Occupy Wall Street 'goes global': Revolution or circus?

Occupy Wall Street "went global" on Saturday, as loosely affiliated protests unfolded in more than 900 cities in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Most of the protests were peaceful, but a large march in Rome turned violent when a black-clad breakaway group battled riot police, smashed windows, and lit cars on fire. Will the global appropriation of the month-old Occupy Wall Street movement help strengthen the U.S. protesters' calls for more Wall Street accountability and less income inequality, or dilute it?

Occupy Wall Street just hit the big time: When people in 900 cities can find common cause, "something fascinating is growing" out of the New York protests, says Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast. "And by the time it ends, I suspect, politics will be different in the United States and a lot of other places as well." The global nature of the populist anger underscores that this is larger than the 2012 election — the movement is "decoupled" from President Obama or the Democrats — and that suggests that a real reckoning may be coming.

"Occupy protests' seismic effect"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

This is the revolution? Saturday's protests may have given the "professional European left" the chance they've craved to get some of that sweet Occupy Wall Street action, says Rick Moran in American Thinker. But a measly 5,000 marchers in New York, mere dozens in many other U.S. cities, and a paltry 1,000 protesters in London? "A global temper tantrum by adults with the emotional maturity of five-year-olds does not a protest movement make."

"Wall Street protests go global"

If nothing else, this is a branding coup: What was really impressive wasn't the large numbers of protesters "yelling about banks" generally, says Amy Davidson in The New Yorker. It was the "99 Percent" signs in Hong Kong, Stockholm, Sydney, and Tokyo, and the word "occupy" infiltrating other languages. And counterintuitively, "as the marches spread, the ideas are getting more coherent, not less so." Occupy Wall Street has started "a global conversation." We'll see where it leads.

"Two, three, many Wall Streets"