Wall Street: Activism Never Sleeps

Like the grunge revolt of twenty years ago in popular music, no one knows exactly what sparked the Occupy Wall Street movement, which started in September and has been growing ever since.  But the main cause boils down to one simple condition: Americans have seen their socioeconomic standing undermined by corporate greed, and they're not going to take it anymore.  Now they're fighting back.

Occupy Wall Street held a demonstration in New York this past Saturday that threatened to shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and today they held a march in Lower Manhattan.  Occupying a pocket park near the World Trade Center site, they've brought a diverse array of grievances ranging from diminished wages and merciless creditors to poor health care options and lack of economic opportunity. They're not as well-organized as the Tea Party, but they are a more universal and more unifying message of social and economic justice.  It's not just Woodstock hippie types; teachers and construction workers have joined the movement in New York, and similar demonstrations with a similar mix of people have sprouted up nationwide.  It won't be long before Middle America realize that this movement is their movement too.

Right now, many pundits are predicting that Occupy Wall Street is too unformed and too unfocused to last.  The media have treated the Tea Party more seriously despite their bad principles and bad ideas, and they're laughing off Occupy Wall Street as if it were a fad, like, say, Beatlemania.  As with those who scoffed at that phenomenon nearly half a century ago, they laugh at this movement at their own peril. This movement isn't a movement launched by a loudmouth TV business reporter ranting on the air.  This movement is for real.