A protester at the Occupy Wall Street march.
(Stephen Nessen/WNYC)
Obama knows protesters at Occupy Wall Street are frustrated. Like Clinton and our pain, Obama feels that frustration.
“I think people are frustrated and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system work,” he said at his press conference Thursday.
It’s nothing new that the American people see the banks’ recovery in opposition to their own standing. This week, Rasmussen poll found that 79 percent of Americans agree with the statement that "the big banks got bailed out but the middle class got left behind."
As Occupy Wall Street looks to build power as it spreads across the country, the Tea Party has taken those numbers, well, right to the bank.
Read. Argue. Listen. Act.
More"There's never been a bigger crony capitalist that I've seen then Barack Obama," Iowa Tea Party leader Ryan Rhodes said this week when I asked him about Occupy Wall Street. And Rhodes is actively working to get Obama out.
From the beginning, the Tea Party focused its anger on officeholders - threatening to throw them out, which they did in the 2010 midterms.
In Iowa, Rhodes organized a Tea Party bus tour last summer to build momentum and allow activists to corner candidates on their positions on bailouts and big cuts to federal spending.
“If candidates are talking about our issues, we win,” he explained to The Atlantic. He endorsed Michele Bachmann on the eve of the Iowa Straw Poll.
In contrast, at the Wall Street protests in New York, there's been little focus on turning widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo into results at the polls.
"The cold fact that everybody's here is that people are aware that our votes are meaningless. It's a whole charade because it's the lobbyists that count,” said Kenny Ladd, a construction worker from Staten Island.
He still counts himself as an Obama supporter, but he said the president didn’t really have a chance when money and corporate power reign in Washington.
“Once you join the mechanism, you're part of the machinery," Ladd said. "He came in with noble ideas until the reality of politics landed on his head."
That was also the take of Elizabeth Starcevic, a retired CUNY professor who came to the protests after an afternoon union meeting this week.
“I think this is a bigger picture. I think this is an intention by the youth to say it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. There has to be a fair shake,” she said.
That wasn’t the case three years ago, when young activists were certain it mattered who was in charge, and they worked for candidate Obama.
New Yorker Alyssa Vinnik, now 26, was one of them. She knocked on doors for the campaign in Pennsylvania and Brooklyn, but is not sure she'd be great at it this time around.
"I felt very, very convinced in 2008, and think it would be a little bit harder to do that for other people who are skeptical because I feel a little skeptical myself,” she said. “I think it’s going to be a harder sell.”
Wall Street protester Heather Long, 18, is among the unconvinced.
"I’m neither here nor there on Obama,” she said.
Long drove up to the protests from Jacksonville, Florida. She's in a freshman in college, the first in her family to go - and she's felt the brunt of the bad economy close up close. Her dad works construction, and was unemployed for a four year stretch.
“It was very hard,” she said. “We went through a lot of times where the banks were trying to foreclose. We never had cable, we never had internet. We never had home phone service. Because we couldn't afford to pay those bills. It just wasn't an option."
And while Long says she’s excited to vote for the first time, she doesn't have much hope that a single election will change much.
"No matter how much sense either party makes, they're never going to agree with each other. They're always going be competing, who's right, who's better,” she said. “And as long as that's the competition, that's what they're concerned on, nothing's going to change. And so I feel like the way the government is set up needs to change."
So many find themselves at Occupy Wall Street, demonstrating for something bigger – more abstract – than electoral wins that could alter the balance of power in Washington.
All that could change when there's a Republican presidential challenger. Then, like Tea Party, they'll have someone to get fired up against.
Anna Sale covers politics for WNYC, including the 2013 mayoral race. During the 2012 presidential election, she traveled the country to tell the stories of voters in early primary battlegrounds and swing states. She has hosted The Brian Lehrer Show and The Takeaway and contributed to NPR, Marketplace, PBS Newshour, the BBC, Slate, WGBH World Channel, Current TV, and NY1.
Comments [9]
Your guest this morning spoke about Democratic party politicians "co-opting the OWS movement too soon". What makes him think that the movement is open to co-opting sooner or later? I think the people in Zucotti Square are astute about not allowing the corrupt capitalist political system to take them over. It's the corruption of that system that they are protesting.
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The reason for the protest(s) may well be due, at bottom, to the perception of probability.
Americans, by and large, have not held any animosity toward those who are very wealthy. In fact, the middle and lower classes combined have cherished the belief that anyone, if they work hard, can become wealthy. This attitude contrasts sharply with that of the Soviet proles during the USSR era. There, the thought wasn't that a person could improve his situation but, rather, that those doing better should be reduced to the norm. This dour view found no foothold in the US. The American 'dream' could be seen straight ahead, glittering, smiling and beckoning.
Of course, while Americans also believed that a little mozel wouldn't hurt in the pursuit of wealth, the actual probability of success wasn't examined closely. It was enough to know that the possibility was there. Success icons were known and regularly lauded, keeping the dream going strong: 'Look at so-and-so. He started with nothing and now he's on top of the world!'
The past two decades, though, have given cause to many to reconsider their chances for significant advancement. Statistics of salary levels have been made readily available and have become a topic for discussion. The severity of the current recession has opened still more eyes. The future, seen from the vantage point of today, is far from rosy. The dream wears tattered clothes.
The chance of realizing the American dream is looking less and less likely. The probability of 'making it' is now, finally, under consideration. It's seen as considerably less than in the past, and it's still dropping.
Probability is a concept that folks find a bit slippery to pin down. Is it any wonder, then, that people are having trouble singling out specific 'targets' for their demonstration?
The #OWS people have a perceptual understanding that the problem is the process itself.
I have a friend, a single working mom, who earns about $25,000, but apparently paid more taxes than GE did in 2010. It seems to me that something is wrong.
GE is in a position to actually write the tax code to suit its own needs -- so of course they can easily act within the law. They have a close collaboration with their friends in Washington DC, Albany, etc.. We do not.
The reason we do not have this access to our "leaders", is that over the past generation, we have come to want too much from "the government". It is our own fault that the government has gotton so big and inaccessible to common people.
The problem is the process.
To fix the problem we must get rid of the people at the core of the process.
Vote out every incumbant and get a clean start.
We may loose a few good ones and that is unfortunate. But overwhelmingly, we will unload out-of-touch carreer politicians and get in some people who are more in tune with the common folk.
That last sentence is spot on... angry populist movements get fired up AGAINST things.
The New York Police representative's statement that overtime has been employed because they are understaffed is an extreme representation. While more police presence may be required due to the protests, the past 3 weeks there has been gross overstaffing of police around the Wall Street area. I work near Wall St. at Hanover Square and every day I see dozens of idle cops collecting time and a half to watch commuters walk to work....
If Eric Cantor and his cronies think that the "Wall Street Protest" is nothing but a MOB and messy gatherings, he is living in the foolish world. He should thank his God that these hundreds and thousands of people who have joined this protest around the Nation are still behaving civilized way, have not damaged to any property or have done any harm to anyone, and did not go to teach lesson to the individual politician but if Cantor and his groups will come out openly against them and give them wrong label, some of them will surely behaved differently taking march and protests and hunger strikes to their homes and offices and demand time bound programs to restore America 's reputation, prestige and economical stability by cutting trillion dollar tax loot to the millionaires by Bush, stopping wars at once and closing all loop holes to the large corporations, banks and wall street goons. Cair &Cantor has not to wait too long, when the protesters will start demonstrating on his home and office very soon.If less fortunate Arabs can revolt against their dictators and kings, why American cannot raise their voice to their politicians who have sold their souls to the millionaires and billionaires.
I am part of the 99% that believes that the OWS people are misguided and ignorant of the American Dream. America is the land or "risk / reward". Risk nothing and live a mediocre life. I took advantage of every opportunity that I could uncover and am on the precipice of greatness. I hope to become part of a 1% that does not have to pay 70% of the countries taxes. Some of you slobs need to pay your dues. Take a risk.
I concur with the sentiment that neither political party is truly interested in (or capable of) making things better for the 99%... The people have to do something more basic to get drastic changes started. These protests are a good start; they are about something bigger -- they are about bringing back basic humanity and decency into our society.
I encourage everyone to check out the recent interview Charlie Rose did with Jeffrey Sachs, which has helped me better understand the mess we are in.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/11925
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