By Joyce Yin
New Organizing Project blogger
==============================================
It’s hard to believe that the ‘occupy _____’ movement is a little more than a month old. Since the first Occupy Wallstreet action on September 17th, 2011, there has been a domino effect across the country. Thousands of people from a variety of backgrounds, experiences and communities have come together to protest, well, a little bit of everything. But it seems like the reoccurring theme is, “we’ve had enough of this economic inequality and corporate greed. We are the 99%.”
And you know what? I can relate to that to some degree. I’m tired of big banks being bailed out, corporations being treated like people. However, after reading the colorlines article about (de)occupying Albuquerque, the article put this entire movement into a different perspective that I hadn’t even considered: we, the ‘99%’ are also screwing other people over whether we realize it or not. We’ve been screwing over Native Americans since we got here 600+ years ago, occupying a land and oppressing an entire community.
So while I can get down with this ‘occupy ____’ movement to a certain degree, I think it’s important for all of us to remember that we are not free from a certain amount of privilege either. Yes, the majority of us may belong to the ‘99%’ but in some ways, as much as we might hate to admit it to ourselves, we are also the 1%.
