Visual source: Newseum
Dana Milbank:
For the struggling president, the nascent [OWS] movement offers a chance at salvation, the opportunity to excite liberals with the sort of populist energy that has fueled the Tea Party for two years. But, as liberal leaders already know, the young movement must be careful to avoid Obama’s embrace: He decimated the progressive cause once, and he would do it again if given the chance...
But the most striking thing about the progressives’ gathering this week was how little Obama was mentioned, and how dismissive the few mentions were. When one woman at the convention attempted to ignite Obama’s trademark “fired up!” cheer, only a few people responded with the usual answer, “ready to go!” The attempt quickly died.
This isn't about Obama. Nor is it an artifical astroturf election ploy. Really.
Gail Collins:
The demonstrators have been in Zuccotti Park, a few blocks from the actual Wall Street, since Sept. 17, a small core group of a couple hundred that can swell to thousands when it’s time for a protest march.
It’s not clear that the world would ever have noticed them had it not been for the New York Police Department, whose officers keep getting caught doing ill-advised-but-photogenic things like shooting helpless women in the face with pepper spray. As Jim Dwyer pointed out last week in his column in The Times, it does make you reflect on the fact that these are the same guys who now boast that they’ve got the weaponry to shoot down aircraft in the name of antiterrorism.
Thomas Mann:
"Mostly rabble-rousers with too much time on their hands” might actually apply better to the tea party. Still much too early to say whether Occupy Wall Street will develop into a serious social movement but on its face it is no less legitimate than the tea party as an expression of discontent with the current state of affairs. Its diagnosis of the problem and prescription for solving it offers a stark alternative to that of the tea party. That’s much needed and good for the body politic.
David Bossie (Citizens United):
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement is just a bunch of trust-fund babies, college students skipping class, and ex-hippies who are taking their cues from the likes of George Soros, Michael Moore, and other billionaires and millionaires who want to kill capitalism. To call “Occupy Wall Street” a left-wing tea party is an oxymoron. The tea party is a grassroots movement that was founded in local communities around America to protest the destructive policies of the Obama administration. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement was conceived at the Obama campaign headquarters to gin up the youth vote and liberals and has now been joined by radical left-wing AstroTurf groups like Moveon.org and Big Labor.
I wonder how many of the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd knows that President Obama took more Wall Street money than John McCain did in the 2008 campaign?
Read the above for a classic example of propaganda. If you took a drink for every lie, you'd quickly be suffering from alcohol poisoning.
David S. Meyer:
Most people take to protest only when they believe it is their best hope for getting what they want. It doesn’t have to be extremely promising, just more likely to work than anything else. Nearly three years into President Obama’s term, the Occupiers have little reason to believe that their government is going to respond to their concerns. Washington seems stalemated, and the protesters’ priorities — addressing economic insecurity and political inequality — aren’t high on the agenda. So they’ve gone to Zuccotti Parkin Lower Manhattan, camped out in front of Los Angeles City Hall and marched in Washington’s Freedom Plaza.
They are there with or without cameras (no guaranteee - the protest were not organized by Fox.)
Bill McKibben:
Something fresh is afoot in this country, drawing its inspiration from the Arab Spring. It’s what Van Jones, head of Rebuild the Dream, has taken to calling “the American Autumn.” Yes, that Van Jones, the one the White House unceremoniously dumped overboard after Glenn Beck (preposterously) called him a communist. Now Jones is back on stage — and so is a strain of American populism that many have been waiting to see emerge. No one knows if it will turn into political action, à la the Tea Party, or morph into something altogether new. But the energy is undeniable — even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said he understood the anger of Wall Street protesters.