Fifteen years ago, on September 17, 2011, approximately one thousand people gathered in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, launching the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Establishing a permanent encampment — a tactic that soon spread to hundreds of cities and towns across the country and the world — the movement brought attention to the skyrocketing inequality between the wealthiest one percent and the rest of us, “the 99 percent.”

The UE officers announced the union’s solidarity with the movement, pointing out in a statement issued on November 7 [1] that “The protestors, predominantly young, have revived the tactic of occupation which, in the form of sit-down strikes, was central to the growth of a militant U.S. labor movement in the 1930s. The factory occupations of the ’30s not only brought millions of workers into unions. They also helped enact some of the most important economic and social reforms of the 20th century.”

UE members were active in supporting encampments in UE areas from Erie, Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Southern California. In Burlington, Vermont, Occupy activists provided important support for UE Local 267’s contract negotiations at the University of Vermont, and in Southern California, UE locals took the lead in organizing a Labor Solidarity Committee of over 30 unions to support Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Long Beach, and Occupy Orange County.

Sherry Filiatreault, a UE Local 222 member from Norwich, Connecticut, travelled to New York City with then-Northeast Region President Peter Knowlton to visit the original Occupy encampment. She told the UE NEWS, “You can see the support of the construction union brothers and sisters through the writing on the beams on the construction sites, expressing solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. To be in the park, to walk around and see, feel and listen to history being made, a new generation becoming passionate about the world in which they live, it was a great eye-opening experience. It made me realize when we are negotiating our contracts we need to keep in mind how hard people are working to preserve their futures.”

“It has changed the entire debate over the role of capital and working-class people, and the need for more emphasis on people over profits,” added Knowlton.