Photograph provided by the author.

Occupy Wall Street can only be understood within the context of how increasingly Orwellian our society has become. I do not use that term lightly, but I see no other way to describe a society in which a topdown consensus is imposed on the people, dissent ridiculed and intimidated, and where words themselves have been twisted so as to be rendered unrecognizable. Corporate-funded think tanks and politicians define the accepted terms of debate, and large media empires exist largely to mock those who engage in questioning the manufactured consensus. Billions have been spent militarizing police forces to be used in intimidating and keeping under surveillance the people they were ostensibly supposed to protect. As dissent has grown, journalists have been barred from reporting on police actions and arrested. In recent weeks, police carted off a library of books and threw them in a dumpster. Meanwhile, the same politicians and media that were cheerleading the mass slaughter of Iraqis now attempt to portray protesters as violent, while praising as “job creators” the CEOs who have done everything they can to eliminate the jobs of working Americans. Our so-called democracy is a strange kabuki where radical ideologues call themselves conservative, while a conservative president is portrayed as a radical. Our highest court is emblazoned with the motto “Equal Justice Under Law” while its justices actively seek to ensure that some are more equal than others. It is only in this context, where words have been contorted to lose all meaning that one can begin to understand what is happening.

The rule of law, regardless of wealth. Democracy. A sustainable economy with decent jobs and healthcare for all. Affordable education. In today’s society, this is a radical platform. To be sure, there are many Democrats, including the president, who purport to stand for these goals. But to them they are at best ideals, something noble to aspire to, like a pony for every child. Maybe someday, but for today true acts of political heavy lifting are reserved for the owners. These are the corporations: insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness, but above all, banks. No idea is too radical, no request too large, if it comes from the owners. Hell, their lobbyists can usually write the legislation. But actual delivery of jobs, healthcare, and some semblance of social justice? That is for the starry-eyed idealists. The owners have no use for that. Aren’t you aware that we have a deficit? We are having trouble even paying for current ‘entitlements’, so please stop complaining, you plebes.

Having bought the politicians, the oligarchs that run this country have dressed themselves in the threads of a free market fundamentalism, and the serious people are told that to be wise is to recognize its inherent truth. Prosperity will surely be ours if we just cut taxes on investment, deregulate, and remove barriers to trade. We are told that market failures are caused by government, not by the infinite wisdom of the free market. Government should preferably not exist, or if it must, at least let it be run by those who are knowledgeable in such matters. Like former Goldman Sachs CEOs Hank Paulson and Jon Corzine, or Bain Capital CEO Mitt Romney, or billionaire Michael Bloomberg. These men know how the markets work. Of course, this is all transparent propaganda, a modern-day divine right of kings, both morally and intellectually bankrupt. Yet, it remains parroted by one useful idiot after another corporate bootlicker. After all, in Hans Christian Andersen’s fable, it is only the child who is brave enough to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

And so we have Occupy Wall Street, which exists in a world where common sense ideas are branded radical, and simple truths ignored by those at the adult’s table. As the child in the room, Occupy would seem easy to dismiss. Ad hominem tropes are a dime a dozen: lazy, dirty, hippies, hipsters, slackers. “Get a job!” yell passing bankers, as if unaware of basic economic indicators like the unemployment rate. Those less tone-deaf will acknowledge that the youth are economically frustrated, but urge them to be patient because those who understand economics are working on a corporate tax holiday and a Colombian free trade agreement that they promise will help. And yet, despite the attempted dismissals, what started as a hundred young people camped in a non-descript square has undoubtedly changed our national conversation. The reason for this is simple: the protesters speak the truth. For if one actually listens to the voices in Liberty Square, you will see that these youth understand economics in a way that betrays the charade that is the free market mythology. For when they protest Goldman Sachs selling fraudulent derivatives, they understand asymmetric information. When they are outraged over environmental degradation and the increased cost of education, it is because they understand externalities. When they point to the growing dominance of fewer and fewer corporations in sector after sector, they understand barriers to entry. Reflected in handmade sign after handmade sign are deep truths about the market failures that the corporate interests and their political sock puppets would prefer you ignore. And because the protesters speak simple economic truths, their numbers have grown immensely, and their message has been endorsed by prominent economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. Even Jeffrey Sachs, former maven of neoliberal deregulation, has been a loud advocate of Occupy Wall Street, which should give some idea of how far off the rails the oligarchs have gone in their insatiable quest for further profit.

Of course, there is perhaps nothing that has helped the nascent movement more than the violent police crackdowns. It was one hotheaded officer pepper-spraying a young woman that became the Youtube sensation that launched the Zuccotti shantytown into the national spotlight. The orchestrated mass arrests of seven hundred a week later on the Brooklyn Bridge made it clear that this was not merely an isolated officer misbehaving, but a clear campaign of police intimidation against peaceful protest.
The police led us onto the bridge that day, presumably with full intention of using it as an excuse for mass arrests. Kettled between two phalanxes of officers halfway across the span, bodies crushed against the steel beams, I recognized a scientist I know. I met two teachers who had travelled from Boston to join the demonstrations. Crammed into a jail cell with over one hundred supposed criminals, I met a Buddhist monk, and a missionary who was hopeful he could get out of jail in time to catch his flight overseas. My wife, a teacher, wasn’t so lucky, as she was locked in a cell alone. These are the people police have deemed a threat: teachers, students, scientists, union organizers, and clergy. Meanwhile, investment bankers who defrauded customers of billions walk free, subject not even to cursory investigation. To citizens under the illusion that justice and law enforcement work for them, this display of priorities must have been jarring. And so it grew to a demonstration of fifteen thousand a few days later, and eventually spread to hundreds of locations across the country and around the world. Police overreaction resulted in similar escalation from Boston to Oakland. If there was ever any doubt whom the police serve and protect, it should be settled by now. The police serve the government, and the government is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.

In lower Manhattan, after raiding the heart of the movement, gassing its kitchen staff, and arresting journalists and a city councilor, police installed more and more barricades, and instituted identification checkpoints to enter the public streets of the financial district. At Liberty Square, the protesters tore down the barricades in a heroic act of defiance, piling them high and jumping on them, chanting, “the people united will never be defeated!” We can only hope that they are right. America’s history is deeply scarred, but its ideals remain noble and are worth fighting for. Will its citizens really stand as idle witnesses to the death of democracy and the triumph of a corporate oligarchy? Occupy Wall Street has made it clear that at the very least, some will rage against the dying of the light.