Some say it inspired BLM and the growth of the US left. Others see it as an abject failure. A decade after the occupation of New York’s Zuccotti Park, the people who were there look back
“We are the 99%.” Ten years ago that unifying slogan travelled around the world. Some attribute its origin to the economist Joseph Stiglitz, who first popularised the distinction between the 1% of people with great wealth and power and the rest of us. Others say that it was the late anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber who coined the phrase. But everyone agrees that it went global when it was voiced by demonstrators who gathered in lower Manhattan’s financial district on 17 September 2011.
What took place that day, and the two months to follow, would become known as Occupy Wall Street, a protest movement against economic inequality and injustice that spread to 28 other US cities, to European capitals and financial centres, including London, Paris and Berlin, as well as parts of South America and the far east. In total it’s said that there were more than 750 Occupy events around the world, featuring demonstrators ranging from a few tens in some places to many thousands in others.
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