Aiming to inspire bank boycotts and an on-campus “occupation,” a small group of students gathered Sunday afternoon in Bruin Plaza for a meeting of the newly formed Occupy UCLA.
Its goal is to inform people about problems facing the UC system, as well as general economic injustices, said Joseph Silva, a third-year philosophy and labor studies student and organizer of the Occupy UCLA group.
It is one of the latest groups to form in response to the international “Occupy” movement, a series of protests calling for an end to corporate greed and government corruption.
The “99 percent,” as the protesters refer to themselves, consist of locally based individuals operating independent branches.
The movement continues to spread to college campuses and cities around the nation. But the Occupy protests as a whole are also drawing skepticism for a lack of uniformly defined goals and organizational structure.
“(The protesters) need to make concrete demands if they want to make concrete change,” said Andrew Sabl, associate professor of public policy and public affairs. “Protests for protests’ sake only gets you so far.”
Sabl said there is a growing awareness about the need to reinstate regulations on the financial sector and address the wealth imbalance in the country.
As tax cuts for the rich increase, economic disparities between the economic groups are widening, said Michael Chwe, associate professor of political science.
Jason Ball, a postdoctoral political science student, took part in the Occupy L.A. protests.
He said he sees similarities between the protest movements of the Arab Spring and the events related to Occupy Wall Street.
“This is a time in global history where the systems we’ve created are not working anymore,” Ball said.
The aim of an occupation, Ball said, is different from that of a protest or demonstration ““ occupations are intended to provide a space for people to envision what an ideal society can look like.
Sabl said, however, the desire of the Occupy movement to avoid political engagement is obstructing its ability to effect permanent change.
For the movement to have a definite political impact, the protesters need to formulate a clear list of basic demands and take part in the political process, he added.
One product of the movement, however, is that issues of wealth, poverty and corporate misconduct are being discussed at a level they were not before, Sabl said. The Occupy movement has succeeded in creating an open dialogue about wealth inequalities and deeper problems in the economic system, he added.
A localized organizational structure encourages diversity among each segment of the Occupy protesters, in that no two groups have the same demands, Sabl said.
With contributing reports by Danyal Budare.