70 Students Head to Wall Street As Occupation Continues

, by Zoe Broad, Staff Writer

Wesleyan’s presence at Occupy Wall Street continues to grow–over 70 Wesleyan students boarded a University-funded bus to New York City this past weekend. While six University students have been arrested at Occupy Wall Street Protests over the past two weekends, no students were arrested on Saturday’s trip.

Claire Dougherty, ’13, described Saturday’s event as “quieter” than the previous weekend’s march. Protesters departed from Occupy Wall Street’s encampment at Zuccotti Park and headed to Washington Square, where a meeting of the movement’s governing body, the General Assembly, was convened.

“I think the point was to take the movement out of Zuccotti Park and to expose its infrastructure,” Dougherty said.

The meeting was held in the movement’s typical “human microphone” style, which functions on a call-and-response basis, with the intent that all protesters participate in the decision-making protest. This particular meeting consisted of an overview of the various committees that comprise Occupy Wall Street’s organizational structure.

Sean Winnik ’14 said he was impressed by the structure of the movement.

“It’s way more organized than people think,” he said. “There are all these working groups that deal with food, media, press, legal education, all kinds of things. They even provided food and pillows and blankets.”

On Friday, President Michael Roth expressed his support for the students’ initiative and spirit.

“Wesleyan students have a tradition of engaging in the issues of the day,” he said. “Certainly, the dramatic increase in inequality in this country over the past few decades has aroused the concern, anger, and frustration of thousands, if not millions, of Americans. I’m proud of our Wesleyan students who want to make their voices heard in peaceful protest against an economic situation that is increasingly untenable for most Americans.”

The Student Budget Committee of the Wesleyan Student Assembly approved funding for the bus for the University chapter of the movement, Occupy Wesleyan.

Manon Lefevre ’14 attended the Occupy protest for the first time three weeks ago, when the movement was in its initial phases. She said she was impressed by how much the movement, which has inspired similar protests in over 70 cities, has grown since her last visit to the park.

“It’s changed so drastically,” Lefevre said. “This small occupation has turned into this huge movement. Some of the marches have tens of thousands of people now.”

Winnik said he headed to New York because he feels that the financial system needs to change.

“I decided that it’s my life, and I should go do it,” he said. “I could have sat back but I decided I needed to support these people and their discontent with the inequality of wealth. I think that the super rich should be taxed way more than they currently are, and that corporations should be forced out of politics as much as possible. That’s what I stand for.”

Winnik and Lefevre both said they hope to return to New York in the near future to support the Occupy Wall Street effort.

“I feel like we accomplished something,” Winnik said. “There’s more conversation, and hopefully now politicians and the media will start noticing and have to play to this new and vocal population.”

Lefevre expressed hope that the media would continue covering the movement.

“Now that the mainstream media has started to write about the movement, everyone knows about it,” she said. “My hope is that the movement will gain political standing and that we can use the force behind the movement to have some kind of influence politically. It’s not looking like it’s going to back down, and I’m excited to see what happens as the months go on.”

 

 

  • Aubrey Clark

    The Wall Street protest has Americans struggling with just who these people are and what they represent. So, naturally, they are also questioning their true motivations. Many view OWS as a “spontaneous” extension of President Obama’s own war on the rich which seemed to have conveniently reached a crescendo just as the first protesters appeared on Wall Street.

    Others suspect, along with many of the conservative pundits, that it is a George Soros-backed conspiracy to stoke the anti-capitalist flames. And, there are others who see it as a ploy by the unions to build up their stature and their ranks.

    Due to the lack of a coherent message or rational demand out of this largely disjointed association of activists, Americans are having trouble accepting it as a pure, grass-roots movement with legitimate intentions. The circus like, and borderline violent atmosphere, as opposed to the serious Tea Party demeanor, raises skepticism that the Wall Street protest is nothing more than a ploy to distract the American public from the abyssmal job performance of the current administration.

    Having spread from Wall Street to main street it has garnered much more media attention, but the focus is as much on its unruliness and non-conformity as it is on any cogent message it is trying to convey.

    Whether it is real or not, opportunistic or sincere, it is bringing to a much brighter light what most Americans are already sensing – that the country is sinking further into economic distress and the last drops of optimism have evaporated into a dark cloud of uncertainty. That a small number of people, although misguided and largely misinformed, would stand up to fight for jobs and their share of influence over policy making decisions, doesn’t seem so extreme or radical to the average American.

    No one would argue with the need for more urgent action to turn the economy around. And, you won’t find too many people siding with the very institutions that, through their incessant hunger for profits, were willing accomplices to one of the worst financial calamities in our history.

    In fact, at their core, the grievances that form the basis of many of its demands are shared by people on both sides of the aisle. Even Tea Partiers find little to fault with OWS’s assault on crony capitalism and lack of accountability of Wall Street’s complicity in the financial crisis. They just believe that their anger is misdirected.

    The Tea Party see’s the government and its designs on the people’s liberties as the root of all evil, while the OWS crowd sees Wall Street, the banks and corporate America as the evil doers. While there is enough blame to spread around, the reality is that, by targeting the private sector, the protesters are biting the hands that feed them – literally.

    True, many of the protesters are recipients of government handouts – many are unemployed and a good number are receiving some sort of welfare. But, the government isn’t going to give them a job, and it certainly doesn’t produce the many products and technological innovations that they are now enjoying even as they mount their assault on capitalism. By disrupting the thousands of local businesses, the wall street protest are hurting the economies of dozens of cities which will only exacerbate the financial distress of their communities.

    If instead, they joined hands and marched, peacefully, on Washington and targeted the politicians who perpetuate the crony capitalism they abhor, and who have broken their promises to “fix” Wall Street and get the lobbyists out of the White House, and who, through their actions or in-actions, are suppressing the ability of businesses to generate more jobs, they will have a much greater impact.

    Instead of coalescing around an unpopular campaign (1% versus the 99%) to pit the rich against the middle class, it is only going to stoke the fires of the President and other leftist politicians who have been trying the same strategy without success. The people don’t want to hear it.

    The problem for OWS, is that, with no clear leadership and no clearly articulated message, they have been, and are still in the process of being hijacked by every activist group or whacko cause out there, and now the unions, the Marxists and the politicians are co-opting the movement for their own purposes.

    While all of the added support and encouragement from these groups has emboldened the movement and made its voice louder, all it has really done is made it more shrill and even more disjointed. Add to the soup, the infiltration by every homeless person, drug addict, ageless hippie and teen in search of a rave party, and you have a spectacle that few Americans can relate too, which is unfortunate.

    Everyone from the Fed Chairman to Warren Buffet, from Hollywood liberals to conservative talk show hosts, from Tea Partiers to the President, agree that the anger is real, the outrage is justified, and that Wall Street and the politicians need to be held to account for the malaise in which we find ourselves. But the assault on the private sector and capitalism is misguided.

    Capitalism has done nothing but create prosperity for all who actively participate in it. It’s the Washington politicians who, throughout history, have tried to control capitalism that have inflicted the damage. That’s where OWS needs to go right now. To comment or read more go here http://www.directbanc.com

  • Anonymous

    playwright larry myers iff to speak at dc after varvard ptown manhattam
    wsrote wall street square collection if plays

  • long live movement

  • long live movement

  • kerouac

    Playwright Larry Myers threatened to be called a whistleblower instigator was at the ill attended OCCUPY WAL STREeT ANNIVERSARY
    It was very Samuel Beckett on a bare kandscpe Zucoti Park –

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