New York City police officers in Zuccotti Park kept an eye on Occupy Wall Street protests, which have spread nationwide.
(Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press)
Wall Street protests capture attention of veterans of past social movements
New York City police officers in Zuccotti Park kept an eye on Occupy Wall Street protests, which have spread nationwide.
(Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press)
NEW YORK - To veterans of past social movements, the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York and spread nationwide have been a welcome response to corporate greed and the enfeebled economy. But whether the energy of protesters can be tapped to transform the political climate remains to be seen.
“There’s a difference between an emotional outcry and a movement,’’ said Andrew Young, who worked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a strategist during the civil rights movement and served as US ambassador to the United Nations. “This is an emotional outcry. The difference is organization and articulation.’’
The nearly four-week-old protest that began in a lower Manhattan park has taken on a semblance of organization and a coherent message has largely emerged: that “the 99 percent’’ who struggle daily as the economy shudders, employment stagnates, and medical costs rise are suffering as the 1 percent who control the vast majority of the economy’s wealth continues to prosper.
Labor unions and students joined the protest on Wednesday, swelling the ranks for a day into the thousands and lending the occupation a surge of political clout and legitimacy.
President Obama said Thursday that the protesters were “giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works;’’ some Republicans have been seeking to cast Occupy Wall Street as class warfare.
The growing cohesiveness and profile of the protest have caught the attention of public intellectuals and veterans of past social movements.
“I think if the idea of the movement is to raise the discontent that a lot of people from different walks of life and different persuasions have on the economic inequity in this country - it’s been perfect,’’ said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who plans to broadcast his nationally syndicated radio show from the park today and to lead a jobs march in Washington five days later.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said the protest could become a powerful movement if “it remains disciplined, focused, and nonviolent - and turns some of their pain into voting power.’’
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.
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