals. Americans should be angry, and we do deserve better, but it is only through a conviction that rests on serious, achievable ends that we can ultimately turn these truths into a better system.
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Mike Del Moro graduated from Tufts in 2011 with a degree in international relations.
