I know we had this just two days before… But it happened that Sandra and I prepared an article with the same topic at exactly the same time. She was a bit faster in publishing it 🙂 I just thought about deleting mine, but as I research more and more, the topic really seems to be interesting and for a lot of people as well pretty important.

Just a word to some comments that came in via facebook: No, this is not a political website, neither are we trying to brainwash your opinions. We just want to let you participate in German cultur, events and language. So, if there´s a movement going on, or the media are reporting about a special subject, this could also be interesting for you, no?

But now let´s start with the actual post:

I guess a lot of you readers are living in the USA, so I think you are familiar with the term Occupy Wall Street.

For those who are not:

Einerseits (On the one hand), Occupy Wall Street is a protestation where Demonstranten (demonstrators/protesters) are occupying Zucotti Park in Lower Manhattan since September 17th 2011. They renamed it „Liberty Plaza“. This event was getting a Vorbild (paradigm) for similar actions in numerous cities in the USA and even worldwirde.

Andererseits (On the other hand) it is a synonym for the so called Occupy-Wall-Street-Movement.

The movement denunciates soziale Ungerechtigkeit (social injustice) in the United States and sees itself as the 99% of the Bevölkerung (population) that will not longer accept the Gier (greed) and corruption of the other 1%. Criticism is against the powerful influence on politics and legislation by rich Americans as well as a policy that sympathizes too much with banks and the economic system in general. With a long-term Besetzung (occupation) of the Wall Street, changes should be provoked.

The Canadian magazine „Adbusters“ has called up the occupation by mentioning the Arab Spring as an example.

On http://occupystream.com/ you can see some streams of the Bewegung (movement).

You might ask, where is the Verbindung (link) to Germany? Well, encouraged by the events in the USA, the whole movement spilled over to Europe and as well to Germany. Since the Finanzkrise (financial crisis) that started in 2007 the whole thing is still very present and people are starting to dislike the imagination that everybody is dependent on stock-markets, rating agencies and the stability of the EURO.

So in Germany a globalization-skeptical network named „Attac“ and various politicians called up to support the protests.

There were protests in:

Frankfurt am Main
Berlin
Hamburg
München
Köln
Düsseldorf
Stuttgart
Aachen
Bochum
Dortmund
Minden
Bielefeld
Paderborn
Solingen

Altogether there were about 40.000 people who participated.

For being a very up-to-date topic, it would be nice to start a little discussion here.

What is your attitude towards the Occupy-Movement? Are there events in your countries/cities as well? Do you think that it could provoke something?

Try to say it in German and let us know!

Here´s some vocabulary to this post:

einerseits – on the one hand
der Demonstrant – protester
das Vorbild – paradigm
andererseits – on the other hand
die soziale Ungerechtigkeit – social injustice
die Bevölkerung – population
die Gier – greed
die Besetzung – occupation
die Verbindung – link
die Finanzkrise – financial crisis
die Bewegung – movement