Political Unawareness 101: #OWS

#OWS has been recently trending in Twitter and many people may ask - what is #ows? Well, it is Occupy Wall Street's hashtag obviously. The Occupy Wall Street protests started September 17th, 2011 in Zuccotti Park. The protesters are protesting against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and business corruption over the government. The protesters' slogan is "We're the 99%". This is to show the wealth gap between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and the other 99%, because the wealthiest 1% control over 40% of the money. The protesters chose Wall Street because they believe it is a representation of the financial inequality and corporate greed within the United States.

Since the first #OWS protest, there have been over 900 cities in the world creating their own "occupy" protests. Many of the complaints of the corruption of our government are about capitalism. Personally, I don't think the issue is capitalism, it is more of crony capitalism that is the problem. With crony capitalism everything is based on the close relationships with other businesses and people and this determines the success.

For example, if I start a company and it is going well and then it fails - that is my own fault, but capitalism allows for me to do something like that. However, if my business starts to fail and then I have a really rich friend and they bail me out that is crony capitalism. It keeps the rich rich because even though my company failed I am still rich because my friend bailed me out. There is more to capitalism and crony capitalism but that is the basic run down.

To bring some entertainment to this post - there are some plays on Occupy Wall Street. One of my favorites is Occupy Occupy Wall Street. Their slogan is "The 1% fights back" and they are pretending to be the bankers on Wall Street and they are protesting the protest because they want to keep their money. The videos are pretty funny and are a good spin on the situation. My other favorite is Occupy Sesame Street. This is another silly play on what is happening on Wall Street and putting it in a context that makes it seem ridiculous.