Wednesday, October 19, 2011

70% of OWS Supporters are Politically Independent



Posted 10/19/11 by Occupy Wall Street

Two weeks ago we conducted an anonymous poll on this website to learn more about our visitors. We asked Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán Ph.D, sociologist of the City University of New York to look at the data, which he analyzed to create an original academic paper titled "Mainstream Support for a Mainstream Movement".

His analysis shows that the Occupy Wall Street movement is heavily supported by a diverse group of individuals and that "the 99% movement comes from and looks like the 99%." Among the most telling of his findings is that 70.3% of respondents identified as politically independent.

Dr. Cordero-Guzmán's findings strongly reinforce what we've known all along: Occupy Wall Street is a post-political movement representing something far greater than failed party politics. We are a movement of people empowerment, a collective realization that we ourselves have the power to create change from the bottom-up, because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians.

Since our humble beginning a few short weeks ago, we've helped inspire people around the world to organize democratic assemblies in their own communities to take back public spaces, meet basic needs, make their own demands, and begin building a better world today.

Below is Dr. Cordero-Guzmán's executive summary of his findings along with a link to his full academic paper.






The Occupy Wall Street movement has galvanized the attention of the world by organizing the largest demonstrations in this country as a response to the Great Recession caused by our financial and political leaders. Data from a survey of 1,619 respondents from a survey placed on occupywallst.org suggests that there is a huge undercurrent of mainstream dissatisfaction with traditional political party affiliations as well a huge amount of support for radical change in the United States of America.

  • 92.5% of respondents either somewhat or strongly supported the protests with most respondents indicating strong support.

  • 1/4th of the sample (or 24.2%) participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests as of October 5, 2011.

  • 91.8% of the sample thinks that the Occupy Wall Street Protests will continue to grow.


In terms of demographic characteristics of the sample, we found that,

  • 64.2% of respondents were younger than 34 years of age.

  • While the sample is relatively young, one in three respondents is older than 35 and one in five respondents is 45 and older.

  • 7.9% of respondents have a high school degree or less.

  • 92.1% of the sample has some college, a college degree, or a graduate degree.

  • 27.4% have some college (but no degree), 35% have a college degree, 8.2% have some graduate school (but no degree), and close to 21.5% have a graduate school degree.

  • This is a highly educated sample.

  • 26.7% of respondents were enrolled in school and 73.3% were not enrolled in school.

  • 50.4% were employed full-time and an additional 20.4% were employed part-time.

  • 13.1% of the sample are unemployed.

  • 2.6% of respondents were retired, 1.3% disabled, 2.6% homemakers and 9.7% are full-time students.

  • 47.5% of the sample earns less than $24,999 dollars a year and another quarter (24%) earn between $25,000 and $49,999 per year.

  • 71.5% of the sample earns less than $50,000 per year.

  • 15.4% of the sample earned between $50,000 and $74,999.

  • The remainder 13% of the sample earn over $75,000 with close to 2% earning over $150,000 per year.

  • 27.3% of respondents considered themselves Democrats, another 2.4% said they were Republican.

  • Interestingly, a very large proportion of the sample, close to 70.3%, considered themselves Independents.

  • 66.4% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use Facebook.

  • 28.9% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use Twitter.

  • 73.9% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use YouTube.

  • Our data suggest that the 99% movement comes from and looks like the 99%.


Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Demands: A group claiming to be on the verge of issuing demands for #OWS has gotten the attention of a story hungry media. We are our demands. #OWS is conversation, organization, and action focused on ending the tyranny of the 1%. On Saturday we marched in solidarity against corrupt banking systems, against war, and against foreclosure. We discussed how to break up the "too big to fail" financial companies and end excessive wall street executive bonuses, we were arrested while trying to remove our money from the grasp of these dangerous institutions, [we occupied the boardrooms of the 1% so they wouldn't feel so sad and alone, we occupied foreclosure court rooms where they use a broken system to legally steal the homes of the 99%, rallied in front of military recruitment centers demanding an end to US wars, and tens of thousands of us marched into the times square, the neon heart of consumerism, demanding economic justice.


Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power major banks and unaccountable multinational corporations wield against democracy, and the role of Wall Street in creating the economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in nearly a century. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and around the world, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of a dangerous neoliberal economic agenda that is stealing our future.


11 comments:

  1. Viva OWS...let the revolution continue.

    Let Dissent and Defiance be the call words of the day.

    End the rule of the 1%.

    Power to the People everywhere.
    \\ll//

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  2. It is also important to remember how swiftly the Framers turned to repressive measures to curb political expression when that expression did not accommodate their system of privilege. When the protest began, for example, Sam Adams engineered a Riot Act which prohibited twelve or more armed persons from congregating in public and which empowered county sheriffs to kill rioters. If convicted under the act, rioters would “forfeit all their lands, tenements, goods, and chattels, to the common wealth” and would be “whipped thirty-nine stripes on the naked back, at the public whipping post, and suffer imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months, nor less than six months.” Massachusetts suspended the writ of habeas corpus. The state was also granted the power to arrest and imprison without bail for an indefinite period “in any part of the Commonwealth any person whom they shall suspect is unfriendly to government.” Sam Adams's justification for these measures bears repeating because it underscores the attitude of the Framers toward revolutionaries which prevails to this day: “In monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.” The right to revolution (for the middle class) advanced in the Declaration of Independence is here taken back - for good.~Zinn, 94.
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  3. Note also that the principle found in the Declaration of Independence that revolution is a right of people (“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”) has been eliminated altogether in the Constitution. To be sure, the Framers in 1776 only had the white male middle to upper classes in mind when they framed the right to revolt. The Constitution, however, not only eliminates any encouragement to revolt, it makes revolution virtually impossible. With the state militia under federal jurisdiction, with the creation of a national army, the authorization to suspend habeas corpus (or lock people up without giving a reason), and put down domestic insurrections, the risks entailed in challenging political authority are greatly enlarged.
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  4. Make note of this COTO:

    I am illuminating the situation that is the National Government here, to show what we and the current rebellion are up against.

    Not the mythological Constitution of "We the People," but a national government of an elite oligarchy that the Constitution in reality represents.
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  5. THIS GUY IS AWESOME! WE NEED MORE LIKE HIM AS THE PREVIOUS POST SAYS.

    AND HE"S HUGE !!!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmEHcOc0Sys&feature=related

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  6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLdcB0ln9t8&feature=related

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  7. Woh ho ho ho...all it takes is one bull of a man...an American Hero to back down a whole goon squad....

    Thanks for posting this Jayjee...an inspiration.
    \\ll//

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  8. Three men...could they pull it off?

    It may be worth a try. We will see what develops.

    Maybe God is working behind the scenes??? Aye?
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  9. Why did the police not make a move on this Patriotic military man? They were intimidated, scared to be "bullies" against a formidable opponent. Multiply this honorable Man's attitude and righteous indignation by Millions, 10's of Millions of real AMERICANS. THAT is a fighting force that can stand down the Bullies!

    This Man's essence is inside 10's of Millions of Americans. Find IT! Embrace IT -- for IT IS HONORABLE TO STAND AGAINST INJUSTICE where ever found. If there is anything worth standing for, it is to stand for those brothers and sisters who cannot fight for themselves against tyranny.

    I would really love to see this scenario played out with men such as this speaking directly with conviction to the pathetic, mealy, sell-out Congress crabapples. In a room. Where they cannot slither away from the emasculating truths raining down on their culpable congressional codpieces. Barney Frank. Harry Reid. Nancy Pelosi, et. al. Same for apparatchiks like Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner. And go upstairs to Mr. Obama, and Biden. Find and fillet the Cabinet members, the Czars, those in place and those who have moved on and out like Emmanuel.

    This is a seminal event for our time. A WIN for The People because one Man cared enough to stand up, and defend the people he was trained to fight for...

    3 Cheers!

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  10. “It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”~Henry Ford, 1922
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  11. George Kennan's (head of the State Department Planning Staff) icy assessment of the security threat posed to the United States in1948:


    ...we have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population....In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all the sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction...We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.~Policy Planning Study (PPS) 23, Feb. 24, 1948, FRUS 1948, I (part 2).

    ReplyDelete