The Occupy Wall Street was not quite the populist movement that it said it was. Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce and Penny Lewis of City University New York have published a study that disrupts the carefully crafted narrative that the occupy movement portrayed in its heyday. The movement cast itself as unemployed, mostly young college grads, and suffering under crushing mountains of student debt. The movement itself was supposedly a spontaneous reaction to circumstances, when it sprang to life in September 2011.
That was a carefully create portrait that did not depict reality.
According to the study, “OWS was not a spontaneous movement that appeared out of nowhere. It was carefully planned by a group of experienced political activists” who had been inspired by the Arab Spring.
As for who made up the OWS’ footsoldiers, they weren’t the plucky down-on-their-luckers that the media showed the world. “Highly educated young adults were overrepresented” among occupiers, according to the study. Additionally:
[T]he majority of participants were white and well-educated (76 percent of respondents had a four-year degree). Two-thirds of Occupy protesters had professional jobs, the sociology study found, with nearly a third living in households with incomes of $100,000 or more.
Were they really the 99%, then?
Hands up anyone who’s shocked….
Yeah. No one.
– water is wet!
Just like in the 1960s and 70s. Most of the rioters and hippies were actually rich kids with daddy issues and plenty of the rest were radicals well trained by their parents. What’s interesting is that the media tended to portray them as heroes even though they terrorized college towns with years of theft, vandalism, and making big messes. A couple of years this went on with the college heads and all not doing anything to stop it. Then Kent State happened. Within a week or two all the protesters were gone and colleges and the towns got back to normal, more or less.
Bill Ayers was the son of the Chairman of the Board of the Commonwealth Edison Company. Bill senior was a descendent of Fredrick Ayers of Boston. Mr. Ayers connection to Chicago is that he bought up the Loop after the great Chicago Fire of 1871. Mr. Ayers daughter Beatrice married a young Army officer named George S. Patton, Jr.
I didn’t need a study for that. Anyone with eyes could see their clothes didn’t come cheap. They’re no different from the kids with 80 dollar Doc Martins panhandling on the street. If I ever see an American kid with a patch in his clothes I’ll call the Smithsonian and tell them there’s probably a dodo bird and some passenger pigeons in the area too.
This study is late in the game, Breitbart fully exposed this early on. Occupy UnMasked is quite telling.
At this point, the study is just meant to be rubbing it in people’s faces. “Yeah, so what. We won, what are you going to do about it?”
There’s no shame on the Left.
After studying the Occupy Movement for about 30 seconds I came to the conclusion that what we had here was a large group of spoiled rich white kids being used like the useful idiots that they are.
You mean that girl who complained that someone stole her $5000 laptop was actually well-off?
I guess she should have been happy, then. She went to agitate for the redistribution of wealth, and her wealth was redistributed.
A very deceptive article. Let me explain OWS in 60 seconds.
These are people, mostly younger “highly educated” kids who NEED anywhere from from $50-$100/hr salary to support themselves. Unfortunately they are only worth in economic terms, that is their productive value to society, anywhere from $5-$15/hr. Being “highly educated” doesnt make you employable. As a matter of fact, there productive value to society is almost inversely proportional to their education. That is because any PhD working for $15/hr is gonna be super hostile and resentful about taking a job beneath his dignity.
And the crazy part is that these narcissistic parasites have been trained from day 1 that prosperity is their birthright! Just because they come from household earning $100k+ doesnt mean that THEY themselves are earning money! All the more reason for their perverse sense of entitlement. They fancy themselves worth $200/hr! They are basically useless people in economic terms. They have no marketable skills even though they are educated. They will tell you stuff like “money isnt importnat to me”. Which is code for “My Slackerdom is YOUR responsibility”.
There is a big difference between coming from upper middle class families and actually being upper middle class on your own. These OWS people really are broke. And its their own fault!
“well educated”? I would disagree.