Jules Hedwig S.

Dayrit 2008-67937

February 14, 2013 SEA 30: Social Movements Paper

At its heart, the Occupy Movement is an international campaign against inequality brought about by the misappropriation of power and wealth among the peoples of the Globe, the goal of which being the proper distribution of said things amongst all the involved parties. The proponents of the movement identify themselves as the 99% and their main enemy as Capitalism, which is basically mass exploitation for the profit of a few. These social movers wish to see the current capitalist system brought down and replaced with a socialist one geared towards serving the public over the individual. But all is not well in the fight for liberation against this powerful foe, as in this current age where the evolution of technology and consumerism is fast and relentless; the Enemy has gained powerful tools to shut up the upstarts: Tools such as social networking, the shopping mall, and entertainment media, all of which cause the public to turn a blind eye from the atrocities that are being committed in pursuit and retention of profit; Atrocities such as the urban poor in places like Payatas driven to their current situation by state neglect, causing them to resort to prostitution or theft in order to eke out an existence. Id doubt many people are consciously aware that these things are happening. The public has simply been made too uninformed to care. And should they every encounter this abusiveness, they would not know what to make of it, or worse, make something else out of it. After all, those who know nothing may understand nothing. Thus, in the case of the proliferation of the urban poor, the uninformed populace would simply pass it over as the result of the poors own misgivings, instead of as a result of abuse, just to be done with that issue because they have other things to worry about such as what to tweet next or which clothes to buy for next Saturdays party; things which have been given false importance by the exploitative capitalists. But blatant atrocities arent the only effects of capitalism in our country. The state favoring foreign investors, which has been the subject of many an art form concerning this topic, to open up shop here in favor of us building our own industries is a form of abuse; a sort of consensual rape of our motherland. The multinationals go in and establish themselves, with the intention of bleeding our natural resources dry and working our cheap labor force to death, covering this malicious intent with the promise of economic growth. These corporations are given freedom to do whatever is their bidding by our very own government, who supports their push, leaving our nation depleted and the workforce exhausted but not for our own benefit, as the gleam of progress is but a reflection of the cattle state we have become. And if some of our kin would benefit from this transgression, it would be those who sold us out in the first place. This said it becomes quite clear that those capable of fully understanding the Occupy Movement, with all its causes, advocacies, and end goals, are the ones who are directly involved with it or study it as a case example, i.e. those who willingly submit themselves to the pursuit of its notions. These people are the ones who can be fully impacted by the ideals of the Movement since they chose to at least forgo the consumerism and be immersed with the concept. This is not an easy feat, as it takes skill to reject the seductions of the consumerist life those above want us to live, thereby making us subservient to their whims. And not only that, it takes will power to stay immune to the advances of this lifestyle. Aficionados of the Movement may even be able to turn the Enemys weapons against them, using mass media and social networking to spread word of the deceit capitalism has spread. Public venues such as malls can have the same effect if used for easy access propaganda. This way, as the Enemy keeps on creating new means to drown out the truth, advocates of the Movement can adapt and subvert these means to unveil them.

Jules Hedwig S. Dayrit 2008-67937

February 14, 2013 SEA 30: Social Movements Paper

But this effort in by no means one-way. Its one thing to show the public facts and tell them their implications; its another different thing to make them comprehend and accept these truths. Thus, the hidden informations release must be controlled and calculated, to avoid shocking the intended targets. And it must either be discrete or loud and strong in delivery. That way the Enemy would have no means to intercept it or would find it hard to prevent it. Either way, this implies information sharing that is easy to swallow, further implying that the Movement must take its time to gather as many followers as possible in order to make the fell swoop as effective as it can be. At this point, it gets tricky. On one hand, the Occupy Movement claims to be leaderless, not bound by the state, and would burn it to the ground the moment they can. To them, the state exists only as a hindrance to a true communal liberty. It need not be there for society to function. This is where several subversive groups come into opposition, especially between the occupy movement and the party led movement who claim the state is needed in order for order to be established and kept. These Marxist-Leninists, those who say a state is needed, agree on most everything the Occupy Movement upholds except this one key bullet. I myself believe that anarchy isnt the way to go. It would result in chaos, as without nothing to stop the natural entropy of things, it will just grow and consume everything around it, and people will start craving order, thus reestablishing a state-like body, which will go on to repeat a vicious cycle. Entropy must be lessened, and the force to do that is a state, a socialist state specifically, which unlike the biased capitalist state, would cater to the needs of society as a whole. As a synthesis, social movers today are both at their most powerful and most vulnerable. The Enemy has the tools to completely block them out of the populaces view, in addition to blocking out all the bad stuff resulting from capitalism. But these tools can also be used to spread word, and if done correctly, it will spread like wild fire, too fast and powerful to be hindered by any capitalist machine. And once the old structure has been torn down, it must be replaced with one that is sensitive to the societal necessities, avoiding indulgences and focusing on pragmatism. Only then can the atrocities stop. Only then can everyone be equal.