Occupy Wall Street Protests Expand in the Face of Repression

 

It’s getting rough and rowdy as Occupy Wall Street protesters attempt to shut Wall Street down and police try to clear them out. Protesters marched from their former home in Zuccotti Park and blocked intersections near the New York Stock Exchange. Police hit and shoved some of them, and reporters saw one woman pinned to the ground by police, bleeding from her mouth. (“Protesters Disrupt Business Around Wall Street,” Wall Street Journal).

Organizers say they now plan to use the subways as platforms to talk about economic inequality as they travel to Foley Square in Lower Manhattan. They have also called for student walkouts. A rally at Foley Square is being backed by some of the city’s larger unions.

Many people originally thought that Occupy Wall Street would fade away when it began two months ago, but the revolt against corporate greed and economic inequities went viral and is now a worldwide movement supported by many progressive intellectuals.

One of them, Ralph Nader, believes that the movement will expand and exhaust the resources and resolve of the repressors. Nader writes: “As the destruction of the Occupy encampments proceeds, this movement will disperse into many locations and become larger and stronger. ‘ Becoming stronger from violent over-reaction by the police, it will become an “Occupy America” movement with demands for long-overdue revisions of priorities and equities relating to children, workers, consumers, taxpayers, retirees and restricted voters.”

The movement is also picking up active middle class support. “This is a critical moment for the movement given what happened the other night,” Paul Knick, 44, a software engineer from Montclair, N.J., said as he marched through the financial district with other protesters on Thursday. “It seems like there’s a concerted effort to stop the movement and I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen.” (Occupy protesters arrested in NYC finance district,” AP).

Even on Wall Street, there is agreement with some of OWS’s basic principles. One 57-year-old bond trader, kidded that he was “one of the bad guys” but that he sympathized with the protesters. “They have a point in a lot of ways,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, there is a schism between the rich and the poor and it’s getting wider.”

Page Perry is an Atlanta-based law firm with over 150 years collective experience protecting investor rights and fighting Wall Street greed.