Research Log #3

Unknown. “Occupy protest 6-month anniversary ends with police sweep” The Telegraph(U.K.) March 18, 2012. Web.

 

Six months after the start of the Occupy Movement started a huge group of protesters made their way back to Zuccotti Park in New York which is less than a 5 minute walk from the New York Stock Exchange. Many protesters gathered with their tents and sleeping bags and sat and locked arms in the park once the park was closed.  The night ended with the New York Police Department coming through and sweeping the park making many arrests as they came through.  A bus was seen driving away with about a dozen people in plastic handcuffs who were arrested during the police sweep. Earlier in the day the protesters were seen protesting just outside the New York Stock Exchange chanting phrases like “We are unstoppable” and “Spring is Coming”.  Many protesters also talked about how they were happy with where they were in the movement and what had been accomplished so far.

 

I feel like this article was the best one I had read so far about the Occupy Movement. One protester held a cardboard sign in the protests that read, “Spring is Coming”.  This short phrase gave me the biggest reaction from the entire article. It showed me that the mentality now is that the warm spring weather will revitalize the movement and have the same spark the movement once had a few months earlier.  Many people had talked in different articles saying that the movement was dying out and how it was going to fade out soon.  But this protest marking the 6^th month anniversary showed that the movement was soon to get back on its feet and where it had left off once the spring weather comes. Protesters talked about how the movement will have the same momentum if not more than it had a few months earlier. The same protester said, “It's changed the language," she said. "It's brought out a lot of issues that people are talking about. ... And that's the start of change.” This shows me that they have succeeded in the first step of the movement which was just to get the word of the movement out to the public and this was succeeded when the movement moved all over the world and not just around the New York Stock Exchange.

 

I chose this source because the last source I had looked at was about 6 months ago and the very beginning of the movement and now this one was written less than a month ago. From this I was able to see what was going on with the movement and how far they had come along in the movement. I was interested to see that even though it seemed like the movement was starting to die out that they are very optimistic it will come back just as strong as when it had started once the weather gets better and also that they were happy with what the movement had accomplished so far.