Protestors ‘Occupy’ Baltimore’s Inner Harbor
Towson alumna Jamya Canty paints a protest sign during the Occupy Baltimore event in the city's Inner Harbor Tuesday. - Kaitlin Newman/ The Towerlight
Jamya Canty is the 99 percent.
Occupy Wall Street protestors maintain the belief that the majority of the United States’ wealth is controlled by a fraction of the population: the one percent.
The other 99 percent of citizens are left without funds for the future.
Canty graduated in 2011 with a degree in mass communication and intended to find a job in the field of public relations or advertising.
Four months later, she is unemployed and in debt, as many college graduates are. Because she can’t spend her time at a steady job, Canty took her complaints where she hoped someone would hear them: the streets of New York City.
“We’re going to school to educate and help other people when we can’t even help ourselves,” Canty said. “It’s unfair. The system tells us to go to school and graduate and get a job and start a family. It’s really hard. I know, I just graduated. And it’s really hard.”
Canty participated in the Occupy Wall Street movement Sept. 23-25, which was formed online in July but has only recently sparked media attention.
Subsequent protests in major cities across the country have begun, including Occupy Baltimore, a peaceful protest held in McKeldin Park in the Inner Harbor on Tuesday, Oct. 4.
More than 100 people met at noon to voice their grievances with the corporations of the United States.
College students across Baltimore were among the group, armed with homemade signs or used supplies from event organizers to paint new ones.
“I just feel really close to everything that we’re talking about. This is all of our struggles. We’re all part of the 99 percent,” Maryland Institute College of Art senior Alesha Burk said. “It’s important for us to be here physically and not just a part of the Facebook group or the online petitions.”
College students play a necessary role in the current protests, Occupy Baltimore medical team member Jerry, who would not give his last name for privacy reasons, said.
“We’d love to have students from Towson down to Goucher down to Notre Dame, down to Loyola,” he said. “You’re the ones who have to figure this thing out.”
Inspired by her trip to New York, friends of Canty have attended Occupy-based protests in Washington, D.C. Canty said many of the people she knows who recently graduated are working in jobs they could have gotten without attending college.
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” Canty said. “Because I come from a lower-middle class family and my parents worked their whole lives. Because I don’t have the connections, I don’t have a chance.”
MICA senior Rachel Christensen, who attended the protest with Burk, said she is concerned about entering the working world in its current state, which is why she has to be a part of the change.
“I thought that Baltimore really needed to be a part of this and I hope that things keep on rolling and we’ll be here for a while,” Christensen said. “This event wouldn’t be happening if there wasn’t a discrepancy. It wasn’t a known fact that there’s something wrong with the world we’re living in right now.”
Canty said she hopes to return to New York City to continue protesting with Occupy Wall Street, even though much of the peaceful protesting has resulted in violence.
Canty witnessed police beating, macing and dragging protestors from the sidewalks.
“I never experienced anything like it in my life. I had tears in my eyes,” Canty said. “We had to constantly move. If you stood still, they would arrest you.”
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Be very scared of these Communists, they choose to ignore more than 150 years of history and swear that if given absolute control they can make it work this time.
As a TSU alum I implore my fellows to realize that they are being used as tools. Just as the left recognizes that the Tea Party movement is likely funded and fostered by entrenched political powers seeking more control, more power and more self aggrandizement, so too are the Occupiers being used. The OWS movement has been around for months in one form or another, it has only been since the Unions, the Media and other left leaning groups began encouraging and participating that it has begun to gather momentum. Don’t let yourself be manipulated by these interests, you will be disappointed. Think and work for yourself.
She can’t find a job because she has a degree from mica, that’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on.
what did she expect to do with an art degree… honestly.
The paranoia and snarkiness of the above comments is disappointing. Two points of clarification for the article. The concentration of wealth American’s wealth in the hands of 1% of the population is not a belief but a fact. And there were no “event organizers” for the Occupations other than those doing the occupying themselves. In Baltimore, all decisions so far have been made by carefully monitored consensus.
@Yar: Couldn’t put it better.
To those who think the protesters are lunatics and/or “tools”: What is it about the system we have now that makes you think challenging it will do us more harm than continuing to let corporations run the world?
My thanks to the people who are participating in these protests. You resemble the original Tea Party movement against taxation without representation. The first step in righting the wrongs in America is to reinstate a government that is by and for We The People, not special interests. We have many issues in America that can only be addressed when our government represents us, not moneyed-interest.
Just want to point out that it is a fact, not a belief, that 1% of the population controls most of the wealth.
The two girls in the video dont even know why they are there or what they are protesting. What a crock. If your jealous about the 1% having money, go out there, work hard and earn it. Dont expect a handout. Hard work goes a long way. There are jobs out there for people, even if its Mcdonalds or Burger King, there are jobs. If you dont have one, any jobs is better then nothing.. Stop expecting handouts and help yourself..
The people who have the 1% started out just like everyone else. Trust me. They were once college students and average citizens. Instead of hating them for their success you should look to them as role models and who you want to become, rather then the enemy…
The comments about being jelous of the 1% or the people who are part of the 1% group not starting out rich only shows Towson University students are still not the smartest college students around. The fact that 1% of the wealthiest people hold most of the capital power only illustrates the fact that the system is flaw in this country. And working at Burger King is a job if you don’t have the college education to get a better job. Kids spend their time and money at 4 year institutions such as Towson so that they won’t work at places like Burger King but sadly with the economic and political injustices college grads are being forces to take jobs that they could of gotten straight of out high school. The distribution of wealth in this country is a joke , the 1% of lucky Americans control the lives of the schmucks on this board who say “work hard so you can be in that 1% of people”
Mike,
There is is. I was waiting for someone to say that. “The 1% control the schmucks who say work hard…” So who controls the 99% of degenerates who want free handouts for everything? Tell me why its wrong for someone to work hard and be successful. Why is it wrong to have a lot of money?
I will say it again, WORK HARD. If your so concerned about jobs, why are you putting down someone who works ar Burger King? Kids spend their money to get an education, its not an entitlement to a job. No one is entitled to anything. Its through hard work that gets someone ahead. A degree will help, but its not a guarantee.
John, its not wrong to have a lot of money. Our social system here in the U.S. has been twisted and turned by those with power so that that 1% of the population that holds so much wealth and power has more and more of it each year. It got this bad at the beginning of the 1900 when the rest of the population worked in sweat shops, worked farming, and the one-percenters had incredible power, wealth and deregulated working standards, environmental standards, food inspection standards, business standards and financial trading standards ran amok. Back then the downfall of all that and the facts that businesses and financial barons were taking unfair advantage of the rest of the population changed the way Americans lived, radically, for the better. It created a government that finally thought about the welfare of its citizens and wanting to create a more perfect social structure. One in which more people could live with little need or want for necessities. Over time Americans had better and more safe food, air, water, land, sane working conditions, pensions, affordable health care, better education, better and safer housing, etc.
It seems a lot of people have forgotten that and many, not all, of those one-percenters, many in the 5% catagory and some poor saps who’ve been hoodwinked by those rich and powerful into believing all they have to do is work hard for their poor and middle-class wage that has, in fact, declined in value by 7% over the past 30 years, and things will be okay. Those powerful people are co-opting Congress, mainly Republicans, but some Dems as well, into loosening regulations, lowering their tax burden to the lowest its been for them in over 100 years, making it easier to screw up the lives of 99% of the population for their own financial and power gain. And when they get in trouble the ask the government to bail them out.
I haven’t been protesting, but I cheer them on and hope that our government gets the message that, yes, our middle-class is disappearing, our wages are getting smaller while the 1 percent of wage earners skyrocket. Those few powerful wealthy people who support the Buffett Rule know the country is in need and they want to help, and can help. The others are just greedy bastards sitting on pile of cash, growing larger by the second and laughing at all the rest of us 99-percenters without a care for country or humanity.
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