I am from Brazil, from my point of view Occupy was a sort of copy-cat of the spanish occupy (that spawned from the financial crisis), also vaguely related to Arab Spring.
At the time, I even tought about how closely it looked to the "Stand Alone Complex" discussed in the anime series of same name, when people create a social movement, and they believe they are being copy-cats, but there is no "original" to copy.
When Occupy happened, it was the same time as occupy-style protests in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, the Spanish and Portuguese called themselves "Indignados", and if you saw live feeds of the Greece movement, you could see people carrying "Indignados" banners too.
Also Arab spring happened at the same time, one thing interesting was that Anonymous (the 4chan Anonymous "group") was present in all of those, sometimes doing important things, for example in the same IRC channel they organized live feeds of spanish protests, medical help in Tunisia (a couple of "Anons" with actual medical training in Tunisia roamed around in makeshift ambulances helping injured protesters) and internet infrastructure in Egypt (in Egypt after the government shutdown the internet, "Anons" drove around in vans with satellite and various forms of local connections to provide data links so people could upload photos and videos of the protests).
Occupy Wall Street was a sort of natural consequence, lots of US people got involved in the overseas protests, and it does not surprise me they decided to try the same in US.
The thing is, that in US the cause they could fight for was completely unrelated, in Europe the problem was the stupid austerity programs and the debt problems, in the muslim world it started as protests against corruption (the first protester, a Tunisian that set fire to himself, was upset that the Tunisian police could stroll on the market and take whatever they wanted without paying, that Tunisian was a shopkeeper).
US has much less obvious corruption than Tunisia (ie: no cops stealing food from food trucks), and although US has crazy debts, the dollar being reserve currency allow the US to pretend the debt problem does not exist, so Occupy had to protest confusing stuff.
I agree that a lot of the details of the financial system fly over society's collective heads, but I think the impunity of white-collar bad actors was a very concrete non-confusing source of outrage.
It's a very power populist message. But it's hard to channel that into reform. Holding banks responsible for the crash just wasn't possible. Creating regulation for the future was possible, but it's wonkish and doesn't lend itself to crowd pleasing measures.
At the time, I even tought about how closely it looked to the "Stand Alone Complex" discussed in the anime series of same name, when people create a social movement, and they believe they are being copy-cats, but there is no "original" to copy.
When Occupy happened, it was the same time as occupy-style protests in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, the Spanish and Portuguese called themselves "Indignados", and if you saw live feeds of the Greece movement, you could see people carrying "Indignados" banners too.
Also Arab spring happened at the same time, one thing interesting was that Anonymous (the 4chan Anonymous "group") was present in all of those, sometimes doing important things, for example in the same IRC channel they organized live feeds of spanish protests, medical help in Tunisia (a couple of "Anons" with actual medical training in Tunisia roamed around in makeshift ambulances helping injured protesters) and internet infrastructure in Egypt (in Egypt after the government shutdown the internet, "Anons" drove around in vans with satellite and various forms of local connections to provide data links so people could upload photos and videos of the protests).
Occupy Wall Street was a sort of natural consequence, lots of US people got involved in the overseas protests, and it does not surprise me they decided to try the same in US.
The thing is, that in US the cause they could fight for was completely unrelated, in Europe the problem was the stupid austerity programs and the debt problems, in the muslim world it started as protests against corruption (the first protester, a Tunisian that set fire to himself, was upset that the Tunisian police could stroll on the market and take whatever they wanted without paying, that Tunisian was a shopkeeper).
US has much less obvious corruption than Tunisia (ie: no cops stealing food from food trucks), and although US has crazy debts, the dollar being reserve currency allow the US to pretend the debt problem does not exist, so Occupy had to protest confusing stuff.