Occupy Toronto

Barely a few weeks before the Occupy Wall Street movement caught most by surprise, many commentators to an article on the BBC website had concluded that collective protests against grinding social inequality that had recently erupted in Britain, Spain and Greece were unlikely to occur in the United States.1 While not ruling out the possibility of some collective response, most social scientists quoted in the article agreed that despite the financial meltdown, millions losing their homes due to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the ongoing military engagements costing trillions and the mounting debt, rather than connect, as C. Wright Mills put it, personal troubles to public issues of social structure, most Americans were more likely to blame themselves than engage in any collective action.