One thing that everyone can agree on about Occupy Wall Street is that they are out to change economic conditions for the 99% in America. However, every revolution needs funding, so where does a group comprised of people who want more money get money? My research has shown that there are actually two major ways.
The first and most important way is through individual donations. Estimations have placed the amount gained through individual donations, at roughly $800,000. This money was gained from individuals who felt like giving to the movement, and they gave some cash. Some individuals contributed a few dollars, and others contributed $20 or even $40, but nobody decided to give OWS 100,000 or anything of that nature, that is until the Movement Resource Group came along.
The Movement Resource Group (which shall be referenced as MRG henceforth) has collected $300,000, and wants to give it to OWS protests and offshoots of those protests.
According to their website, the members of MRG currently include
Ben Cohen —co-founder, Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream
Richard Foos — co-founder, Rhino Records
Danny Goldberg —CEO, GoldVe Entertainment
Jerry Greenfield —co-founder, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream
Dal LaMagna —CEO President, IceStone USA
Judy Wicks —Founder, White Dog Cafe
Now this move has angered some activists and proponents of OWS, because they want the movement to remain ‘pure’ in a sense, and they don’t like the way that MRG is going about supporting the Occupy movement. There is a lot of he said, she said business going around, but what I can say, is that there are two facts that are known right now.
First and foremost, MRG considers itself to be associated with OWS, that is according to their official website. That would be fine and dandy, but OWS (whoever makes the decisions for OWS, and I believe that this is a major issues, because as far as I know, there is nobody who makes decisions for the entire movement) has not reached an agreement with MRG for distribution of the funds.
So what does that mean?
It means that OWS doesn’t consider MRG part of their movement, and if MRG does in fact contribute to the movement, it is because individual actors in the movement asked for funds, and this is not representative of the movement as a whole.
Now why would the good people (note, all white males, with the exception of one female) at MRG decide to give $300,000 to OWS? That is a question I think I would be hard-pressed to answer with actual statistics and facts, I’ll look into it more.
- Justin
