Some of the progressive blogs are lauding the protests against Wall Street as if these protests were an uprising of the “PEOPLE” against the rich, and a copy of the heroism of the Arab Spring.
Now, I am aghast at the Wall Street shenanigans as much as the next person, but when the president and his men are deeply enmeshed in that culture of a new world financial order, I doubt they will listen to me.
And exactly what is the alternative? I mean, yes, I’ve read Chomsky et al but it seems that their anti capitalistic rhetoric didn’t exactly work when it was put into practice. Zimbabwe, North Korea, Venezuela and pre capitalistic China were not exactly places of peace and prosperity, whereas South Korea, Malaysia, South Africa and Brazil are getting out of poverty the capitalistic way.
Luckily you live in a free system where you won’t “disappear” for protesting.
On the other hand, I am not sure what you and these 700 clowns are going to do, beside make folks wonder why there are so few of them.
Come on now: Liberals used to be able to get crowds of thousands to protest anything in the good old days. What’s wrong with our young people?
Well, I shouldn’t say only 700: The crowd swelled to a full 2000 after a rock group was supposed to show up….and didn’t.
“I actually think it’s kind of ridiculous,” said a dreadlocked 20-year-old who identified himself as Pigpen. “The only reason 500 people are here is because they think Radiohead is going to be here.”
Organizers were red-faced.
They were even more redfaced when they picketed the wrong office.
A crowd of more than 2,000 people marched up Broadway, past a closed City Hall Park, under the arch of the Municipal Building and massed outside what some mistakenly thought was NYPD headquarters.
But most of the chanting horde plopped down in front of One St. Andrew’s Plaza, which houses the U.S. Attorney’s Office, not the NYPD.
So what’s the next step? Block ordinary folks from getting home, of course. No, not the tunnels near Wall Street, but the Brooklyn Bridge, near China Town. I guess it’s a bit closer to Wall Street than the George Washington Bridge, but stopping the traffic a couple hours for middle class and working folks is not the way to win friends and influence people.
And this protester should have cut her mouth shut.
Erin Larkins, a graduate student at Columbia University who says she and her boyfriend have $130,000 combined in student loan debt, was among the thousands of protesters on the bridge. She said a friend persuaded her to join the march and she’s glad she did.
“I don’t think we’re asking for much, just to wake up every morning not worrying whether we can pay the rent, or whether our next meal will be rice and beans again,”
She owes $130 000 dollars but “isn’t asking for much”? Exactly how much money does she think “much” is?
Presumably she never heard the expression “There is no such thing as a free lunch”.
Except of course she already not only has had a free lunch but the equivalent of a free education at someone else’s expense. Who wants to bet she and her boyfriend will default in paying back the loans, and feel justified in doing so because it’s “rich folks” money (read retirement savings from hardworking old folks like us).
Well, honey, instead of “asking” for a free lunch, I can think of some alternatives.
Maybe she should have gone to a cheaper University than Colombia, where a year of graduate work will cost $32,000.
My grandchildren and I attended states universities where tuition was lower, and we worked part time to supplement our fees.
My son earned tuition money from Americorps.
I paid back part of my tuition loans by working in needy areas, my son in law got his masters degree thanks to the US Navy, and my husband earned his tuition from his veterans benefits.
Nah. Working a couple years building homes in Appalachia like my son might ruin her manicure, and she probably never even met someone who was in the military (“not one of us”).
Or maybe she should not have gone to graduate school but found a job instead, and gone to graduate school at night.
A third option, of course, is to marry her boyfriend and then flip coins to see which one quits to go to work and which one finishes the degree first.Nah, forget it. That would take hard work and maturity, neither of which seems to be on display.
Talk is cheap. It’s easy to “demonstrate” against problems, but harder to find a solution.
I have no solution to the world’s economic problems, but I suspect you have even less idea of how the world economic system works, let alone a suggestion on how to fix it.
But if you are a spoiled rich kid with an attitude and a handy IPad that the world “owes” you something, that doesn’t matter. You want to “do something”, and protesting with the possibility of a RadioHead concert is a lot more fun that working in a homeless shelter or tutoring kids after school.
Oh, I’m so impressed (not).
Could an old lady give you some advice?
Keep your mouth shut and stop dissing the hard working cops. They weren’t the ones who bilked billions from Wall street.
Unlike you, they work hard for their money, and often risk their lives to keep the city streets safe for your benefit.
You know, even when we older hardworking and law abiding folks hear of the “innocent” being peppersprayed, we are cynical about it. You have been trying to provoke a reaction for days, and now that you have provoked an incident trying to block ordinary folks from using a bridge to get home after work, you have your headlines and are happy.
Maybe Powerline is right in saying ” the days are gone when a policeman can wantonly assault protesters, no matter how obnoxious they may be”, but some of us figure that after days of verbal insults and harssment trying to start violence and blocking traffic etc. in order to get a headline, that it is a miracle that it took this long for someone to snap.
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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines.
22 users commented in " Rich Kids Protesting Wall Street "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHi Nancy,
I read what you wrote above. I didn’t just say that I have 130K in debt, and I wasn’t talking about it being covered. I found a program at Columbia that I loved and I knew it would cost more. Both of us went to state schools for undergrad and paid our way as best we could, both of us with full time jobs. We haven’t defaulted on any loans and don’t intend to. There were many paragraphs in the email I wrote to the AP between “I have 130K in debt” and “I’m not expecting much” – namely that although my boyfriend and I have full time jobs, we can’t pay our bills. That was it. No handouts. I fully intend to pay down every cent of my loan debt, and never expected that my government would “bail me out” from that responsibility. I just feel that if you work hard, you should be able to pay your bills (and no, not the fancy ones – we don’t have cable, we don’t go out to dinner). Does this clarify at all? Thanks and have a great day, Erin Larkins
Additionally,I just have to say that many men in my family served in the military and I have a great amount of respect for our troops. Sorry, my mom found your post and it upset her. I just wanted to put this out there.
You are very cynical. All movemments start slowly and build. At least some folks are starting to speak out.
Some of your points are well-taken, particularly regarding the use of student loans (why not choose a cheaper college and pay back your own debt?), but you’re implication that the pepperspray incident happened BECAUSE of the Brooklyn Bridge incident, rather than a few days before when protesters were peacefully marching is misleading and kind of ruins the rest of your opinion piece.
Your reasoning is pretty sound, but your assumption that these are a bunch of rich kids is unfounded. 2 people with a 130,000 of student loan debt doesn’t sound like a pair of rich kids to me. I haven’t heard that lady say anything about not repaying the loans or about being entitled to anything. It sounds like people who banked on an education as a long term investment that was going to pay off in an economy that no longer exists. How would you feel if you bought a house and woke up to discover that the electric, water and sewer and garbage collection services were no longer there because the commisioner embezzled from the municiple bonds and skpped town with the cash? You may consider yourself morally obliged to pay your mortgage for as long as you can but being screwed out of your future is no occasion to shut up. On Monday morning, a 30-foot stretched towncar is going to drop off a hedgefund manager in a 2000 dollar suit at the lobby of a lower Manhattan smoked glass skyscraper where he will disappear from view and begin thinking, “how can I sell 10 thousand defaulted subprime loans as a triple-A security and make a million dollars when the inevitable happens” The only time he’s going to be reminded that his actions will have consequences beyond his own bottom line is when his driver pulls up to the curb. If he opens the door on a crowd of angry broke people maybe he’ll respect his investors a little more. If people shut up and stay home, he goes up the express elevator, thinking to himself that dergegulation, union-busting and mark-to-market accounting are good because he sees no evidence to the contrary. If you don’t think shrinking veterans benefits and defunded aid programs are affected by the financial collapse of 2008, well, think some more.
Nancy,
You would probably like the slutwalk that took place the same day in New York. Really, when you went to school what did it cost? By the way, I rather like the way Norway, Sweden and other Northern European countries are solving their problems. Why didn’t you mention purely socialist countries like them in your list? Oh, I’m so impressed (not).
They’re not all rich kids. I don’t imagine you’ve deigned to go down there and gaze upon the protesters, who are of all ages and economic classes. Every American who can’t afford a lobbyist is affected by their lack of a voice in politics.
That isn’t to say that someone’s arguments ought to be ignored just because they’re a rich kid.
For shame.
At first in Tahrir and in Syria there were a couple of dozen protesters then couple of thousand and now tens of thousands. Same pattern always follows police brutality and financial slavery. This should be the beginning of the end for US capitalism, regardless of what these propagandists avoiding the event think. Their opinion will matter only after they themselves are overrun by protesters.
I just read your post and am left with very mixed feelings. I definitely hear your anger and though I confess that I don’t know the whole story about what exactly happened with the Brooklyn Bridge incident, I am leaning more toward your side, knowing that of course the protestors knew that they would be blocking traffic if they walked directly onto the road as opposed to the walkway… But I also believe that the police should have stopped them before they got as far as they did – when people are following one another in a huge crowd, it is difficult to know what is “going on” at the front of the line. There should not have been that many people arrested…
As far as your complaints about the “rich kids” seeking a handout, what made you think that this woman you spoke to was rich? I am a single 40 year old female who went back to school about 4 yrs ago for my Masters at NYU for Drama Therapy. I live alone, have lived alone for over 15 years and have worked two jobs to pay off my undergrad student loans – all myself. I am now in debt over $100K because of going back to grad school. I was unable to choose a “cheaper school” as you suggested because NYU is the only school that offers this major on the Eastern coast. There are many universities that offer degrees very unique and specialized, hence the reason many people return to grad school. I was forced to quit my full time job in order to complete the 2 yr program because I had to complete 2 unpaid internships as part of my clinical training. As a result I had to take out more money to compensate for my sky high NY rent – which is another story altogether. I’m curious to know what your solution to that problem would be – was I supposed to take an apartment in the middle of New Jersey and commute an hour and a half in addition to my 3 hr commute to one of my internships at a center for mothers and children who were victims of domestic abuse in Long Island?? I am now employed at a nursing home where I make $40K a year before taxes. After taxes, it’s about $31K. More than half of that amount goes to my rent so I am left with less than $15K to live off of – for bills, food, utilities and the insane amount of money I am expected to pay toward student loans each month: $390 for my private loans and $240 for my federal loans. The federal loan company does not take into account what my monthly rent is – nor do they care that I am also paying close to $400 toward my private loans. They base my amount on my yearly earnings alone. Nothing more. And the private loans could care less about what the government is requesting of me. That makes no sense at all!! How are they expecting me to live? It doesn’t work. I am tirelessly trying to meet these payments and am doing it – but barely. I had to decrease my monthly fed payment and now I’m in “default”. This is no way to live. I am not a “rich kid” simply because I chose NYU and was fortunate enough to be accepted into the competitive program – I am the first member of my blue collar family to complete a Bachelor’s degree, let alone a Masters. I know what it’s like to work hard for what I have but enough is enough – NYU should not have charged so much money for their tuition. The federal government should have offered more in grants/financial aid. They also should not charge so much interest on my loans. The only incentive is that if I work full time in a non-profit “approved” organization for 10 years, my federal loans will be forgiven. I don’t want to work full time for 10 years. I’m 40 yrs old right now – my goal is to open a private practice where I will specialize in providing counseling services for children and adolescents and at risk youth. What’s more -there are VERY limited job opportunities available for creative arts therapists in the “federally approved” non-profit industry.
One of the purposes of this protest is based on the unfairness of what has happened in this country. Why did the government bail out these huge banks when the real “rich people” of which you should have been speaking about in your post were not struggling like those of us who are just trying our best to get ahead – and help others in the long run with the degrees we’ve worked hard to obtain. I have no shame in asking for mercy here. I received an education to help others, not to swindle people. But I can barely get by because of what this education has cost me.
What a mish-mash of misinformation, if not disinformation. Not only is the timeline backwards on the bridge and pepperspray incident, but the numbers of the protesters she cites seem to be pulled from random sources.
The 700 she cites is the number of people arrested on the bridge, out of the ~3,000 who marched. That’s the biggest number that’s been reported in conjunction with the arrests. Or possibly he grabbed the number of uniformed pilots who joined the protest as members of the ALPA (a union protesting contract shenanigans foisted upon them by the United/Continental merger). Either way, at no point since the protest began have there been as few as 700 protesters in total.
Obviously not every single person involved in the protest joined the march that ended on the Brooklyn Bridge, so we’re left with the 2,000-3,000 who marched plus those who remained in the area around the park. The exact number? No one knows, because no one with the resources to provide an accurate count seems willing to look at it. The mainstream media even went so far as to pretend that it’s a coincidence that 700 pilots showed up to protest on Wall Street at the same time these other people were, as if this is the natural venue for pilots to demonstrate against the airlines, just so they could hold them up as a contrast of real, professional working people engaged in meaningful protest, not like those shiftless hippies.
And the protester he quotes talking about what she wants? Please tell me, Mr. Oh-So-Informed Blogger, at which point she says that $130,000 isn’t that much. She says she wants:
“I don’t think we’re asking for much, just to wake up every morning not worrying whether we can pay the rent, or whether our next meal will be rice and beans again.”
That’s what she says shouldn’t be too much to ask for. A job. A future. An economic outlook with any hope or promise for her and people like her.
People pulled this same B.S. during Obama’s election campaigns when someone said they didn’t want to have to worry about their house payments or every time they have to fill up their tank.
“Oh-ho, you lazy entitled morons! You want Obama to give you a house and free gas!”
No. English is the first language of this country, so why can’t this “old lady” and people like her seem to read or comprehend it? Not wanting to live in a world where we have to -dread- our economic future isn’t the same as wanting someone else to take care of it for us.
Telling people to go out there and get a job means you’re living in an alternate reality where there are jobs to go get. McDonalds got 20 people for every position they advertised on their national hiring day. Corporations, the “job creators”, pocket 88% of every new dollar they get and put 1% to wages, which means for every million of tax-payer funded largesse they get, they’re $880,000 richer and have $10,000 to spend on a new hire.
And yet they’re called the “job creators”. We’re told the “market” will take care of us if we get the government out of its way. BS. The market doesn’t create jobs, it creates profits, and every job the market eliminates is a double bonus. They save money on the job they eliminated and they save again on every person they hire thereafter, because the supply of warm bodies who need jobs… people who need food, a roof over their heads, and a way of getting to and from work… has increased by 1 while the supply of jobs has gone down by 1.
You’ve already reached the end game, Ms. Reyes. You’re retired. So you have no idea how the current job market works and no need to learn. But it’s supply and demand. The corporations have figured out that by creating a permanent army of unemployed and underemployed workers… skilled or unskilled… they can get everything they need and they can get it for cheap.
This is the reality that’s being protested. A reality where people can go to school and wrack up debts of $130,000, or even just $30,000 or $13,000 and then never be able to pay it off because there are 10 or 20 people fighting for every job that opens up. A world where being experienced and highly trained and having seniority gets you fired because it means you’re valuable, and “valuable” means “expensive.”
Think about how hard you worked to get where you were at the top of your career, Ms. Reyes. Now imagine being told that there’s no money to pay for the skills of someone like yourself, they’re going to go with an intern who will do your job and the job of another person. And they say this to you while they’re accepting a rebate that you paid for with your taxes, and pocketing the highest profits they’ve ever seen.
And at the same time, they tell you that the pension you earned… that you paid into… is gone, that you don’t deserve it, that it’s an “entitlement”.
That’s what’s being protested.
Learn the truth before you fix your mouth to speak about a situation, or nothing but ignorance will fall out of it.
Fantastic article, brings up a lot of good points.
Lot’s of hard-working middle class folks were laid off from Wall St. because these greedy corporations off-shored their computer work to India. They are also illegaly importing 85,000 foreigners yearly on H1B visas issued by the U.S. Dept. of Labor, besides about 200,000 renewals, to steal away the remaining jobs from unemployed American citizens.
I was discussing the bridge incident pepper spray, ,which was in our local news here in the Philippines and on the front of Drudge.
The Powerline quote about the rouge incident by one police supervisor was just to show that such incidents will be lamented even on right wing blogs. This incident was not covered in our papers.
My point was that the protest wasn’t by poor people but by a small number of elites, including those who are milking the system.
The only other protester I saw quoted was by a school teacher, who had a job. Yet if this was a real grass roots protest, a thousand teachers/truckdrivers/civil servants would have been out in force. Despite their unions “supporting” the protest, they stayed home. Also absent: people of colour.
So until the protesters include those laid off, I see this as political theatre trying to egg the police into violence, and there is a class element in this that is being ignored by the press.
At least here in the Philippines when our left protests, the farmers and workers protest, not graduate students.
Nancy Reyes, you are part of the problem. Your drivel only serves to illustrate exactly what is wrong. You are just a mouthpiece for the very people who choose to divide Americans. Maybe you have more in common with the 1% of Americans than the 99% but I doubt it. You need to wake up and face the fact that the American system is broken, irreparably broken. Unlike the Tea Party that was underwritten by corporations and the religious right, OWS is a grassroots movement in its most honest sense. Without the help of any large players, unions and the like, thousands marched in NYC, Boston, LA and all around the country. This is spontaneous, this is real and this is growing regardless of your opinion. Democracy isn’t so comfortable in a Fascist state.
I’m glade you are expressing your problems with the protest…but you are missing the point. You complaint the girls should pick a cheaper school. You are telling Americans to lower their standards. “Students attending graduate schools (2002) reported an additional $31,700 in average debt, an increase of 51 percent since 1997.” Now the average debt is $40,000 that is another 15% increase sense 1997. WOW. So that average debt of a college student from 1997 has increased 66%. I hope you see why that young “rich” student is protesting and so should you. Less people will go to school if they can’t pay…makes for stupider people/stupider Americans. You and me are poor and so is she, lets stick together and forge against them.
Well Nancy you have the right to your thoughts and so do the protesters.Isolating one instance as you described does not give an answer as to the protest growth movement.Worldwide people are fed up with the deceit of the financial world and the collapse of peoples living standards due to unemployment which is causing these housing losses.The corporate model of purchasing then running State run utilities and offices has proven to be a dismal failure as social structuring can`t be performed under a corporate model because of the Company/Investor relationship.A newer and better model has to be invented by Governments as the financial sector can`t be trusted to do this because the free market deregulation has failed badly.Corporations will outsource every job they can to maximize profits,they will move every industry to the cheapest place with the cheapest labour at the detriment of their host countries.Then they will stash their loot in tax havens like they Cayman Islands whilst paying the smallest amount of tax that they can.As Buffet said he paid 15% on 48.1 billion profit whilst his workers paid 33%.Wall Streets wheel has fallen off.
I worked my way through school. Everyone in my family has served in the armed forces since the 1800s when we immigrated from Ireland. I am not unemployed. I am not out of the country, on some island, sniping at people who are getting off their asses and doing something either. Frankly, this kind of mentality is exactly what perpetuates the downfall of great nations. If we allow ourselves to fall prey to the stagnant-minded elderly like this writer, we will all be doomed. Go back to your garden and leave the heavy lifting to the truly living, because you do noting but help to foster even more scorn in the minds of others.
Nacey, your generations behind us, you have no idea what this is about. There is no comparesent between the 1950’s and 2010. Your views and ideas are so old there is mold on them. It pains me to type this.
I think, as several of the articles note, the biggest problem with the protests is the lack of cohesive message. Some are anti-capitalists, as you state, but many are simply against the corporate power differential- tax loop holes, bonuses given with bail out money, and lack of accountability, while at the same time coming down hard on the unions and public workers as though frivolous government spending is all there is to blame on the economic crisis. I don’t think most of these protesters want to see capitalism disappear.
Here is a small subset of folks that I, personally, know have marched in these protests, which are occurring not just in NYC but elsewhere.
Obviously this is not a random sampling, but maybe it will give you a clearer vision of who’s out there:
an employee of the conservation planning dept of my city (went to state schools, paid off her loans)
a nurse, who, like you, paid off her loans working with the underserved
university professors, of various educational backgrounds
a teacher, and a parent, who went to a state school.
So, far, none of these people (with the possible exception of some of the university professors) are “rich kids” shirking responsibilities. And I don’t think a majority are. It does not seem that even the police, in all cases, are being “dissed.” Some, in fact, are quite sympathetic, especially in cases of union protests.
There are many, many people who are struggling to just make a living, serving underserved populations (try teachers in most public schools), who are working very hard. These people SHOULD be making a living where they don’t have to worry about loosing their house if a long-term illness occurs, who should be taxed less and paid more, and who are not. These are not people driving luxury cars, in big homes, or not making sacrifices- they drive one car with two jobs, scrimp with coupons to perhaps go out to dinner once a month, and camp for vacation. Some are educated individuals who depend on medicaid for their children’s health care because they are single parents or even two parent households where one person has been laid off for a long time, or both. Schools have been cut to the bone where teachers are buying all the supplies, there is no art, music or replacement of textbooks. This protest is about looking to corporate institutions to carry their fair share, rather than cracking down on those who are already heavily burdened.
I just wish the message was more cohesive, that there were actual bullet points of action.
dear Shocked:
Maybe my “generations behind us, you have no idea what this is about. There is no comparesent between the 1950’s and 2010”
But unlike you, I learned grammar in school and my grand daughter taught me how to use “spell check” on my computer.
Nope, no “comparesent” at all…
Nancy, Nancy, Nancy,
Lets see if I understand this or not. You and your family went to school on federal funds from tax money, which incidentally I help fund and my daughter had to get a loan.
I’m confused as to who is/was after the free lunch????
Brett Larkins
These posts are truly sad. Much like the “Wal-Martins” that go around the web.
100K for “Drama Therapy”? Because you liked it? I earn about the same and I really, really like Bentleys, buy me one. Janis Joplin said it best.
Wall St and banking are the most regulated industries in the country. Guess who writes the regulations? Former Goldman Sachs people working for the Admin. Why protest in NY, the problem is in DC?
The system is broken? No the system is administered by corrupt people for whom you voted. And you want more of this?
Do you really think Michael Moore, Rosanne, Warren Buffet,Andy Stern, and last but not least the collaborator George Soros, have your best interests at heart? If so I have a bridge to sell, after I get the pepper spray canisters removed.
Protesting Wall Street on Saturday? Dudes, no one is there, they are in East Hampton, take the train and go there, you might even get to see Mayor Mike.
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