2011.10.30 

Taking It To The Streets

Page 22-26, TIME October 24, 2011

SignSpotting

• What is the protest in America for and what is it directed at ?
• What is everyone else thinking about the movement ?
• What dose the protest trend mean in the political perspective ?

Briefing

• At first, it was a small meeting against disproportionate power of U.S. corporate elite, held by Canadian magazine on Sept. 17. Now, it grew into the massive scale protest movement as a number of various claims arose. What they call for is different from person to person, but everyone there shares one emotion; anger at the wealthy. 
• The political fucus of this activity is pretty unclear, but according to the result of the national poll, the protest looks favorable nationwide, unlike any large protest in the history like the Tea Party movement a few years ago. 
• As republicans won the election with the power of the tea party in 2010, democrats and Obama administration is trying to ride the wave of the protest for policymaking, such as new taxation to fix the fiscal financial balance. The policy investigation conducted by TIME tells that 69 percent of people think tax increase is necessary to reduce federal budget deficit, and that 73 percent  favor raising tax on the wealthy. 

Opinion

People’s behavior at the citizen movement is different from the cultura and economic structure of the country. For example, university students in America never hesitate to participate in the protest in times of job-hunting, even if their applying enterprise is included in the target list of the protest. This is because citizenship is strictly protected by federal law and recruiters can be charged if refuse application for the personal history of the protest. Contrarily, Japanese are not sensitive about the individual right as a citizen. In the election, some employees vote for the candidate along with the employer’s wish, sometimes they even support those who actually they against. This is not the personal conflict between citizenship and employment, but the failure of social structure  which always takes priority over enterprise’s profit.