Anger over Wall Street grows
Protests of economy, perceived greed spread
NEW YORK – Protests against Wall Street spread across the country Monday as demonstrators marched on Federal Reserve banks and camped out in parks from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine, in a show of anger over the wobbly economy and what they see as corporate greed.
In Manhattan, hundreds of protesters dressed as corporate zombies lurched past the New York Stock Exchange clutching fistfuls of fake money. In Chicago, demonstrators pounded drums in the city’s financial district. Others pitched tents or waved protest signs at passing cars in Boston, St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo.
The arrests of 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend galvanized a slice of discontented America, from college students worried about their job prospects to middle-age workers who have been recently laid off.
Some protesters likened themselves to a liberal tea party movement, or to the Arab Spring demonstrators who brought down their rulers in the Middle East.
“I’ve felt this way for a long time. I’ve really just kind of been waiting for a movement to come along that I thought would last and have some resonation within the community,” said Steven Harris, a laid-off truck driver in Kansas City.
In Washington, 2,000 progressive activists who represented more than 200 groups gathered Monday to chart a new course for recapturing the 2008 electoral magic that put Barack Obama in office and gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress.
The three-day “Take Back the American Dream” conference, which includes a jobs rally Wednesday, is sponsored by the liberal Campaign for America’s Future and by Rebuild the Dream, an organization founded by Van Jones, former green jobs adviser for the Obama White House.
Jones chided liberal leaders for falling asleep at the wheel after Obama became president, arguing, “We went from ‘Yes, we can,’ to ‘Yes, he can.’ ”
Hoping to strike a strong activist tone, Monday’s conference began with a live video feed of protesters at New York’s Occupy Wall Street demonstration.
City bus drivers sued the New York Police Department on Monday for commandeering their buses Saturday to pick up detained protesters.
“We’re down with these protesters,” said Transport Workers Union President John Samuelsen. “Our bus operators are not going to be pressed into service to arrest protesters anywhere.”