Featherstone: Protesting Wall St.'s riches

Liza Featherstone, a writer who lives in Brooklyn, joined an Occupy Wall Street march last week with her family, and plans to participate in a rally protesting police treatment of the occupiers on Friday evening.

Wall Street is under "occupation." A menacing word, perhaps, but in this case it means that hundreds of peaceful protesters -- from adolescents to self-identified "grannies" -- from all over the nation have been living in Zuccotti Park since Sept. 17. When not marching down Wall Street, they talk with one other and with the countless people walking through one of the busiest neighborhoods in the world, about why they are there.

Why indeed?

There's been much confusion on this point in the media. As the occupation began, New York Magazine complained that "what the protesters are asking for [was] far from clear." Gothamist laid on the snark: "Protestors Want to 'Occupy' Wall Street, Not Quite Sure Why." A Fox News pundit was indignant that the protesters said they were inspired by the Arab Spring protest: "Let's remember," he fumed, "people were killed in Egypt, Yemen and Syria for something." These editorialists seemed anxious to deny that this protest could possibly be about "something."

But is it really any mystery why people would be protesting against Wall Street? Bystanders at one march last week -- sympathizers, tourists, office workers taking a break -- looked pleased to see fellow citizens finally objecting to the kleptocracy that's been ruining so many lives.

Everyone knows why the occupiers are there. The financial markets helped drive the housing bubble, the collapse of which led to the Great Recession. Income inequality is at or near record levels. If the occupiers have a slogan, it's "We are the 99 percent" -- referring to the fact that the richest 1 percent of Americans has been gorging itself at the expense of nearly everyone else.

Most Americans endure staggering unemployment, foreclosed-on homes, worsening work conditions and languishing public services -- while our politicians coddle the biggest winners of our recklessly unregulated casino of a financial sector.

Like those who gathered in Tahrir Square, those occupying Wall Street are disgusted with the elite and its ownership of the political and economic system -- and they want a better future.

To be sure, the protesters themselves haven't always helped to clarify matters. While some have expressed their demands eloquently, others have made a mishmash of their public communications, with rantings about the Federal Reserve and writings that reflect often-conflicting belief systems, ranging from the populist to the socialist to the libertarian. At Zuccotti Park, a manifesto-in-progress is taped to the wall, and anyone may take a pen and add comments. Next to a list of woolly ideals, someone has scribbled an apt if misspelled critique: "Vauge."

But the long lists -- whether of fuzzy abstractions or eclectic specifics -- are beside the point. With so many out of work, and tax policies that treat rich people as if they were rare birds in need of environmental protection, the only surprise is that it's taken so long for the citizenry to take to these particular streets.

One young woman said last week that she had traveled from St. Louis. After spending four days watching a live feed of the event on the Internet, she said, "I just had to be here." Those who can't travel to New York are not merely tweeting (though they do a lot of that): Protesters in Chicago and Denver have set up their own occupations, while others are planned in many other cities.

Well-wishers from around the globe have ordered so much pizza for the Wall Street occupiers that they've had plenty of extra food to donate to the city's growing homeless population. Despite some rough police tactics -- one video shows an officer using pepper spray on peaceful female demonstrators -- the protesters plan to stay, and expect their movement to grow.

And grow it may. As one young man exhorted bystanders last week, "Are you a billionaire? No? Then you should join us."

"Vauge"? Perhaps, but it's a good start.