Running head: SOMETHING HAPPENING HERE

There’s Something Happening Here: Occupying Wall Street
Mindy Newell, R.N., CNOR

Grand Canyon University

NRS – 432V
Teresa Ortner, RNC, MSNEd
October 8, 2011

There’s Something Happening Here: Occupying Wall Street The Plan of Action On September 17, 2011, nearly 1,000 protesters gathered around the symbolic sculpture of a charging bull that is the focal point of Bowling Green Park, which is in the financial district of downtown Manhattan, to say to the kings of Wall Street “Enough! No more! You will not continue to profit on the broken backs and weary shoulders of we, the people! You will not destroy the American dream with your greed!” They did not leave, but hoisted tents and unrolled sleeping bags to “Occupy Wall Street” (Smith, 2011). Since that day, the movement has spread across the country, from New York up the coast to Boston, down the coast through Washington to Miami, and across the country through Chicago and St. Louis all the way to Los Angeles, from large metropolises to small towns across America. It has become a genuine social and political movement, utilizing both old media such as newspapers and television news and new media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube (Ellis, Raja & Follman, 2011). Major labor unions, such as National Nurses United, the AFL-CIO, the Communications Workers of America, the United Auto Workers, the United Federation of Teachers, the Writers Guild East, and others have pledged their support, while economic and social organizations, such as the Coalition for the Homeless, the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP), the Alliance for Quality Education, the Human Services Council, and others have also raises their voices in solidarity (Occupy Wall Street, 2011). On October 5, 2011, ABC News reported at least 15,000 people were marching through the financial district’s man-made canyons while similar demonstrations were taking place throughout the country. (Occupy Wall Street, 2011). This author remembers the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968. She also remembers the students at Columbia University in New York and at Berkley in California shutting down their schools in protest to the Vietnam War, and. more recently, the protests at the Republican Convention of 2004 in New York City, at which upwards of 500,000 people participated (Egan & Berkowitz, 2011). The author believes, that yes, there is definitely something happening here. This paper will attempt to explore the ethical dilemma that has given rise to the Occupy Wall Street movement, using appropriate ethical terminology, and will analyze the scenario according to the decision-making model. The author will identify the problem, state her ethical position and present the theories and principles to back that position. The author will also attempt to generate alternatives to the protests, predict the possible consequences to these alternatives, and develop a plan of action. Finally, she will evaluate her decision(s). Identification of the Event The event, a planned demonstration against Wall Street’s greed and corruption—as perceived by the protesters—and which was described in the opening paragraphs of this paper, has become the beginning of a political and social protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street in New York City, and as Occupy Together in other parts of the country (CBS News, 2011). This author believes that ethical implications have driven the birth and maturing of this movement, beginning with the September, 2008 collapse of the “housing bubble” and subsequent Wall Street fallout and leading up to the present and continuing political climate in which the United States Congress has failed to adequately address the economic disaster that followed. The True Ethical Problem As this author sees it, the protest movement is not a problem, as many on the right would have the country see it, but an ethical answer to a true ethical problem, a problem that threatens the very existence of this country. Paul Krugman, writing in his column for the New York Times on October 5, 2011, put it this way: “…It was a play in three acts. In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubble burst—but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support—and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts—behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.” Wall Street now lives for an ethical principle this author calls “every man for himself and for himself every dollar.” It’s vice ethics, the very opposite of virtue ethics, which has at its base the qualities of compassion, discernment (or wisdom), trustworthiness, and integrity. (Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2008). Ethical Implications As of this writing, there are 1.5 million workers who have used up their unemployment benefits, including the extended “99 weeks” benefits. Those who are still receiving checks receive an average of $302. 90 every week, a grand total of $15, 750.80 a year, an impossible sum to live on comfortably in this country. There are approximate five applicants for every job. More than 6 million people have remained unemployed for six months or longer. 1 out of 6 depend on federal anti-poverty programs just to get by. And 4 out of 10 children are living at or below the official poverty line (The American Dream, 2011). In the March/April 2011 issue of Mother Jones magazine, Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot wrote It’s The Inequality, Stupid, a collection of eleven charts demonstrating the huge wealth and income disparity present in America today, and stating, “A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.” And yet the first paragraph of the United States Constitution reads “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America” (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.) Establish justice. Insure domestic tranquility. Promote the general welfare. And secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. In ethical terms, these words can be transcribed into (1) justice; (2) beneficence; (3) least harm; and (4) respect for autonomy. And these are the ethical values and principles for which the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together movements are fighting. Alternatives for Resolving the Problem As this author sees the situation, the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together movements is currently the only alternative for changing the way Wall Street does business. With Congress in a continual “Moebius loop”—the Republican platform is not jobs, not the economy, not Afghanistan or Iraq, but, as Mitch McConnell simply stated to the National Journal on October 25, 2010, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” (Shakir, 2010)—the power of protest, the “power of the street” is the only way to open the floodgates. Evaluation and Conclusion Occupy Wall Street has been accused of having no central message, of having too many messages, and of not offering any real solution. But this author does believe that they do have a plan; it may not be something concrete, such as imposing a “financial sales tax” or discarding the “carried interest loopholes” (Kristoff, 2011), but it’s something that’s just as important, perhaps even more important. Their plan, their job, is to wake up the “sleeping giant” that is the American citizenry. And it’s working. When this author was researching the Occupy Wall Street movement for this paper, it wasn’t the paucity of articles that made it difficult to choose; it was the increasing numbers of articles that made proved a stumbling block. However, this author does have one caveat for the Occupy Wall Street’ers. Let the police spray pepper in their eyes and knee demonstrators in the throat. Let them use mace and batons (Tracey, 2011). It is extremely important that the protest remains as peaceful an act of civil disobedience as possible, else the support that Occupy Wall Street has been garnering will disappear; it will become fodder for the conservative, anti-Obama faction. If the movement descends into anarchy, if the demonstrators become nothing more than an angry mob, it will give legitimacy to those pundits and powers that denigrate it, and hand over whatever power it has established or will establish, whatever good it has done and will do, to those live by a “vice” virtue theory. And it will be a very long time before the sleeping giant that is the American people wake up again.

References American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.) The Constitution of the United States booklet. New York, NY: American Civil Liberties Union CBS News Interactive, Inc. (Oct. 8, 2011). “Occupy” protestors garner increased support.” Retrieved on October 8, 2011 from http://www.cbsnews.com/ 2102-500188_162-20117634.html/?tag=contentMain;contentBody Egan, M. & Berkowitz, B. (Oct. 7, 2011) Insight: Occupy Wall St, the start of a new protest era? Reuters. Retrieved October 9, 2011 from http://www.reuters.com/ assets/print?aid=USTRE7964CY30221007 Ellis, L., Raja, T., & Follman, M. (Oct. 4, 2011). Map: Occupy Wall Street spreads nationwide (updated). Mother Jones. Retrieved on October 9, 2011 from http:// motherjones.com/print/138772 Gilson, D. & Perot, C. (2011). “It’s the inequality, stupid.” Mother Jones. (March/April 2011 issue). Retrieved on October 9, 2011 from http:// motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph Krugman, Paul. (Oct 6, 2011). Confronting the malefactors. The New York Times. Retrieved on October 7, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/ krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print OccupyWallStreet.org. (Oct, 4, 2011). #OccupyWallStreet union march from Foley Square to Wall Street. Retrieved October 8, 2011 from http://occupywallst.org/ Shakir, Faiz. (Oct. 25, 2010). Mitch McConnell: I want to be Senate Majority Leader in order to make Obama a one-term president. Think Progress. Retrieved October 8, 2011 from http://thinkprogress.org/poliltics/2010/10/25/126242/ mcconnell-obama-one-term/ Smith, Candace. (Sep. 17, 2011). Protestors begin effort to ‘Occupy Wall Street.’ ABC News. Retrieved on October 8, 2011 from http://abcnews.go/com/blogs/ headlines/2011/09/protesters-begin-effort-to-occupy-wall-street/ The American Dream.com. (2011). The 99ers. Retrieved October 9, 2011 from http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-99ers Tracey, Michael. (Oct 6, 2011). The NYPD's violent crackdown on Occupy Wall Street protesters. Mother Jones. Retrieved October 7, 2011 from http:// motherjones.com /politics/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-police-violence