Independent Thought

Uncovering the Wall Street Protest

So there’s a HUGE protest going on in New York City. Did you know that? It’s in it’s second week, and has gotten incredibly little to no news coverage on American mainstream media. I first learned about it through word of mouth, and even then I had to go to a British news site to learn anything about it. Since then a friend of mine also linked me to a Facebook page that is constantly feeding out information and links to small websites and blogs with bits of current information. I have seen videos of violent arrests and mace attacks on unsuspecting women. I have seen live footage where people pleaded for medical care for the violently arrested victims locked up in jail. Right before I started writing this, I joined a surge of people in the protest network spreading phone numbers for major news networks trying to get hem to cover the story. Since then, articles have been released online by some of the major news outlets. I watched it happen. 

So what is it that all these people are protesting exactly?

It’s clear that the people involved are tired of our economic system, that much is obvious without very much digging. But even on the protest’s ‘official’ website (https://occupywallst.org/), it’s hard to get a bead on what exactly the protestors are trying to make happen. Here’s their mission statement: 

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“Reasonable Doubt”

“Reasonable doubt”. It’s a phrase most are familiar with in regards to the criminal justice system. It started with early British Christians who were wary of taking judgement upon another person- something which they felt was only God’s place to do so. By the 1780’s it became a standard beyond which all guilty convictions must be held- something the American justice system didn’t hesitate to officially adapt. Today, when an American juror is instructed the legal rules of how to decide a criminal case, they are told to apply this standard of being ‘guilty beyond a reasonable doubt’. The rule is there specifically to preserve the court’s “Presumption of innocence”. Basically, it’s what makes everyone innocent until proven guilty. This system was originally meant to to protect innocent people from conviction. This system has failed.

Troy Anthony Davis has been sentenced to death. As much as I would like to, I’m not going to tear into the moral hypocrisy of the death penalty right now. Because right now I think it’s more important that people know his story.

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“Old Man on the Mountain”

Phoenix Godwin

Finished 7-29-2011

Drawn with a mouse on Seashore.

The Reason for Dissent

There have always been problems in our society, and nobody disagrees with that. Over time, these problems have remained relatively the same for a good 80-90 years. Of course, we’ve done great things over that period of time as well. I don’t think that as a species we’ll ever stop doing amazing things unless we are destroyed by nature or ourselves. What makes me (and others like me) stand apart from the decades old stereotype of dissenter is the time period we specifically live in. Consider how complicated everything is right now. Society involves far more complexities now than it ever has before, and a lot of that is because of things that have happened within my lifetime. Cellphone use. Internet. Social Networking. Camera’s in nearly everybody’s hands. Public music sharing. Outsourcing. Importing. Exporting. International relations. All of these things are the way they are now because of developments that have occurred within the last twenty years. It’s significantly complicated things by massively increasing the level of communication and community we have. Suddenly, things all over the world have effects that can travel any distance in nearly an instant. Of course humanity as a whole has been moving in that direction since we first started creating empires back in ancient history. Now we’re here though, and there is a critical flaw in how our society is using it. The flaw stems from the base of most of this nation’s problems over the last century. 

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