Arab Spring & Occupy Wallstreet

             With the recent rise of social network systems, people now even use SNS as ways to change the world. Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements are great examples of influential acts done by people gathered online. They were first organized through Facebook, and now they are everywhere, affecting uncountable numbers of people. Started in a similar way, Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street have both a similarity and a difference.

Both Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street are refusals against the current systems that have lasted for a long time. Arab Spring was first started by factors such as dictatorship, absolute monarchy, human rights violations, government corruption, extreme poverty, etc. In a big picture, it was to stand against the status quo of the dictatorship in government that led to innumerable social problems. Occupy Wall Street was said to be largely influenced by Arab Spring; it was caused by social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the perceived undue influence of corporations on government. It was basically against the whole system of Capitalism and New Liberalism.

Arab Spring was successfully done in many countries such as Tunisia and Egypt. The rebel forces frequently used violence to achieve their goal of justice. In Tunisia, the prime minister resigned; so did the one in Egypt. In Egypt, even the whole government was overthrown and the fourth president Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison for ordering the killing of protesters. Very similar things also happened in Yemen and Lybia. Although in some other countries, the dictators are still ruling the country and the protests are ongoing, the overall atmosphere of the movement is quite successful.

On the other hand, Occupy Wall Street seems like it is not as effective as its “original version” Arab Spring. Many political columnists point out that the theme of “nonviolence” is not as efficient when it comes to radically changing the system. If the ultimate equality between all people and corporations is what they want, they would probably have to forcefully take the money that was forcefully taken from the “99%”, since the riches won’t give it up voluntarily. This process is not likely to be done without any violence. Thus, their goal and their method were not coherent enough to work effectively.  

Each of them was meaningful in its own way. Arab Spring was quite successfully done among several countries, and was influential enough to spread literally everywhere in the world. Occupy Wall Street is not yet complete, but still is meaningful in a way that people actually “started” acting, against a larger frame of the problem. As a refusal of the corruption in Capitalism, people occupied the Wall Street, the symbol of the market itself. Started small, but small changes are now getting huge.