The Tea Party (TP) and Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements, analyzing how, despite their opposing ideologies and constituencies, they both arose from similar socio-economic conditions shaped by the Great Recession

One Collapse, Two Movements: The Socio-Economic Roots of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Your Name Subject and Section Professors Name April 25, 2025 Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u I.Introduction PAGEREF _Toc196443072 \h 2II.Historical Context: The Great Recession and Its Fallout PAGEREF _Toc196443073 \h 3III.Movement Genesis: Comparing Origins and Mobilization PAGEREF _Toc196443074 \h 8IV.Shared Socioeconomic Conditions PAGEREF _Toc196443075 \h 13V.Divergent Ideologies, Rhetoric, and Goals PAGEREF _Toc196443076 \h 18VI.Media Representation and Public Reception PAGEREF _Toc196443077 \h 21VII.Lasting Impact and Legacies PAGEREF _Toc196443078 \h 24VIII.Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc196443079 \h 26 * Introduction In 2008, one of the most disastrous financial and economic disasters in recent human history happened before most could fully prepare for it. Particularly, the collapse of the US housing market led to financial institution failures, which transformed into an international economic crisis. The economic breakdown destroyed jobs across all sectors and wiped out personal savings before showing how poorly built international markets work. American taxpayers paid bailouts to big banks and businesses, but millions of citizens suffered losses in their homes and financial problems. Higher-ups in politics and finance became the target of public fury, which lowered people's trust in government, leading to significant societal protests. The public's anger produced major social movements called the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. When the Tea Party began organizing in 2009, its members opposed bailout money to financial institutions and government interventions during President Obama's term. Based on constitutional values and reduced government action, the movement fought against unneeded state control. In 2011, when OWS activists started their protests, they opposed business control and demanded fairness through protests against the strongest economic group. Protesters, rallying behind the slogan "We are the 99%," demanded systemic change to an economic order that privileged elites while marginalizing the majority. The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street organizations formed as responses to economic problems and held similar fearful feelings towards their nations. This research shows how the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street represent similar reactions to the core problems of America's social system. Both organizations faced the same loss of trust but focused their anger on separate sources – government for one and corporations for the other. This study uses primary and academic materials to investigate how and why the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street formed. The study relies on the documentary Occupy: The Movie interviews with current Tea Party participants and research from Amenta and Caren (Rough Draft of History) and Kumkar (The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and the Great Recession). These sources create a complete system showing how different movements arose from one historic break. * Historical Context: The Great Recession and Its Fallout The economic crisis of 2007–2009 became the most significant downturn in US history after the Great Depression. Financial and regulatory systems showed weakness after the housing bubble's collapse, leading to the subprime mortgage lending crisis. The market value of homes increased beyond realistic levels through dangerous mortgage-backed securities together with exploitative mortgage practices throughout the initial years of the 2000s. Throughout 2006–2007, the bursting housing bubble released widespread defaults and foreclosures, which caused massive damage to financial sector trust by investors. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported that the crisis resulted from a convergence of "an explosion in risky subprime lending and securitization, unsustainable rises in housing prices, widespread failures in financial regulation, and dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance.”[Reed, John. “Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States.” THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY REPORT • OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT EDITION •, 2011.] Multiple major American financial institutions faced bankruptcy, needing massive government support throughout 2008. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers occurred in September 2008, and AIG received $182 billion in federal aid for survival during that period. The breakdown of confidence and credit freeze resulted in significant output decreases and high job losses. The economic output (GDP) reached a 4.3 percent decrease following its high point in late 2007, and the unemployment rate rose to 10 percent by late 2009. A total of 8.7 million jobs disappeared from 2007 until 2010.[Ibid., 342–343.] [Bureau of Labor Statistics, “The Recession of 2007–2009,” Spotlight on Statistics, accessed April 25, 2025, https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2012/recession/.] [Ibid.] During this time, the United States housing market managed to collapse completely. Millions of homeowners defaulted on their loans when their mortgage properties declined, and their adjustable-rate mortgages started at unmanageable rates. In 2008, a total of 3.1 million homes faced foreclosure, resulting in an 81 percent rise compared to the previous year. At the end of the decade, more than 3.8 million homes became foreclosure properties, severely destabilizing residential communities. Both homeowners, renters, and nearby property owners suffered from this financial and psychological devastation.[Lynn Adler, “U.S. Foreclosures up 81 Pct in 2008,” Reuters, January 15, 2009, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-housing-foreclosures-idUSTRE50E25C20090115.] [Scally, Corianne Payton, Elizabeth Champion, and Michael Neal. "An Equitable Framework for Housing Policy Solutions for COVID-19 and Beyond." Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Retrieved November 24 (2020): 2020.] The recession led to a significant escalation in student loan debt. Young Americans began enrolling in college education when their job market became increasingly difficult to enter while taking out loans for tuition. Student debt proved to be a main recession consequence based on Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data, which shows it tripled from 2006 to 2016, reaching $1.6 trillion. – establishing a financial strain upon Millennial and Generation Z workers that grows their generational separation regarding wealth.[Oksana Leukhina, "Rising Student Debt and the Great Recession," St. Louis Fed On the Economy, Jan. 14, 2020.] The deepening economic problems caused people to lose faith in principal government organizations. The confidence level among American citizens toward banks plummeted from 41 percent to 22 percent from 2007 to 2009. During this time, public trust in the government dipped to its lowest historical point and stagnated afterward. People from different political backgrounds felt frustrated that the government and financial elites had abandoned their responsibilities by rescuing those who caused the crisis. As one analyst summarized, “The belief by Main Street is that the bankers got away with it, and Main Street paid the bill.”[Covitz, Daniel, Nellie Liang, and Gustavo Suarez. “The Evolution of a Financial Crisis: Collapse of the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Market.” Journal of Finance 68, no. 3 (2013): 815–48..] [Nadeem, Reem, and Reem Nadeem. 2025. “Americans’ views of government: decades of distrust, enduring support for its role.” Pew Research Center. April 24, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/americans-views-of-government-decades-of-distrust-enduring-support-for-its-role/.] [Kingsley, Patrick, and Phillip Inman. 2018. “Inside Job: How Bankers Caused the Financial Crisis.” The Guardian, February 15, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/feb/17/inside-job-financial-crisis-bankers-verdicts.] The feeling of betrayal and loss of power created an ideal situation for populist political movements to arise throughout society. The right side of politics saw the rapid growth of the Tea Party movement in early 2009. Sparked by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli's now-famous on-air rant criticizing government mortgage relief plans as "promoting bad behavior," the movement rapidly organized protests against perceived government overreach, excessive taxation, and the bailout of Wall Street. On Tax Day, April 15, 2009, over a thousand Tea Party rallies were held nationwide. According to scholarly analysis, counties' highest economic distress rates matched the locations where Tea Party chapters showed their most active involvement.[Rick Santelli, CNBC broadcast, February 19, 2009, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, archived at https://www.cnbc.com/video/2009/02/19/cnbcs-rick-santelli-on-mortgage-bailout.html.] [Patrick Rafail and John D. McCarthy, The Rise, Fall, and Influence of the Tea Party Insurgency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 58–60.] On the political left, the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged in 2011, targeting the financial elite and raising awareness of wealth inequality under the slogan "We are the 99%." Zuccotti Park became the launchpad for a worldwide protest movement shortly after its first Occupy Wall Street camp was established in New York City. On October 15th, 2011, demonstrations erupted in more than 950 cities worldwide. The demonstrators pressured officials to implement structural reforms targeting financial institutions while seeking economic equity and political reforms. The decentralized organization of Occupy Wall Street produced significant effects on public discussions, explicitly focusing on the problems of economic inequality alongside student loans and job instability in the workforce.[Ortiz, Isabel, Sara Burke, Mohamed Berrada, and Hernán Cortés. "World Protests 2006-2013." Initiative for Policy Dialogue and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York Working Paper 2013 (2013).] [Joanna Walters, "Occupy Wall Street Protesters Say It is Not Over," The Guardian, October 16, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/16/occupy-wall-street-not-over.] The Great Recession produced the Tea Party through similar means as it created Occupy Wall Street despite their divergent goals. The two movements had different approaches, but they shared a fundamental dislike of how elites failed in their commitment to serve ordinary American citizens. * Movement Genesis: Comparing Origins and Mobilization Two grassroots protest movements emerged in the United States during the post-Great Recession period because citizens lost faith in current political and economic systems but developed opposing views on fixing those problems. The Tea Party (TP) started its presence in 2009 through opposition to government bailout policies and growing federal control by the Obama administration. OWS was launched in 2011 to fight against corporate dominance and economic imbalances among citizens. These oppositional groups shared responsibility for the economic turmoil, and their organizing efforts employed developing digital systems to bring people into their movements. The Tea Party received backing from conservative media and think tank organizations, while Occupy Wall Street was organized through decentralized leadership and adopted horizontal principles during its operations.[Agarwal, Sheetal D., Michael L. Barthel, Caterina Rost, Alan Borning, W. Lance Bennett, and Courtney N. Johnson. "Grassroots organizing in the digital age: Considering values and technology in Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street." Information, Communication & Society 17, no. 3 (2014): 326–341.] The Tea Party gained momentum from massive traditional right-wing discontent regarding the federal bailout schemes implemented during the 2008 financial industry breakdown. TARP, along with its expansion by President Barack Obama during the Bush administration, caused intense anger from fiscal conservatives since it forced bailouts of failed banks and corporations against free-market principles. The moment widely credited with sparking the Tea Party was CNBC commentator Rick Santelli's televised outburst on February 19, 2009, in which he accused the government of "subsidizing the losers' mortgages" and called for a "Chicago Tea Party" on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The viral spread of this clip on YouTube and other platforms struck a chord with Americans who feared a growing federal bureaucracy and loss of personal economic freedom.[Nacos, Brigitte L., Robert Shapiro, and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon. 2024. “2 the Tea Party Movement, the Mass Media, and Contentious Politics.” In Columbia University Press eBooks, 31–72. https://doi.org/10.7312/naco21434-003.] During Tax Day on April 15th, 2009, more than 250,000 Americans participated in Tea Party protests nationwide. Protesters showed anger towards tax increases and stimulus packages and proposed health care reforms. They often used Revolutionary War symbolism, waving "Do not Tread on Me" flags and chanting slogans like "Taxed Enough Already." While participants characterized the movement as organic and grassroots, the Tea Party received significant amplification from conservative media and think tanks. Early Tea Party rallies received expansive sympathy-focused coverage from Fox News, which additionally had anchors who explicitly asked viewers to join the events. The Tea Party maintained an interconnected structure between conservative networks, which enabled its rapid political influence on Republicans during the 2010 midterm election.[Ibid.] [Olver, Christopher. 2020. “Impact of the Tea Party Movement on the 2010 Election.” The Journalist’s Resource. December 4, 2020. https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/tea-party-movement-2010-midterm-elections/.] The Occupy Wall Street protest began its mission in 2011 because participants wanted to challenge capitalism after the economic crisis increased the disparity between rich and poor. The movement’s rallying cry, “We are the 99%,” encapsulated its critique of a system that enriched a small elite while leaving millions struggling with debt, unemployment, and austerity. The initial call to action came from the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, which proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street starting September 17, 2011. Inspired by the Arab Spring and Spanish Indignados, organizers invited protesters to converge on New York's financial district. The demonstrators relocated to Zuccotti Park, a private-public zone near Wall Street, after being stopped from occupying their initial objective.[Gerbaudo, Paolo. “‘The Hashtag Which Did (Not) Start a Revolution’: The Laborious Adding Up to the 99%.” In Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism, 102–33. Pluto Press, 2012. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183pdzs.8.] Demonstrators established a population base within Zuccotti Park, which soon ex...