Symbols of the Young Generation Within the Occupy Movement

Symbolic interactionism is one of the three major sociological perspectives that analyze everyday social interactions and how symbols created from these interactions contribute to the development of our society. A Symbolic interactionist might look at the occupy movement, in terms of the contribution of the new generation of young people, and explain it as a symbol of the growing awareness that has begun to get my generation interested in politics and our government. Throughout time we have seen many different generational groups stand up for different reasons to protest a wrong doing, yet older generations still believe young people don’t know what is going on and our opinion doesn’t matter. For a while many young people who went to protests wouldn’t really know the reason behind it, only that it is a good cause, but today we have evidence that people of all ages know exactly what went wrong in our country and want things to change.

            The occupy movement is a symbol of the new generation of people who understand what our government, big banks, and corporations have done to our economy and that there is hope. No one will sit back and watch our economy and livelihoods dissipate as the corrupt world of politics and money handling continues to run our country into the ground.  Students of all ages especially want things to change. In public schools we have seen what has happened to schools because of the cuts the government has imposed for the corporations that requests them. In my school district back home, almost half of the teachers were fired because there wasn’t enough money. Arts, Sports, nurses, librarians, and school facilities were all cut because there wasn’t enough money. The government continuously said they didn’t have money to give out but were still able to bail out some of the biggest money thieves in the world.

            Symbolically this movement has become a way for my generation to express exactly what we want from our government. Soon we will be the ones in charge and as we can see from all of the protests and movements not just in our country, but all over the world people are taking a stand and expressing their opinions. We understand that there are better ways to run our government and everything needs to change, otherwise nothing will be fixed and our country really will collapse. Its inspiring to see my peers care about something collectively, its what we need to get things changed.