Protest on Wall Street Spreads to Washington

Little by little, and without too much noise, the popular protest movement called “Occupy Wall Street” that emerged in New York three weeks ago is gaining momentum and expanding geographically. On Thursday the outrage arrived in the country’s capital, Washington D.C., where over a thousand people marched through Liberty Plaza, a symbolic square that emulates the Cairo plaza around which the Egyptian Revolution circulated.

Like in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, the protest has no defined objectives, but there is a determination to consolidate as a movement and to use civil disobedience to make grievances heard. In the United States money and politics are intertwined in a more clear and transparent way than anywhere else in the world. Multinational corporations and private interest groups finance election campaigns, intervene in legislation through pressure from their lobbies and sustain the administration through what is generally a give-and-take relationship. Though it has been this way for decades, the economic crisis and high unemployment rate appear to have revitalized the anti-corporate movement, consisting of everyone from traditional pacifist groups to ecologists, student groups and anarchists.

In an appearance at the White House, President Barack Obama attributed the movement to the “discontent” resulting from the difficult economic situation and bank policies.