Executive Zombies Walk in New York

The demonstrations in the New York financial district have spread to other cities, from Los Angeles to Maine. The millionaire George Soros has said he understands the protesters’ pain.

Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and Maine joined the rage of the protesters in New York, who camp at the heart of the stock exchange in Manhattan, where they prove that they do not plan to give up in their claims, in spite of the mass detentions by the police during the weekend. The creativity of the Chilean students — materialized in the choreography of “Thriller,” Michael Jackson’s success in the 1980s — has infected protesters, who chanted to protest the American economy. That is why yesterday they took to the streets of New York again, on the way to the City Council. This time they did so as zombie businessmen. The idea of the movement “Occupy Wall Street” was to walk while eating Monopoly dollars, with their faces painted white and their lips stained with blood, welcoming the exchange brokers and financiers who were going to work, an act that reflects the bankers’ actions.

The protesters seek a way to protest the brutality of the New York police, who arrested 700 members of the movement that blocked off the Brooklyn Bridge last Saturday. Protesters, who pronounce themselves against the greed of the banks and against social inequity, are increasingly organized: They keep their laptops turned on while camping on Wall Street, implying that they intend to stay there for a long time. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement — encouraging the occupation of the New York Stock Exchange — does not have a leader or a specifically defined purpose but has managed to attract enough attention to win supporters and to expand throughout the country, stated the BBC.

The emergence of George Soros in this issue took everyone by surprise. He says that he understands the frustration that has led people in New York to demonstrate against Wall Street and he understands that those protests are spreading elsewhere in the United States. “Actually, I can understand their sentiment,” Soros told the press at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. He appeared in public to show the support of his foundation to several humanitarian projects and to promote the continuity of the Millennium Development Goals in several places in Africa. The Hungarian investor pointed out that he understands the rage that has pushed thousands of demonstrators to protest against what they call the greed of Wall Street, since there are many people that are having a bad time because of the measures applied by banks.

Soros said that there are a lot of small entrepreneurs that have seen how their credit card interest rates have increased during the present crisis. Many of those entrepreneurs depended on personal credit to keep their firms going, he said, and “an awful lot of them actually were put out of business.” Soros pointed out that, in turn, he can “understand” the demonstrations, especially those against the financial system. He also said that the population has seen how banks were actually helped in this current crisis, entities that have obtained benefits and extraordinary down payments. The investor explained that the reason behind these protests is precisely due to the contrast of those two realities.

Van Jones, former environmental adviser to President Barack Obama, added to Soros’s opinions on the shaky present that the U.S. is currently going through. He called on progressive U.S. activists to “steal” the tea party strategy to recover the scene that the ultraconservative movement has conquered in the last two years. “We have been on a one-sided offensive in this country where the worst people in America with the worst ideas have dominated the discussion,” said the Democratic leader at the Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington, D.C., which lasted for three days.

“I am not mad at them. I am not mad at the tea party. I am not mad at them for being so loud. I am mad at us for being so quiet,” he said. “You are going to see an American Fall, an American Autumn, just like we saw the Arab Spring,” declared the environmentalist.