For the past three days, a lively, determined protest against corporate and Wall Street power has been unfolding around the financial district in lower Manhattan. After starting on Saturday with a large rally that numbered many thousands, the demonstration will continue indefinitely as several hundred protesters occupy nearby sidewalks, entrances to buildings and parks in an attempt to disrupt normal business.
Reuters:
Protesters complaining about the unchecked power of the financial industry staged noisy demonstrations that slowed pedestrian traffic on Wall Street for a third day on Monday, vowing to continue "for as long as it takes" to achieve vague demands.
The protests were organized by a different set of groups than the more typical, and more establishment, set of progressive organizations that worked on the August jobs protests:
The protests, dubbed Occupy Wall Street, were organized through Twitter, the magazine web site Adbusters and under the banner of "Anonymous" at various sites online, and were planned for several other cities around the world we well.
Daily Kos community members such as UnaSpenser, Tay and TBug have extensively chronicled the events and ways to get involved. You should check out what they have written.
What follows is a video and a series of pictures of the protest. When you see them, rather than wringing your hands about the perceived lack of media coverage of left-wing protests such as these relative to tea party events, please keep two points in mind:
- This protest actually is getting a lot of media, as a glance at Google News will quickly indicate.
- The more you keep talking about an event, the more likely it is to receive even more media coverage. So if this is something you support, just keep blogging, tweeting and talking about it anywhere you can.
Left-wing protests are getting some notice, and pushing to make them bigger feels better than complaining about being ignored:
