We are amidst a revolution.  Inspired by the Egypt and Tunisia uprising, the Occupy movement has roared across the nation, picking up support as well as backlash, and it’s happening in our own backyard.
Dalton Schwartz, 18, liberal arts major, as well as Marissa Both, 20, fine arts major, from Bucks have participated in the Occupy Philly movement since it began on Oct. 9.
Schwartz and Both showed a solid understanding of the movement and the direction in which they believe that the country is heading.
“I’ve never been a super political person but I knew I had to see what was going on,” says Both.  “It turned out to be much more than what I expected.  It was a real eye opener.”
“This didn’t come from nowhere.  People didn’t just decide to get up and be angry about nothing.  People are seriously concerned about the direction that our democracy is going,” says Schwartz. “I’ve worked in retail for a year and a half and still earned minimum wage yet I made an estimated average of $300 a day for the company and all they ever had to say was ‘make more’  to me. That’s a problem!”
“People that are on Wall Street and people that are in government are refusing to acknowledge their responsibility in what caused all of this,” says Schwartz.
“Any one against the protest needs to listen and see what is really going on.  Explore the movement first hand and understand it before making assumptions based on what the mainstream media has to say,” explains Schwartz.  “Not that what they, the mainstream media, say matters anyway because they are controlled by the 1 percent.”
Schwartz adds that “As this 1 percent of our population becomes richer, the other 99 percent of us are growing poorer and victims to debt.”  The country has seen a squeezing of the middle class over the past decade.
This 1 percent is being mentioned a lot across the United States and has been for more than 10 years now.
A majority of this discontent attitude comes in the wake of the multi-billion dollar bank bailout in 2008 to relieve banks of their debts, the closing of mom and pop shops to be replaced by larger, corporate owned super-stores, and the rising number or college graduates on the unemployment line.
Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate is ranked as the third highest with in the country with 3.5 percent, according to the United States Department of Labor.
“Here in Philly, we had 12 protestors arrested for camping on the streets and an Iraq war vet was injured by a non-lethal weapon used by the police,” explains Schwartz
Both and Schwartz expressed their support for the revolution.  Schwartz says that despite how big the opposition, “I agree with every aspect this movement has to offer.  I do this for the 9.1 percent of people who can’t find work, or the thousands of people living on the streets, or the 99 percent of us who are heading down that path, whether we know it or not.”
The revolution stems from Wall Street and has branched out into Oakland, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Richmond, and Baltimore, to name a few out of the 100 plus cities.  The aim for the Occupy movement is to expose how corporate greed is affecting the democratic system.
When asked for a possible solution, Schwartz replied that “whether it’s releasing the restrictions on capitalism to have a true capitalistic society or perhaps building a social floor and using a little bit of what socialism has to offer or declaring a better educational system or pulling troops out of other countries, something needs to change and only we can do it!”
Schwartz said that he is currently preparing to go back to City Hall for Occupy Philly.