Wall Street, heal yourself

Wall Street demonstrators in Zuccotti Park occupy on October 2, q. Sakamaki/Redux

By Devin Leonard and Ratnesar fight-eczema

At first glance, it's difficult to take seriously the protests for Wall Street to occupy — in part because the participants seem to have so much fun. On 2 October, maybe the beginning of a third week of demonstrations against the financial sector, visitors of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan have thought that she had stumbled upon a Carnival, or a spinoff of the East coast of Burning Man. a shirtless protester meandered to the rhythm of an African drum, while another waved a flag with the slogan "Generation revolution." A punk-rocker with a dog collar around his neck and a safety pin through its nostrils spoke of the virtues of peace, love and anarchy.

The levity was deceiving. The Wall Street protests have proven more occupy organized, disciplined, durable, and Yes, business critics — and even many supporters — might prefer to believe. There is, first of many free food; None of the financial sector excesses condemns them on an empty stomach. Organizers send a barrage of tweets, updates, and press releases on laptops powered by portable gasoline-powered generators. The demonstrators have published their own slickly designed pamphlet, busy, Wall Street Journal, and distributed to the throngs of reporters, cops, students, nurses, teachers, truck drivers, trade union leaders, soldiers, and countless curiosity asylum seekers who have converged on the steps of the New York Stock Exchange. Of the paper lead story began with a virtual declaration of victory: "what is happening on Wall Street is remarkable. For more than two weeks, in the great Cathedral of capitalism, the displaced persons have liberated territory of financial overlords and their police army. "

Hyperbole aside, what the Wall Street activists occupy — or "Occupiers," as they call themselves — have achieved is remarkable. The movement reached a crescendo on 5 October, when thousands of Foley Square marched to the Financial District — "where their pensions are gone," in the words of the organizers. Similar protests have taken place in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston, where 25 people were arrested on september 30, to refuse to clearing the lobby of a Bank of America building. More rallies are planned in at least 240 other cities, according to the website occupytogether.org. The Wall Street demos caught the celebrity of the usual suspects — Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Cornel West — as well as Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who performed a teach-in on 2 October for 500 dissidents. He was accompanied by Jeff Madrick, a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and author of age of greed: the triumph of finance and the decline of America, 1970 to the present. "It's very clear that the occupation reflects a deep and wide anger in America," says Madrick. The listeners were in "very friendly, very attentive Zuccotti Park and very curious. Some people were more radical than others, but I was not radical enough for the time being booed. "

Never mind that the occupiers have yet to occupy a actual building on Wall Street, or articulate concrete objectives. In a time of high unemployment and increasing income inequality, the protesters version of Wall Street as the main perpetrator of the economic woes of the country has found an audience. If it is too early to tell that occupy or Wall Street in a broader movement will merge with endurance, it is clear that, as the Tea Party before them, the occupiers tapped a reservoir of anger on the u.s. financial institution and the politicians perceived to be its bid. The Titans of Wall Street, the demonstrators sources of annoyance, frustration, and overt contempt. But history shows that it would be a mistake to ignore them.