#Occupy Wall Street vs #Occupy All Streets

Over the course of the past year, we’ve seen “regular” people all across the world bring about major changes to their countries by taking to the streets, so to speak.  Dictators have been taken down out, governments over-thrown, civility and democracy ‘restored’.   Whatever problems we have in our own country pale in comparison to those of others, but I was admittedly excited when the Occupy Wall Street movement, and subsequently – Occupying Other Streets cropped up. FINALLY someone was standing up to the financial and corporate bullies.

As the days/weeks/months have passed, I started to wonder “now what”…what are they going to do next? What do they want me/us to do…I may not be able to sleep outside in a tent in support of their movement, but now what? To be honest, I dont even understand what OWS is all about anymore. Like, whats the end game? What are the demands? How are they going to determine when they’ve ‘won’ ? The movement has gotten so much traction, nationally – that I can’t imagine that one day someone is going to wake up and say “ok, lets go home now” and it’ll be all over.

So the other day when I saw a picture of JayZ wearing this:

 

I was like “Cool, now thats whats up.” I see Occupy All Streets as adding new life and some inclusiveness  to the OWS movement, similar to the mission of the Occupy the Hood . Screw just occupying Wall Street, there’s been economic injustices happening in “all streets” for decades. The shirts were for sale on his Roc4Life website. That is, until Priscilla Grim, associated with OWS, blasted Jay for what she and others saw as an attempt by Jay to profit off their movement (Rocawear stated that at that moment, they had no plans to donate any of the monies from the sales to OWS).

She stated:

“Jay-Z, as talented as he is, has the political sensibility of a hood rat and is a scrotum.To attempt to profit off of the first important social moment of 50 years with an overpriced piece of cotton is an insult to the fight for economic civil rights known as #occupywallstreet.”

 

Shortly after, Jay/Roc4Life removed the Occupy All Streets from the site and it is no longer for sale.  In my opinion, that was a seriously bad move on the part of OWS.

As one of the most powerful voices in the hip hop community and entertainment industry as a whole, it would have made more sense to use this as an opportunity to expand even more and tap into a demographic that they might not have reached otherwise.

I have a problem with this notion that OWS is is a “fight for economic civil rights”, because if you are truly fighting for economic civil rights, you must OCCUPY ALL STREETS.  There are people in this country (mostly minority who are also mostly under-represented in OWS) who have been suffering looooooong before the collapse of the economy linked directly to Wall Street. So again, if this is a fight for economic civil rights, start by connecting with the people who have been hit the hardest.

And then, the “Political sensibility of a hoodrat” ??? Are you effing kidding me?

Jay may be part of this 1% now, but he likely knows more about what it’s like to be at the bottom of the 99% totem pole than she could ever imagine and they could have parlayed this situation into something that could have had an amazing ripple effect.

Anyways, I still want to get my hands on an Occupy All Streets shirt, I don’t care what Priscilla say!

So what do you think about OWS vs OAS? Was Jay/RocAWear obligated to donate to OWS? Could Priscilla/OWS have handled the situation differently, in a manner that would benefit the movement?

 

 

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Tags: Entertainment, Jay-Z, Politics

Category: Entertainment