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| A demonstrator lies on the ground at an entrance to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington after police pepper-sprayed a group of protestors trying to get into the museum on Saturday. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) |
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New York.
What began as a small group of protesters expressing their grievances about
economic inequities last month from a park in New York City has evolved into an
online conversation that is spreading across the country on social media
platforms.
Inspired by
the populist message of the group known as Occupy Wall Street, more than 200
Facebook pages and Twitter accounts have sprung up in dozens of cities during
the past week, seeking volunteers for local protests and fostering discussion
about the group’s concerns.
Some 900
events have been set up on Meetup.com, and blog posts and photographs from all
over the country are popping up on the WeArethe99Percent blog on Tumblr from
people who see themselves as victims of not just a sagging economy but also
economic injustice.
‘’I don’t
want to be rich. I don’t want to live a lavish lifestyle,” a woman wrote on
Tumblr, describing herself as a college student worried about the burden of
student debt. “I’m worried. I’m scared, thinking about the future shakes me. I
hope this works. I really hope this works.”
The online
conversation has grown at the same time that street protests took place in
several other cities last week, including Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and
Washington. The Web site Occupy Together is trying to aggregate the online
conversations and the offline activities.
“We are not
coordinating anything,” said Justin Wedes, 26, a former high school science
teacher from Brooklyn who helps manage one of the movement’s main Twitter
accounts, @OccupyWallStNYC. “It is all grassroots. We are just trying to use it
to disseminate information, tell stories, ask for donations and to give people
a voice.”
To help get
the word out about a rally at 3 p.m. on Saturday in Washington Square Park, the
group turned to its Facebook and Twitter accounts. “If you are one of the 99
percent, this is your meeting,” the Facebook invitation said. Nearly 700 people
replied on Facebook saying that they would be there.
More than
1,000 demonstrators arrived at Washington Square Park for the rally, many of
them after marching from the encampment they had established three weeks ago in
Zuccotti Park, in Lower Manhattan.
During
their march, protesters kept to the sidewalks and out of traffic in a
purposeful attempt to prevent arrests. Once there, they held meetings until the
early evening, when the crowd dispersed and protesters made their way back to
Zuccotti Park, where they were welcomed with loud cheers.
While
people in New York are still dominating the conversation on Twitter, an
analysis of the micro-blogging site’s data on Friday showed that almost half of
the posts were made in other parts of the country, primarily in Los Angeles and
San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, as well as Texas, Florida and Oregon,
according Trendrr, a social media analytics firm.
Mark Ghuneim,
founder and chief executive officer of Trendrr, said the Twitter conversation
was producing an average of 10,000 to 15,000 posts an hour Friday about Occupy
Wall Street, with most people sharing links from news sites, Tumblr, YouTube
and Trendsmap.
Washington’s
National Air and Space Museum was closed after demonstrators tried to enter the
building with signs.
“This is
more of a growing conversation than something massive as we have seen from
hurricanes and with people passing away,” Ghuneim said. “The conversation for
this has a strong and steady heartbeat that is spreading. We’re seeing the
national dialogue morph into pockets of local and topic-based conversation.”
In Egypt,
the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page was started 10 months before the
uprising in January to protest police brutality. The page had more than 400,000
members before it was used to help propel protesters into Tahrir Square. Occupy
Wall Street’s Facebook page began a few weeks ago and has 138,000 members.
Yet it
represents only a sliver of the conversation taking place on Facebook about the
group’s anti-corporate message. Unlike in Egypt, where people found one another
on one Facebook page, geographically based Occupy Facebook pages have cropped
up, reflecting the loosely organized approach of the group. These Occupy pages
are being used not only to echo the issues being discussed in New York about
jobs, corporate greed and budget cuts, but also to talk about other problems
closer to home.
In
Tennessee, for example, there is an Occupy Tennessee Facebook page, as well as
pages for Occupy Memphis, Occupy Knoxville, Occupy Clarksville, Occupy
Chattanooga, Occupy Murfreesboro and Occupy Nashville, which helped get out the
word about a lunchtime protest in Nashville’s Legislative Plaza on Friday that
drew several hundred protesters with some bearing signs with the movement’s
motto: “We are the 99 percent.”
The center
of the movement’s media operation is in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, where
several hundred people have been camping since Sept. 17.
The New
York Times
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