The traffic in Gulshan whirrs and hums in a similar way to most days, but today I am receiving a number of texts, calls, and notifications of violence brimming in the city’s borders. Politicians are being put on death row and workers are fighting for higher wages. The country’s political parties lie at a crossroads, with neither willing to yield or discuss to reach an agreement that will end these conflicts and better the people of Bangladesh.
While these events are happening here in Dhaka, I am half a world away from my country, the United States, but I see constant similarities in these two countries’ landscapes. Politicians are removed, playing with the people as pawns and trying to make moves to grab power without thought or consideration for those who are working day in and day out for the right to survive.
They think little of the ramifications of their actions, and they give empty promises to pile on to the others, long unfulfilled, of a better future and pure democracy with the right of each to build a future for themselves.
Many in this country hold America in a high regard, as a place that is orderly, where business and a proper life can be easily conducted. However, I cast my memory back to the Occupy movement two years ago and see humanity uniting in a global struggle for a voice.
This week marks the two year anniversary of the west coast Occupy movement. The flame began on Wall Street and spread like wildfire from coast to coast before jumping across oceans and around the world. It seemed temporary at first, grabbing headlines and a wildfire of sensationalist media, but gradually it began to grow into something real.
It was 2011, 40 years after our cultural revolution, and we as a country were apathetic. This apathy annoyed us all, got under our skin, itching and disturbing us as we noticed it. It came out often in years previous, in dinner conversations, college seminars, and any place where conscientious people came together.
Many have criticised the Occupy movement for its lack of focus. However, we were a generation unhappy with too many aspects of the current system to be pinpointed. Our goal was freedom and equality for all.
If they said we could not demonstrate as was our constitutional right, then we must demonstrate. Every violent act committed by the government only fanned the flames of non-violent resistance. I was brought into the movement when I checked my email one morning and saw a video showing a recent military veteran, Scott Olson, being shot with a gas canister.
Tears came to my eyes as I realised that I could no longer sit idly by and let my brothers and sisters stand for freedom on American soil. I joined Occupy Oakland that evening, met by cold eyes from the policeman as I walked and sat down, uneasily, with others in the encampment. Some days passed uneventfully, working my job and going to the plaza where Occupy was located.
Others ended with tear gas, batons, and rubber bullets as policemen chased us away again and again, injuring those who were fighting for the very constitutional rights they were hired to defend. These events continued for months, eventually fading away from sight, but forever leaving the imprint on the world that people are ready to stand up for their rights.
Now, two years later, I sit in Dhaka, and news of a rejuvenation of the Occupy movement is coming to my inbox. I am contemplating these past events as I see another revolution unfold around me. I see police violence against the poor alongside the mindless mob attacks. I see poor workers standing for their rights as human beings with a voice. I see confusion, violence, and a fractured political system. I see politicians using the poor as pawns for their own political gain.
I do not defend those looting in the streets, harming the innocent, and burning factories. On the contrary, I stand with those who are working for peaceful, meaningful change for this country. I stand with those who are urging politicians to work together so that the poor are not the ones who will suffer.
I stand with those who are working for equality for all, for the right to work, earn, and build a good life in safe conditions with the dignity each human deserves.
