If 2,000 tea party activists descended on Wall Street, you would probably have an equal number of reporters there covering them. Yet 2,000 people did occupy Wall Street on Saturday. They weren\u2019t carrying the banner of the tea party, the Gadsden flag with its coiled snake and the threat \u201cDon\u2019t Tread on Me.\u201d Yet their message was clear: \u201cWe are the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.\u201d They were there, mostly young, protesting the virtually unregulated speculation of Wall Street that caused the global financial meltdown.<\/p>\n
One of New York\u2019s better-known billionaires, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, commented on the protests: \u201cYou have a lot of kids graduating college, can\u2019t find jobs. That\u2019s what happened in Cairo. That\u2019s what happened in Madrid. You don\u2019t want those kinds of riots here.\u201d Riots? Is that really what the Arab Spring and the European protests are about?<\/p>\n
Perhaps to the chagrin of Mayor Bloomberg, that is exactly what inspired many who occupied Wall Street. In its most recent communiqu\u00e9, the Wall Street protest umbrella group said: \u201cOn Saturday [17 Sep 2011] we held a general assembly, two thousand strong. … By 8 p.m. on Monday we still held the plaza, despite constant police presence. … We are building the world that we want to see, based on human need and sustainability, not corporate greed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of the tea party, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has caused a continuous fracas in the Republican presidential debates with his declaration that the U.S.\u2019 revered Social Security system is a \u201cPonzi scheme.\u201d Charles Ponzi was the con artist who swindled thousands in 1920 with a fraudulent promise for high returns on investments. A typical Ponzi scheme involves taking money from investors, then paying them off with money taken from new investors, rather than paying them from actual earnings. Social Security is actually solvent, with a trust fund of more than $2.6 trillion. The real Ponzi scheme threatening the U.S. public is the voracious greed of Wall Street banks.<\/p>\n
I interviewed one of the \u201cOccupy Wall Street\u201d protest organizers. David Graeber teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has authored several books, most recently \u201cDebt: The First 5,000 Years.\u201d Graeber points out that, in the midst of the financial crash of 2008, enormous debts between banks were renegotiated. Yet only a fraction of troubled mortgages have gotten the same treatment. He said: \u201cDebts between the very wealthy or between governments can always be renegotiated and always have been throughout world history. … It\u2019s when you have debts owed by the poor to the rich that suddenly debts become a sacred obligation, more important than anything else. The idea of renegotiating them becomes unthinkable.\u201d<\/p>\n
President Barack Obama has proposed a jobs plan and further efforts to reduce the deficit. One is a so-called millionaire\u2019s tax, endorsed by billionaire Obama supporter Warren Buffett. The Republicans call the proposed tax \u201cclass warfare.\u201d Graeber commented: \u201cFor the last 30 years we\u2019ve seen a political battle being waged by the super-rich against everyone else, and this is the latest move in the shadow dance, which is completely dysfunctional economically and politically. It\u2019s the reason why young people have just abandoned any thought of appealing to politicians. We all know what\u2019s going to happen. The tax proposals are a sort of mock populist gesture, which everyone knows will be shot down. What will actually probably happen would be more cuts to social services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside in the cold Tuesday [20 Sep 2011] morning, the demonstrators continued their fourth day of the protest with a march amidst a heavy police presence and the ringing of an opening bell at 9:30 a.m. for a \u201cpeople\u2019s exchange,\u201d just as the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange is rung. While the bankers remained secure in their bailed-out banks, outside, the police began arresting protesters. In a just world, with a just economy, we have to wonder, who would be out in the cold? Who would be getting arrested?<\/p>\n
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Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.<\/em><\/p>\n Amy Goodman is the host of \u201cDemocracy Now!,\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of \u201cBreaking the Sound Barrier,\u201d recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n