photo credit: thestar.com

The Occupy protest movement has established itself in Canada. Born against the backdrop of our current economic crisis and claiming to speak for the “99%” of the population who the Occupiers say have been hurt by the policies of many of the world’s governments, financial institutions and the richest“1%” of the population, the Occupy movement has come to encompass a wide variety of demands for change that would address the increasing problems we face regarding unemployment, corporate power, environmentalism and a number of other subjects. The number of different voices who’ve joined the Occupy movement has been cited as one of its strengths, and indeed it’s difficult to reduce the Occupiers’ desires to a specific set of demands. What is clear, however, is that the Occupy movement has become overwhelmingly associated with left-wing politics.

Right wing politics have developed their own protest movement in the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement, although largely concerned with domestic politics in the United States, was formed in response to some of the same things that inspired the Occupy movement, namely the current economic crisis and the rising unemployment that followed it. Its other major concerns include the level of taxation in the U.S., the U.S. federal government’s massive deficits and the resulting growing U.S. national debt, and what many Tea Partiers view as government power growing beyond its constitutional limits and threatening individual freedom. Like the Occupy movement, it has no central leadership, and it is made up of a loose collection of affiliated groups that have various connections with one another.

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