Inequality and Discrimination
While Occupy decried police brutality, fought against the ballooning housing crisis, and named and confronted economic inequalities—in particular, policies that negatively impacted the poor—the movement faced its own internal struggles against systemic oppression. Though many of the activists embraced anti-oppressive values, and were actively engaged in dismantling power imbalances, the movement itself perpetuated status-quo structures of oppression. In spite of Occupy's commitment to non-hierarchical organizing, preexisting societal notions of white, cis, abled, male normativity created fractures in the movement, and the persistence of these harms most impacted people of color, women, trans, non-binary, and disabled activists.
