Wall Street Demonstrators "Reflect Opinion of Most Americans"

It has been more than a month and a half since of the occupation of Zucotti Park. Since Oct. 5, there have been growing protests throughout the world. There are protesters camped out in Geneva, Switzerland.

Despite the lack of a cohesive structure and a formal list of demands, this spontaneous outbreak of protests is sparking hundreds of other similar experiments beyond Wall Street. Initially underestimated by the American political right, the New York protesters’ “political ideology” has matured into a movement with sufficient potential to somewhat alter the ideological discourse in American society.

Unable to imagine the possible impact when they began the occupation of Zucotti Park on Sept. 17, the demonstrators in the heart of Wall Street have contributed in recent months to deepen the exposure of a historic North American fallacy, which had worked relatively well for both parties — Republican and Democratic — until now. The fallacy assures that capitalism is intrinsically “healthy” (or “A-OK” in everyday language) and is generally capable of self-correcting during times of crisis, which assures its continuation in the name of validation of the American dream.

With a good dose of political naivety, which their critics denounce as weakness, the Wall Street occupiers have set out to expose the fallacy, while at the same time, aggressively denouncing the complicity of legislators, officials and directors of both parties who, during the last few decades, have accepted and promoted the enormous gap between the richest “1 percent” and the remaining “99 percent.”

The slogan coined by the Nobel [Memorial] Prize winning economist, Joseph Stigliz, stated that the richest 1 percent of the country controls 40 percent of the national wealth. This disparity was facilitated by deregulation policies and was extremely harmful for the less privileged social sectors.

After almost 45 days of protest on Wall Street, the essential question is this: What is the future of this movement? Where is it headed? Even its own protagonists, many of them young, displaced and unemployed because of the crisis, without a home or health [care] insurance, prefer not to speculate about the next steps.

Increasingly alert to the dangers that any institutionalization of the movement’s moral authority or that any unforeseen, almost prophetic vision can lead it, the majority of the occupants and their counterparts in cities around the world prefer to continue multiplying the support networks so that the debate expands and intensifies.

Without a significant critical mass of awareness and protest, they argue, the task of capturing the imagination of other outraged citizens throughout the world is very difficult. So there it is, for the time being, the essential task: to keep resisting in Zucotti Park so that their message reverberates as strongly as possible.

Both sympathizers and critics speculate that the first cold and snow will literally freeze the New York protesters’ passion. It is possible.

But it is also possible that their supporting counterparts in many other places will be able to sustain the continuation of the movement. And even if this doesn’t occur, the impact of the protesters is already irreversible. More and more people are showing that they indentify with the creative and peaceful protest. A New York Times poll published on Oct. 26 seems to confirm it: Half of the interviewees believe that the main concern of the Wall Street protesters “generally reflects the opinion of most Americans.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, hundreds of occupations have been maintained since World Day on Oct. 15, which mobilized hundreds of thousands of people in almost 100 cities in 82 countries.

One of the most symbolic protests, by angry Swiss youth, has maintained the — increasingly popular — occupation in Bastions Park, Geneva, headquarters of the major United Nations Institutions.