By now, everyone is familiar with the Wall Street protesters.  All sorts of folks have commented on who they are and billing them as anti capitalists.  I am not so sure that is correct.  The protesters have not delivered their message well.

From CNN.com:

To be fair, the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the Occupy Wall Street protests as incoherent is because the press and the public are themselves. It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped.

In fact, we are witnessing America’s first true Internet-era movement, which — unlike civil rights protests, labor marches, or even the Obama campaign — does not take its cue from a charismatic leader, express itself in bumper-sticker-length goals and understand itself as having a particular endpoint.

So who are these protesters?  We do we think vs what do we know?   Are these simply people who want reform?  Wall Street isn’t innocent so they should not be playing the victim.  Is CNN right in its assessment?

 

 

 

 

37 Thoughts to “Who are those Occupy Wall Street Protesters?”

  1. SlowpokeRodriguez

    To continue from the open thread, the students walking out is just one of a hundred messages from this group. I’m saying you are right, moon, there is more to it than that. Not surprising from a movement so young. Will they gel around one message?? That’s the question.

  2. cargsosquid

    I”n fact, we are witnessing America’s first true Internet-era movement, which — unlike civil rights protests, labor marches, or even the Obama campaign — does not take its cue from a charismatic leader, express itself in bumper-sticker-length goals and understand itself as having a particular endpoint.”

    In other words….incoherent mob that was astro-turfed and one that CNN supports politically.

    does not take its cue from a charismatic leader- OK
    does not express itself in bumper-sticker length goal – Really? Have you listened to them? Or seen their signs?
    Does not have a particular endpoint. – What does that mean? That they’ll never go home? Winter on New York streets…..chilly.

    we are witnessing America’s first true Internet-era movement, – Unlike…oh……say…the Tea Party……

    This bias is so transparent. But, hey…if they want to support anarchists, communists, and idiots, more power to them. And if they want to support the Wall Street occupiers, that too is fine.

    From Instapundit
    DAN PRIMACK: They Should Be Marching On Universities, Not Wall Street: “Take a look at We Are the 99 Percent – a website on which protest sympathizers share their tales of economic hardship. Very few of them mention banks, or even bank bailouts. The vast majority of them, however, do mention college debt.” Universities are major Democratic constituencies, and as such unlikely to be targeted.

    http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/05/occupation-from-wall-street-to-the-university/?iid=HP_River

    Isn’t it the GOVERNMENT that took over THAT program? why aren’t they protesting in DC?

    Some cogent comments:

    So access to government subsidized easy money resulted in colleges raising prices astronomically, foisting the bill onto the backs of their students beyond anything a reasonable market could bare . . . ? Basically, a sub-prime mortgage blowout only on the education side? And now they’re demanding MORE government involvement? They should join the Tea Party, not sit around gripping about Wall Street.

    Occupy Wall Street protesters demand tuition forgiveness. From Wall Street? Did Wall Street give them their loans? What about their Universities? What about the Feds that guaranteed their loans? What about their own choice to incur debt? How much you want to bet that if they ever got tuition forgiveness (which will never happen) that their protest would evaporate and they would forget all their other utopian rhetoric and demands?

    And I think I found Starry’s alter ego:
    We have this class warfare today because the Billionaire Puppetmasters of the Teabags want to destroy the middle class. Google “teaparty billionaire funding” to see who the Puppetmasters are. They want to give massive tax breaks to the Oil companies but yet layoff firemen and teachers. The Puppetmasters don’t want our children to get educations because they don’t want successful entrepreneurs or managers that would compete against the ultra-wealthy. They don’t want smart, well rounded individuals that can think for themselves

  3. marinm

    Instead of providing only 99% I’d like to say that I support their right to protest whatever it is they’re protesting 100%.

    Just respect the laws, allow people to get to work so that they can pay their bills and clean up after yourselves.

    If I didn’t have a job I think I’d go up to NY to sell some Che and Pro-Marxism t-shirts to make a buck off these kids.

  4. cargsosquid

    Oh…and the fact that they are complaining about being jobless while carrying signs that demand “End Capitalism NOW!” is just priceless.

    And here’s a letter to the protestors:

    http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/letter-new-york-city-protestors
    When you decided to sit in traffic and block the Brooklyn Bridge a few days ago, with that blazing pink “SMASH PATRIARCHY-SMASH CAPITALISM” sign in hand, you probably didn’t see the regular people you stranded in traffic.

    Those people you left stuck in traffic have a hard time paying their bills and rents and health insurance and mortgages. They worry about things like finding decent schools for their children to attend and making sure they don’t get fired at work, and fixing leaking roofs and chimneys.

    You know what they don’t worry about, ever? Smashing patriarchy and capitalism.

    And if the protesters don’t like Wall Street, why do they support Obama? President Goldman Sachs:http://thevimh.blogspot.com/2008/10/goldman-sachs-loves-obama.html

    There’s so much astro-turf on Wall Street right now, the New York Giants could have a game.

  5. Morris Davis

    Cargo – You misunderstood.  It’s not class warfare, it’s ass warfare.  From military members who risk their asses, to average Joes and Janes who bust their asses to make ends meet, to those that got tossed out on their asses when the “job creators” fired their asses and shipped their jobs overseas, to the retirees who lived the dream until their funds suddenly vanished and they lost their asses, many are fed up with the fat asses saying we need to do a better job kissing their asses and manipulating the dumb asses to make asses of themselves.

  6. Elena

    Cargo,
    Many of these people are young, but not all. College students are graduating today and have no prospect of finding a job.

    I love how Sean Hannity calles these people anti american but lOVE the tea partyiers? These young people are opposed to the disparity of wealth that they see in this country.

    Jon Stewart was classic last night. Are you suffering from profound amnesia of events of just a mere three years ago? the collpase of the ecoomy did not happen in a vaccum Cargo.

    What real meaningful change has happended in the banking industry to prevent this disaster from occuring again? Nothing substantial is the answer. People keep being told the uber wealthy are the “job creators”, well, where are the jobs? something is rotten and these people are expressing their disgust at the lack of progress in the economy.

  7. Cato the Elder

    Hopefully the poor CNN reporters assigned to cover this story are up to date with their vaccinations.

  8. Elena

    I love you Moe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT was fabulous 🙂

  9. Censored bybvbl

    Lol, Moe! So true….

    It’s funny how the pendulum swings. The protesters of the Sixties raised many kiddos who became Reagan Repubs and now those people have raised another group of anti-establishment protesters.

  10. marinm

    @Cato the Elder

    You may enjoy. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/occupying-wall-street/

    Most if not all of them likely favor a big expansion of government, but in light of our political-economic history, that would be precisely the wrong way to go because it would further empower the same coercive bureaucracy that gave us this crisis. Putting new people in charge won’t alter that fact that the bureaucracy wields powers that should not exist.

  11. @cARGO, WHAT bias? Jesus, I slapped up a thread in the middle of the night. There is no bias. I expect that moveon.org probably came along as an internet phenomena before your tea party.

    I would like to figure out what these protesters really want and are doing rather than condemn them as anarchists and commies. I guess they have as much right to be out there as anyone else. I sure don’t see that their elders have done anything about those on Wall Street who played willy nilly with our financial lives.

  12. Cato the Elder

    Moonbat manifesto: http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/

    How unoriginal. Some of them are completely ripped off from Marx’s Ten Planks.

  13. Excellent work on the asses, Moe! Just excellent. Hits the nail on the head.

  14. @Cato, young people today haven’t had as much experience at protest as people of my generation. give them a break.

    At least they are doing something rather than nothing. What did WE do when we lost our asses 3 years ago? Sat around and blamed Obama for not fixing it, best I can tell.

  15. Cato the Elder

    @Moon-howler

    What do you mean WE, Tonto? 😉

  16. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    Not bias on YOUR PART. Bias on the side of the media like CNN. When you come across as biased, I always point it out that I’m talking about you.

    I’m not condemning them as anarchists and commies. THEY are SELF-DESCRIBING themselves as such and the communist party helped organize the protest/camp out. Personally I want them to stay as long as they want. I think that they make a great example of the Democratic base and its incoherence.

  17. INGwpokeRodriguez

    well, you gotta figure, the out-of-work have to find SOMETHING to do besides mastering the 87th level of Grand Theft Auto, watching Caligula for 100th time and trying to evolve whale-like blowholes in their heads. Might as well protest!

  18. marinm

    @Cargosquid

    “I think that they make a great example of the Democratic base and its incoherence.”

    Stop giving away the game plan!! 😉

    @Cato the Elder

    Demand: A unicorn for everyone to ride on.

    Demand: Rainbows as freeways

    Demand: All murderers must inform the world 2 weeks ahead of time before they plan murder someone.

    Demand: A detailed map of Atlantis to replace the Constitution on display at the Smithsonian.

    Demand: Turn Pinocchio into a real boy.

    — The Occupying Oligarchy

  19. INGwpokeRodriguez

    There, if one of these protestors would invent a better PC touchpad, they’d make themselves a couple of bucks and become teapartiers! And I wouldn’t be in moderation because I messed my name up!

  20. Morris Davis

    Cato the Elder :http://blog.robballen.com/images/Windows-Live-Writer/To-those-who-should-be-Occupying-A-Job-r_A13E/image_2.png

    Cato – Thanks for providing photographic proof of my point. I’m sure the guy in the photo, Robb Allen, is a good citizen, but he is not the one-percent that is the focus of protest. In 2008, the one-percenters had an adjusted gross income of nearly $400,000. Mr. Allen says he works for a small software firm in Tampa and has a mortgage on his house. I’ll go out on a limb and say his AGI is not $400K or he wouldn’t have a tip jar on his blog — called “Sharp as a Marble” — to help defray his costs.

  21. @Cato the Elder

    Well, lone ranger, most people didn’t make money. The same AH’s are still right where they were before the crash. Many people were doing things that perhaps weren’t illegal but also…weren’t right.

  22. Cato the Elder

    @Morris Davis

    I’ll go out on another limb and say we’ve read this script before. Step one: foment populist rage. Step two: gain critical mass. Step three: throw a bunch of corporate money behind it and hijack the movement. Sound familiar?

    I wonder what this kids are going to think once they figure out that the same guys who own their boogeymen also own their benefactors?

  23. @Cargosquid

    The Socialists, Refuse and Resist and the fringe organizations always come out for these things. Every women’s march I ever attended had its fair share of people you wish would stay home. I am not willing to hang a label on the entire movement yet.

    Not everyone out there is a commie socialist pinko scumbag whatever.

    It is too easy to dismiss them as ‘other.’

  24. Let’s go back to the student demonstrations in the 60s and 70’s. There were some extremist groups out there for sure. However, the rank and file demonstrator was a regular college student who just wanted change. In most cases, they wanted to end the war in Vietnam. Some wanted to shut down Dupont for making napalm but most just wanted the war to end.

    I think it is entirely possible to be opposed to corporate greed and still have a 401k.

    I am willing to cut a break to the demonstrators until I find out more about their message. Remember that we ignored them for a couple weeks. The media paid no attention.

  25. Elena

    Don’t see any money coming there way Cato, at least not yet. REAL change is required to fix this mess. Not just Wall Street, but a paradigm shift for all of us. What is success? Is it having a ton of money? Is it raising decent human beings who care about more than just themselves?

    Have you heard of the book “boomerang” by Michael Lewis? It is on my short list to buy, although a little mouse keeps telling me to just suck it up and buy a kindle. I just don’t know if I am that “21st century” yet!

    1. @Elena

      ahem. I am not an effen mouse. bwaaahahahahahahaha. Buy a kindle! Get the good one.

  26. Cato the Elder

    @Elena

    That’s a great book, and while you’re at it check out Griftopia by Matt Taibbi.

  27. Cargosquid

    Who are the protesters? Here’s one of them.

    http://www.neptunuslex.com/2011/10/05/terminus/

    Whoever they are…they sure ain’t Tea Party members if this guy is a sample.

    I don’t see the protesters as “other.” That’s a cliche. I see them as they portray themselves. They have portrayed themselves as anarchists and socialists without a coherent message other than “Capitalism bad.”

    What do they want Wall Street to do? Hand out money? Give them jobs? Close their doors? All of the above?

    These are the same groups that I saw at the “anti-war” demonstrations run by the Communist party. All the little radical groups would come out to protest and support their pet cause, denounce the war at the last minute, spew hate against GWB, and leave. Rinse. Repeat.

    I guarantee that some of these people are professional protesters.

    1. I can remember you explaining to me that the cameras always go to the most fringe in any large group, back when a tea party demonstration had hitler or joker signs of Obama. Do you think the same theory applies here?

      I am seeing something totally different than you are. Now….I am not saying these are good guys. I am saying that there are still a lot of unknowns here.

    2. There are always professional protesters out there. I feel certain some are. Don’t dismiss everyone as a professional protester though. Some of them might believe some of the very things you espouse. Imagine that.

  28. Elena

    STOP IT Cato! That one is on my list too, ergo the “whispering” to buy a Kindle, stop wasting your money on books! I just have this mental block to reading my books on a computer.

    My dad suggested Griftopia to me just two days ago so it is in my Amazon cart waiting to be bought along with Boomerang.

    Have you read “So Much Damn Money” by Kaiser?

  29. Elena

    Here is the difference to me Cargo. The TEA party was up and running a month after Obama was inaugerated. Why? There were protests suggesting he was a communist, marxist, socialist, blah blah blah etc etc etc. Where were the protests when Congress was running up trillions upon trillions for two wars, medicare prescription, etc etc. Where were the protests when Bush passed TARP?

    It took people three years and almost 10% national unemployment before the average joe finally realized that no one was looking out for them. There was a tangible crisis Cargo, not a made up fear mongering of “what if” because Obama was president. We experienced a massive recession, one not experienced since the Depression.

    Where will jobs come from, well, for beginners, another infrastructure investment bill. My mom took canned goods to her local food pantry today, she was so depressed by what she saw. Hundreds of people waiting for food, moms with small children and the elderly were the majority of the group from what she could see. There is a crisis Cargo, and its getting worse.

    What people want government to do is stop asking the most vulnerable in our society to pay for the needed investments to get the economy moving. What does that take, well, I’m not the expert, but I can tell you this, it isn’t more tax cuts for the wealthy while the you cut hundreds of thousands of jobs with government employees. It isn’t more tax cuts for big corporations while mom and pops small businesses go under.

    The 1% are not job creators Cargo, its the middle class and those average joe entrepreneurs who are the backbone of this democracy. We need small business investments, not 500 billion dollar solar panel investments. How we get that moving, I’m don’t know. But its the people like us who buy the goods and pay for services that is the gas to this economic engine.

    If we can’t buy stuff, people won’t invest in new small businesses ventures.

  30. Slowpoke Rodriguez

    Moon-howler :
    @Cato the Elder
    Well, lone ranger, most people didn’t make money. The same AH’s are still right where they were before the crash. Many people were doing things that perhaps weren’t illegal but also…weren’t right.

    And almost to a man, every one of those AH’s are in Congress or are friends of the current or last administration.

  31. Cato the Elder

    @Elena

    I haven’t read that one, but there’s only so much material one can read about exactly how crooked our entire system is before you start to feel nauseated.

  32. George S. Harris

    I noticed the young womanwith the MS for a state university. So? What was her major? Criminal Justice (the CSI degree), psychology, history, philosophy, ????? She says she can’t keep a job and now wants a BSN–I wonder why she didn’t do that in the first place–could have had a MSN and maybe have been a Nurse Practitioner or perhaps a Physician’s Assistant. I realize we need some folks with degrees in history and philosophy but those are mostly at the PhD level, otherwise, they ain’t worth much right now. How many of the 99%ers have even been to college or how about a trade school (plumbers make pretty good $$ as to HVAC, electricians, etc.). How about “green” jobs?

    Elena says: ” But its the people like us who buy the goods and pay for services that is the gas to this economic engine.

    If we can’t buy stuff, people won’t invest in new small businesses ventures.”

    I say it a bit differently: If we had some jobs we could make the things we would buy, if we had some jobs. Or, If we had some eggs, we would have some ham and eggs, if we had some ham.

    Someone has to create the demand. I say it is the federal and state governments that should prime the pump. They generally don’t manufacture but they do consume. However, buying requires funds and adding funds more than likely means increasing revenue (the dreaded T word) but the Re/Teapublicans have convinced everyone they are paying too much in taxes despite they fact they are as low as they have been for many years. So unless there is some compromise on revenue I don’t think anything is going to move.

  33. Cargosquid

    “Here is the difference to me Cargo. The TEA party was up and running a month after Obama was inaugerated. Why? There were protests suggesting he was a communist, marxist, socialist, blah blah blah etc etc etc. Where were the protests when Congress was running up trillions upon trillions for two wars, medicare prescription, etc etc. Where were the protests when Bush passed TARP? ”

    Where were the Republicans/conservatives? Staying home. They stayed home in protest and the Democrats took office. Then Pelosi/Reid in 07 started ramping up the already excessive spending. Every movement needs a catalyst. The Tep Party movement was primed by the rise of Glenn Beck and the 9/12 groups. His simple statement, “We surround THEM.” made conservatives realize that they were not alone. And the groups got some people organized. The catalyst for the national movement was Rick Santelli’s call for a Tea Party to protest the mortgage bailout policies. This was the inspiration.

    Bush got a lot of heat for TARP, prescription drug plan, etc…..
    The Republicans are actually the main target of the Tea Party. The TP knows that its the GOP that it can affect more than the Democrats or Obama. The TP opposed the policies of the left by electing more conservative politicians.

    @George S. Harris

    When has the gov’t been able to “jumpstart” an economy? Without a war? Didn’t work for FDR, why should it work now?
    You want the gov’t to spend to consume to jumpstart the economy? So, does the gov’t get this money for free? If you raise taxes on business, and then you use that money to buy from business, where is the profit? Why not just cut out the middle man and hire everybody? Instant cash in their pocket. And we keep talking about stimulus….where’s the production from the FIRST stimulus? THAT one was supposed to fix the roads and bridges. Now they’re bringing up that canard AGAIN.

    What’s holding down the economy, as per the businesses, is that the upcoming tax schemes ALREADY ON THE BOOKS, the added increases in hiring expenses, the added cost of new regulations, the new financial bills, and the demonization of energy, are all contributing. Furthermore, the new financial bills add harsh penalties on the banks, etc to any risk taking by lending. Also the banks are able to borrow from the country at 0%. And invest in bonds, as the gov’t wants them to so they can print more money, to make a safe return. Free money. Why SHOULD they take a risk?

    Want to fix the economy? Stop trying to fix it. We can’t get through this without failure. We keep adding programs that cost more and more money. We need more and more taxes.

    How about we cut taxes? A tax holiday for everyone. 0 taxes for a year. I mean, Obama wants to borrow trillions anyway? Freeze new spending. Borrow to cover the costs of no taxes.

    Its radical. But the economy come back with a roar, foreign investment would flood in.

Comments are closed.