Wall Street protests: Is there a message?

last updated 8 January 2015

“Any protest that hopes to accomplish some goal,” said Daniel Indiviglio in TheAtlantic.com, “needs, well, a goal.” That’s why the thousands of protesters currently camped in Lower Manhattan under the banner “Occupy Wall Street” aren’t likely to accomplish very much. The colorful protests have featured signs and speeches denouncing bankers, corporate greed, and capitalism. But despite hundreds of arrests, growing union support, and appearances by liberal celebrities such as Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon, the movement still lacks “a clear set of objectives.” If this “pathetic” gathering of whiny pseudo-anarchists is the Left’s version of the Tea Party, said Rich Lowry in the New York Post, then liberals should hang their heads in shame. This so-called protest looks like “a post-adolescent sleepover, complete with face paint and pizza deliveries.”

Americans have every right to be angry at Wall Street, said John Avlon in TheDailyBeast.com. Our economy has been wrecked by “corruption, collusion, and economic malpractice,” and it’s the middle class and the poor that are paying the steepest price. Unfortunately, Occupy Wall Street seems to be a protest against virtually everything. Wandering through the crowd, I saw signs calling for a new investigation into the 9/11 attacks, for “an end to all wars,” and for American society to “replace capitalism with democracy.” Surely you don’t expect coherence from “young white hippies” living on trust funds, said Tim Stanley in the London Telegraph. Many of the protesters are “professional agitators” who jet around the world “from riot to riot—a cause on every continent, a ring in every orifice.”

That’s unfair, said Michael Scherer in Time.com. Occupy Wall Street may have been started by the usual suspects, but since then the protests have spread to Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, and other cities. Like the Tea Party, these protests are fired by “anger at elites, a feeling of injustice, a concern about jobs, and fear about the direction of the economy.” Laugh that off as naïve if you will, said Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times, but something very real is stirring in this country. People are fed up with “the growing inequality gap,” and the unchecked power and wealth of those at the top. This protest “is a warning shot.” The next step could be “civil unrest,” like the rioting and arson that recently left sections of London in flames.