NEW YORK -- Americans have become so accustomed to our political and economic aspirations yielding only frustration, that we are rightfully inclined to dismiss as impotent the spectacle in the tiny park near Wall Street, where a few hundred people are camped out demanding various versions of change.
The scene feels familiar. There are grungy kids in sleeping bags arrayed on stained pieces of cardboard on the pavement. There are sign-wavers -- "PEOPLE, NOT PROFITS" -- and a handful of aging hippies on the periphery.
The cynic has plenty of material to work with, not least the fact that this inchoate, largely spontaneous gathering is fueled by so many issues -- economic inequality, war in Afghanistan, the unemployment and foreclosure crises, a lack of justice for the Wall Street chieftains who led the country into a ditch. At the same time, this movement lacks a clearly delineated set of demands. Ask the protesters what they want and prepare for a barrage of answers.
But that lack of definition to the agenda is no disqualifier. Indeed, it may be a source of strength and inclusion, as well as an indication of the depth and breadth of the dissatisfaction eating away at contemporary American society.
Beneath the familiar trappings of a youth-led protest movement, a current of unhappiness is rising to the fore, challenging the apathy that afflicts the country despite the steady erosion of economic opportunities for the vast majority of working people. If a sustained challenge to apathy is all this group can ultimately muster, that counts for something.
On Friday morning, Robert James Carlson -- his face clean-shaven, his reddish blonde hair clipped short and business-like -- stands on the northwest corner of Zuccotti Park, the headquarters for the Occupy Wall Street movement. He wears a pressed white shirt and a striped tie. A dollar bill is pressed across his mouth, held in place by duct tape.
Carlson is an accountant who lives in Jersey City, and he has been here for six days, drawn to the protests, he says, out of desire to lend his voice to calls for changes to the financial system so as to limit the threat of another debilitating shock. He hopes new rules will come that regulate dangerous speculation before another crisis materializes.
He rattles off the threats assailing ordinary life -- state finances plunging, leading to layoffs and cuts to basic services; the federal postal system warning of imminent bankruptcy, risking pensions.
"Does it have to get to the point where retired postal workers are in homeless shelters before we take action?" he asks. "The way our system works, it seems as if something has to melt down or break before the system finally changes. If a meltdown does happen, it's not going to be good."
But what sort of change is he demanding exactly? He seems amused by this question. The point is to crystallize a dialogue with the people able to take effective action, to prod the political system to focus on the right questions. He is not the answer man.
"I'm a 25-year-old kid," Carlson says. "If you're honestly expecting answers from a 25-year-old kid ..." His voice trails off. "What we're trying to do is get answers. We're very educated people and these problems are very complicated and it's gotten to the point where there are serious repercussions. We can't deny this anymore. We're a very prideful country, and it's hard for people to admit that our system is not working."
Susie and Artie Ravitz stand next to Carlson. Retirees from Easton, Pa., they have driven here for the day to add to the numbers.
"The main thing is to draw attention to the disparities," she says. "The rich and the greedy are taking the country down. It's really a discouraging time. You have young people with college degrees left out in the cold, unable to find jobs. I have kids and grandchildren. I really worry what their lives are going to be like."
As she speaks, a group of tourists from Shanghai gathers around, snapping photos of Carlson and the dollar bill taped over his mouth. One of the Chinese tourists gives a thumbs up. "We support freedom," he says later, when asked, before the minder of his mainland Chinese tourist group hurriedly leads him away.
So many issues, and so little coherence, one wants to say. Pick one or two and organize on those.
During the Vietnam War, protesters laid out a goal that could fit on a bumper sticker, leaving no confusion about the aims: Bring the troops home now. During the civil rights movement, participants organized around the moral imperative to dismantle a racist system of laws. Women's suffrage activists could declare victory when women got to vote.
The people in the park seem so disorganized in their aims, their talking points a hodgepodge paralleling the social media platforms -- Twitter, Facebook -- that has gained their fledgling movement attention: a little tax justice talk here, a bit of job creation there.
But this is only the beginning, says Ben Yost, a 36-year-old social worker from Brooklyn. He is here waving a sign that has check marks next to: WAR IN IRAQ. RECESSION. UNEMPLOYMENT. WAR IN AFGHANISTAN. Then a question: WHO'S MAKING MONEY? WALL STREET PROFITEERS.
This is the attention-getting moment before the agenda-setting phase, he says. "We need to just get a conversation growing and build a community and figure out how to get some of the money out of the corporations and back to the people who deserve it."
Yes, he says, organizing to pull troops out of war or take down Jim Crow laws makes for greater coherence, but those movements also involved taking on deep rifts in American society. Large numbers of people supported the war in Vietnam as a necessary challenge to the supposed falling dominoes of the Cold War. The segregationist order in the American South was intimately tied to a racist conception of culture and fear of the other, along with the economic privileges that accrued to being white.
The issues that have drawn people to Wall Street may be nebulous, with no obvious or agreed upon solutions, but they collectively amount to something that is not only a crisis, but also one that is incumbent upon the vast majority of Americans: The breakdown of the traditional middle class economic bargain -- the idea that people willing to work are rewarded with a reasonable standard of living.
The mostly young people occupying the park here do not boast expertise in the problems at hand anymore than they lay claim to obvious solutions, which, come to think of it, is rather endearing. But they are well versed in the basic complaint of the day, one that resonates in communities across the United States. For decades, well-connected people on Wall Street have taken home the lion's share of the spoils from American commerce, leaving inadequate scraps for everyone else. That needs to be fixed, or a nation once synonymous with abundant opportunity risks sliding into dysfunction. They are here because they have a sense that we have collectively been cheated of our legacy as Americans -- participants in a noble, national experiment that has enriched generations of people, yet has been perverted by an uber-rich elite and their hired agents in Washington.
What do they all want? It's a natural question, yet the lack of clear answer does not invalidate the ferment that has spawned this movement.
"I'm here wondering the same thing," says Yost. "But I'm sick of staying at home and watching the Daily Show, and this is kind of my first step. I don't want to go down without speaking my voice."
The trained news person in me is inclined to focus on what will come of all this: Probably not much. People may be affected by widespread economic crisis, but they are busy with their day-to-day lives and see no point in participating in futile street theater.
The election of Barack Obama felt like the culmination of a powerful movement for change, yet three years later many participants feel let down and even tricked, as the administration continues many of the policies of its predecessor and mounts tepid and ineffective responses to high unemployment and foreclosure. Populist outpouring has a checkered history in this country and everywhere else, most recently spawning a Tea Party movement that has almost single-handedly stymied every meaningful effort to address the economic challenge. Distrust and even cynicism do not come from nowhere.
These protests will probably peter out and be forgotten, recalled at most as footnotes to an age of diminishing expectations and the turmoil it is sowing.
And yet wouldn't it be better if that proves to be wrong?
The people in the park are not revolutionaries. They are calling for things that are far short of radical -- wages enough to pay for health care and housing; a tax code that taps a fair share from the wealthiest to finance retirement funds and public education.
"I think it's got potential," says Bob Broadhurst, a fourth-generation electrician who has driven down from the Boston area for a look. We need to get back to a functioning democracy. The 99 percenters, we've got to have a voice."
Follow Peter S. Goodman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/petersgoodman
Josh Silver: Wall Street Protests: A Right-Left Movement Must Emerge
David Wild: "Takin' It to the Streets": A Playlist for "Occupy Wall Street"
Nan Roman: Opening Doors Across America
Alison Craiglow Hockenberry: Time for Innovation in Job Creation
Others suspect, along with many of the conservative pundits, that it is a George Soros-backed conspiracy to stoke the anti-capitalist flames. And, there are others who see it as a ploy by the unions to build up their stature and their ranks.
Due to the lack of a coherent message or rational demand out of this largely disjointed association of activists, Americans are having trouble accepting it as a pure, grass-roots movement with legitimate intentions. The circus like, and borderline violent atmosphere, as opposed to the serious Tea Party demeanor, raises skepticism that the Wall Street protest is nothing more than a ploy to distract the American public from the abyssmal job performance of the current administration.To comment or read more go here http://www.directbanc.com/about/
Everyone on the WSJ boards is trying to marginalize the individuals who are taking part in this protest using their own unsubstantiated personal narratives to make sense of it. We deregulated, the stock market crashed, the economy crashed, the Government bailed out the banksters, the rich got richer and the middle class lost jobs and had their hours and their 401k's reduced. Something is wrong here.
spend it or lose it. MY IDEA FOR A NEW TAX CODE- FOR THE 1% OF US.
Wait, we have been!!!! HA HA HA - you rich fools.
You need us, WAY MORE, than we need, or want you.
You are the HOARDERS of our American Dream.
SPEND IT NOW, BEFORE WE TAKE IT FROM YOU!
Bankrupting our nation should have led to a change in ownership, all bankruptcies follow this simple rule.
The problem was that it did not follow that rule and those that bankrupted us are still in power!
Time to close this chapter and move on, time for middle class to regain its power if not too late, however the middle class is up against some formidable powers that easily divides us at every turn.
is you soon run out of numbers to divide :)
1x1= 2.99
1/1= VOTES
Wall Street Protest Starting to Look Like Egypt
http://wwwÂ.zerohedgeÂ.com/contrÂibuted/walÂl-street-pÂrotest-staÂrting-lookÂ-egypt
NYPD police scanners are estimating a crowd up to 5,000
are occupying liberty square in a scene that is now starting to look
more like Egypt’s Tahrir square.
The protests have become so large that Fox News has set up a live stream covering the protests. Here are some screen shots from their camera.
Who Are the ProtestersÂ?
Wall Street is trying to write all of these people off as being
“hippies” who “need to get a job” (to which the protesters would
respond: That’s the point – There are no jobs, because Wall Street has destroyed the economy.)
The poor and the desperate, formerly-mÂiddle class people participatÂing in the protests are not taking well to Wall Street’s “Let them eat cake” response.
But all types are marching, including grannies and pilots:
Marines and other military men and women.
Wealthy folks such as Russel Simmons and Alec Baldwin.
Liberals and conservatiÂves.
On the other side of the protest line, Mayor Bloomberg is whining that the protesters are targeting bankers who “are struggling to make ends meet”.
He has a point: if Wall Street is reined in so that the rest of the
country has a chance, the bankers might have to cut back on their mistressesÂ, prostituteÂs and solid gold toilets.
Oil: Exxon Chairman's $400 Million Parachute
April 14, 2006
Last year, Exxon made the biggest profit of any company ever, $36 billion, and its retiring chairman appears to be reaping the benefits.
Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.
Last November, when he was still chairman of Exxon, Raymond told Congress that gas prices were high because of global supply and demand.
"We're all in this together, everywhere in the world," he testified.
Raymond, however, was confronted with caustic complaints about his compensation.
"In 2004, Mr. Raymond, your bonus was over $3.6 million," Sen. Barbara Boxer said.
That was before new corporate documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that revealed Raymond's retirement deal and his $51.1 million paycheck...
This isn't capitalism, it's stealing.
are not !
even under the umbrella
Of national Security
so that was a lame claim by the ex vice
If one was to look a bit deeper, it would be a better tomorrow for everyone. Individualism took over awhile ago, everything is personalized and tailor made. Successes and failures are now all personalized as well. There is no group success or failure, and blame is easily passed on to those who failed. There's no meaning to the saying "All for one, and one for all" anymore either; probably because it's French, or probably because people are brought up to distrust everyone else.
So if America fails, those that didn't fail feel that they aren't the problem; because their lives are good and they made it. So small are the hearts and minds of these people, that can bask in the warmth of the sun; and feel that the sun is only for them and them alone.
We need jobs - private sector, public sector - a job's a job. When we fire teachers or firefighter, we are just adding to the unemployment lines. If we keep teachers and fire fighters on their jobs they can make purchases to boost the economy. As I retired teacher I know - Teachers spend a small fortune out of their own pockets to provide school supplies for their students. That boosts the economy more than the fat cats on Wall Street.
We need to tax the rich. We need to get rid of all their subsidies and tax loopholes. We need to get rid of subsidies for off-shoring American jobs. . We need to place an excise tax on day trades, hedge funds, commodity trades and derivatives.
Whenever the unemployment rate rises above 6 % - we need to put a surtax on the incomes of the super rich. Maybe they think twice about off-shoring American jobs.
We can use that money to provide jobs to re-build American and to invest in R & D for green technology,like China and Abu Dhabi.
Let's tax the greedy to fund jobs for the needy.
'That's the ONLY way to get this economy going again.
As Mr. Goodman states, "distrust and even cynicism do not come from nowhere" neither do they fuel a fire-storm of activism born not from collective despair, but from collective optimism... born not from collective apathy, but from collective empathy... born not from collective arrogance, but from collective humility... born not from collective tyranny, but from collective self-determination... born not from collective malevolence, but from collective charity.
The movement won't dissipate because too much is at risk and while silence has been its accelerant... confidence, faith and action will be its tailwind to spread across the nation. A NationTogether can accomplish anything worthy of its devotion to democracy and "we the people".