[/caption]Ezra Boyd - The financial meltdown and global recession of 2007 kicked off three waves of political protests and associated civil conflict. Occupy Wall Street is just the most recent iteration of this global trend.
The three waves of civil unrest since the global meltdown of 2007 are the: (1) 2007-08 Global Food Riots, (2) the 2011 Arab spring, and (3) the ongoing austerity backlash. Economic downturns are often associated with civil conflict, and the current downturn has been no different. Further, while the major fractions speaking for Occupy Wall Street have repeatedly stated that they are conducting a peaceful protest, it is important that authorities tread carefully to avoid the violence that has experienced in many other countries.
2007-08 Global Food Riots
In 2007, in the months leading up to the global recession, global food prices spiked dramatically. As food prices doubled during 2007, the meltdown of late 2007 set of the first phase of civil unrest associated with the global meltdown: a series of global food riots that lasted from 2007-08. During this period, a string of food riots affected many countries, mostly developing countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Southern Asia. Impacted countries include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
At this time, the world was on the heels of an unprecedented period of economic expansion and growth. Many of these countries retained significant reserves of food stocks allowing governments to address the immediate factor driving this wave of unrest. However, as we now know, this wave of unrest would be harbinger of coming wider unrest in many of the countries.
2011 Arab Spring
In January 2011, a Tunis street vendor set himself on fire to protest corruption, thus kicking off the second wave of violent protests associated with the global meltdown. In Tunisia and Egypt, the protests quickly resulted in democratic transitions with relatively limited destruction and bloodshed. In Tunisia, transition took 28 days and ended when the former dictator fled the country after protesters stormed his palace. In Egypt it took 25 days, and ended with the former dictator transferring power to a military council and is currently facing a trial in the country. In both countries, the death tolls were in the hundreds. However, for other countries caught up in this unprecedented regional protest movement, the process to be considerably more drawn out and violent.
By mid-February, "Days of Rage" were a common theme and destructive protests occurred throughout a region that stretched from Morocco to Iran. On one "Friday of Rage", the protests spanned a distance of over 3,400 miles, nearly 15% of the Earth's circumference!!! On that weekend deadly clashes occurred in Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and Bahrain with reports suggesting the collective death toll topping 250 spread across 2,000 miles. In Libya, this protest movement quickly morphed into a violent civil war that lasted eight months and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths before the dictator died in battle-torn Sirte. In Yemen, the protest movement also evolved into a much larger civil conflict. At one point, the dictator fled the country due to injuries from an assignation attempt, though he has recently returned to the country and clashes quickly ramped up. A violent crackdown to an initially peaceful protest movement in Syria has also morphed into a low level civil war. In both Yemen and Syria, thousands of deaths have been reported. Harsh crackdowns in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Iran appear to have squashed protestors for now.
2010-11 Austerity Backlash
Greece was the first Western country to feel the acute effects of the global financial crisis. It was also the first to adopt stringent austerity measures and the first to experience a violent backlash against those measures. While tourism and shipping fueled a growing economy through most of the 2000's, the 2007 meltdown brought this expansion to a quick halt. Unemployment rose, as did the budget deficient. In December 2008, a police killing of a 15 year old citizen set off weeks of rioting throughout the country. While the police shooting triggered the riots, the underlying economic and social conditions were also an important cause. In early 2010, Greece became the first country to initiate widespread budgets cuts, and violent protests and riots have been common there ever since.
Just as other European countries have experienced the impacts of the global financial crisis, they have also experienced protests and civil conflict. In Ireland in November 2010, up to 40,000 people protested against cuts to funding for higher education. One group of protestors occupied the Department of Finance, while others clashed with police. At the same time, up to 50,000 people in the United Kingdom participated in similar protests against cuts to higher education there. Again, sporadic clashes between protesters and police occurred. More recently, England was rocked by widespread riots in early August 2011. Triggered by a police shooting, opportunistic criminality seems to have been pervasive through this outbreak of violence, though the events cannot be separated from the harsh social and economic context within which they occurred.
Most recently, this global wave of protests from the 2007 economic meltdown has reached the United States in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Starting out as a small group of protesters who occupied a park near Wall Street, this movement has gained widespread traction nationally and internationally. While mostly non-violent occupations of public places to raise awareness of the dire economic conditions that have griped this country, this fractionalized movement has yet to unite under one cause and one method.
Conclusion
Throughout 2007 and into 2008, a first wave of food riots and protests hit a number of countries throughout the world. Governments of the affected countries responded with expanded food rations and price controls, and with the peoples’ immediate needs met those same people returned to normal life. However, three years into the great recession, circumstances had changed drastically. By early 2011, chronic unemployment has taken hold, leading to deeper, lingering civil discontent. Because of the drop in global productivity, food stockpiles have been diminished, and this time the grumpy old, out-of-touch dictators were unable to respond quickly and effectively.
So far, three North African regimes have fallen, Yemem is very close to falling, and Syria is facing an increasingly violent low level insurgency. Greece continues on a downward spiral and the Eurozone continues to have trouble containing the upheaval. During the recent "Global Day of Rage," we saw the violence in Athens spread to Rome.
While Occupy Wall Street is only two months old, this protest movement fits within social and political trends that have played out over years. Certain groups, speaking about the goals and methods of the movement, say they are non-violent protesters and they do not seek to overthrow the government. However, recent events in Oakland have demonstrated that the fractionalized nature of this movement creates the potential for violent confrontation, particuarly when authorities aggressively deploy well armed riot police. Without doubt, Oakland is starting to resemble Athens. Most folks hope that an aggressive response by authorities there and in other U.S. cities does not escalate the violence to a point where these cities start to resemble Cairo, Sana, or Misrata.