Dr. Nicholas Kiersey, Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio University’s Chillicothe Campus, was quoted in a Big News Network story on the lasting effect of Occupy Wall Street.
For a time, Occupy Wall Street was everywhere, with its grass-roots encampments – first in New York City, then globally – and the refrain, “We are the 99 percent!”
And then it was gone. Its most famous camp in lower Manhattan was cleared out in an overnight police raid two months after it started, and other Occupy locations fizzled soon thereafter.
But five years later, demonstrators plan to gather once again in New York City’s Zuccotti Park on Saturday to commemorate the movement and what they say has been a lasting impact.
They take some of the credit for introducing income inequality into the broader political discourse, for inspiring the fight for a $15 minimum wage and, most recently, for creating a receptive audience for the Democratic presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
And some political observers even draw a line between the movement and the rise of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who tapped into the vein of suspicion against the power of elites – the 1 percent – that Occupy made ubiquitous.
Nicholas Kiersey, a political science professor at Ohio University, said Trump’s political presence is part of Occupy’s impact, as well….
“If Bernie Sanders represented a left-wing popular suspicion that had felt all of a sudden very legitimate in expressing its grievances, Trump, I think, represents the mirror of that from the right,” he said. “They both, in a sense, have ridden the momentum of popular dissatisfaction.”
Read more in “Measuring Occupy Wall Street’s Impact, 5 Years Later“
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