In September 2011, the tents went up in New York City and by year’s end the Occupy Movement had spread to over 950 cities in over 80 countries. Millions of people across the world were on the street to protest rising income inequality and the power of money in democracy. U.S. president Barack Obama declared income inequality the defining issue of our time.
But the movement has not yet produced the fundamental social change demanded by the activists. In The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution, Micah White, one of the movement’s co-creators, argues that it should continue in multiple countries sharing a common agenda, but should shift from street protests to electoral politics.
Canadians were part of this international movement. There were Occupy protests in dozens of cities. But each country’s experience is different: the nature of inequality and how it has changed is different; the politics of protest and of electoral platforms are...
George Fallis is University Professor and a professor of economics and social science at York University. He is the author of Rethinking Higher Education: Participation, Research and Differentiation (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013) and Ideas and Democracy (University of Toronto Press, 2007).
Advertisement
Advertisement