The Staying Power of the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, October 28, 2011


This Occupy Wall Street Movement is not going away, and it’s got the corporate establishment and their apologists freaked out.


But Pat Robertson telling all good Christians not to join the protests is not going to put a damper on them.


Neither is Fox News by making fun of them.


Nor Herman Cain by telling everyone to go get a job.


People in mass numbers continue to gather in city after city, large and small. This weekend there will be protests not only in New York but in places as tiny as Salida, Colorado.


And people are finally willing to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. In Tucson, more than 350 people have been arrested. In Chicago, more than 300.


This movement has real staying power.


And the reason it has staying power is because people understand, in their gut and in their wallet, that they’ve been ripped off.


They know the top 1% runs the show, and hogs the wealth and income.


It’s this lack of fairness, this lack of justice, and this lack of empowerment that fuels the indignation of Occupy Wall Street.


We don’t have representative democracy in America.


We have unrepresentative democracy here.


And that’s putting it nicely. Because what we really have is an oligarchy and a kleptocracy.


At some point, people wake up and yell, “Stop, thief!”


I believe we’ve reached that point now.