A UC Riverside researcher says the Occupy Wall Street movement has expanded to
nearly 30 percent of the state's municipalities in the past few months, based
on a survey of Facebook pages.
Sociology professor Christopher Chase-Dunn said he and graduate student
Michaela Curran-Strange reviewed Occupy pages on Facebook between Dec. 1 and 8
and found that out of the state's 482 municipalities, 143 had such pages
affiliated with them, including Occupy organizations in Riverside, San
Bernardino, Redlands and other Inland cities.
Chase-Dunn, who has studied other sociological issues in the state and
the dynamic between its northern and southern sections, said he was most
intrigued by how evenly split interest in the Occupy movement seemed to be.
Since the northern part of the state is often perceived as more progressive,
he anticipated greater activity there.
"For this movement, that doesn't seem to be the case," Chase-Dunn said.
"It was about the same number (70 in the north, 73 in the south), which
surprised me."
What also caught his attention was the rapidity with which the movement
spread and the places in which it grabbed a foothold.
"This thing is in places you would never expect, quite frankly," he said,
noting that Coachella Valley established an Occupy page on Oct. 2, a little
more than two weeks after the Wall Street organizers began camping out in
Zuccotti Park in New York.
Of course, some Occupy groups were more significant than others. Occupy
Yreka consisted of a single individual.
The groups often evolved, and Chase-Dunn said he hopes to examine more.
"What we don't have is a change over time," he said. "That would be
interesting. The only time element we (looked at) was when was the thing
established and how much traffic there was on the Facebook site and how many
'likes' there are."
He did notice that, while many sites shared the primary concern of
economic inequality when they were established, they often began incorporating
other local issues onto their pages.
He also noted changes in attitudes toward the groups, particularly Occupy
Riverside, in which he participated for awhile.
"There's been a lot of support for this movement," he said. "But people
get tired of their downtown being disrupted and the pressure is on to do
something about it. In Riverside, the City Council was originally friendly to
it and relations with the police were good. Later, when (the police) got
orders from above to move everybody out, it got nasty."
Chase-Dunn sees the Occupy movement as an outgrowth of the Arab Spring.
"It has its own unique qualities but some of those qualities were taken
from what happened this summer in Greece and Spain. The European summer got it
from the Arab Spring. The causes are a little different but they're also
similar. It's basically (concerned with) growing inequality and austerity
measures."
But he thinks the movement is relevant.
"It's changed the discourse in American politics," he said. In the coming
presidential election, he added, "this could make a big difference."
