Anti-Wall Street Movement Spreading By the Day

We could be seeing the start of a worldwide pandemic, meaning “an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across multiple continents, or even worldwide”. Throughout the country, from several dozen people in Jackson, Miss., to some 2,000 each in Pittsburgh and Chicago, the protest gained momentum.

 

The protesters at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement were planning a day of rest Sunday, a day after rallies across the globe drew thousands who marched and chanted and, in some cases, grew violent. In New York City, the group that insists on being leaderless had nothing on its agenda save its nightly assembly and one committee meeting. In the weeks that the protesters have occupied a park in lower Manhattan, Sundays have been used to recuperate.

 

In Chicago, about 175 people were arrested in the early hours after refusing to obey a police order to leave a park that closed at 11 p.m. They were in somewhat of a contrast to demonstrators elsewhere, who have taken care to follow laws in order to continue protesting. Still, the arrests were mostly peaceful, the Chicago Tribune reported.

 

Saturday, billed as "a global day of protest", demonstrators gathered in cities throughout the world to rally against what they see as corporate greed and Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis. In Rome, rioters hijacked a peaceful gathering and smashed windows, tore up sidewalks and torched vehicles. Repair costs were estimated at $1.4 million, the mayor said Sunday.

 

As many as 1,000 demonstrators also paraded to a Chase bank branch in New York, banging drums, blowing horns and carrying signs decrying corporate greed. A few went inside the bank to close their accounts, but the group didn’t stop other customers from getting inside or seek to blockade the business. Lily Paulina of Brooklyn said she was taking her money out because she was upset that JPMorgan Chase was making billions of dollars, while its customers struggled with bank fees and home foreclosures. "The Chase bank is making tons of money off of everyone, while people in the working class are fighting just to keep a living wage in their neighborhood," the 29-year-old United Auto Workers organizer said.

 

Overseas, tens of thousands nicknamed "The Indignant" marched in cities across Europe, as the protests that began in New York linked up with long-running demonstrations against government cost-cutting and failed financial policies in Europe. Protesters also turned out in Australia and Asia.

 

Just like the social revolutions that hit Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Israel and other countries, this economic protest will spin out of control very quickly. Directed by email postings, it is virtually impossible to stop it. It is in the nature of a “happening” instead of an armed uprising. What’s interesting is the outcome: will this cause a change in the global economy which is teetering anyway or will it just die from natural causes in the end? Difficult to predict.