There seemed to be less of a turnout of Wall Street protesters this morning than they'd predicted, for what was promoted by them to be a huge march. 10,000 were supposed to amass, but only about a thousand actually showed up. Some quotes from a few of them follow:
One of then said, "If we don't have the park, we'll take the streets. If we can't take Wall Street, we'll take the side streets. We'll do it all day and all week."
Another claimed, "These are our streets! We are the 99 percent!" And then there was this quote from a guy named, John Tobacco, part of a group called the Wall St. Freedom Fighters, who said, "Enough is enough."
Rory Simpson, 29, describing himself as an itinerant activist made signs Wednesday evening. He said, ""We will get boots on the ground again.This is not over yet."
According to Fox News, "The group announced it would rally near the New York Stock Exchange, then fan out across Manhattan and head to subways, before gathering downtown and marching over the Brooklyn bridge. 'Resist austerity. Rebuild the economy. Reclaim our democracy,' the group wrote in a news release."
All of the preceding stuff got me to thinking about these folks again this morning. Because, frankly, after the first two or three days, I've ignored them since it's never been clear to me as to what their goal is, or what they're protesting about.
While I certainly understand that a huge number of them are deadbeats, who wanted to renege or otherwise dodge students loans they'd taken supposedly on their honor and good faith -the president's now letting them weasel out. Others are paid activists from unions, so I know why they're there too. And then there are groups of varying types of fascists, racists, gang-bangers and skinheads whose presence also makes sense, because they've nothing else to do. But, having listed all of the preceding, who are the others and what do they really want?
What made me think of the question of what the goal is, was the verbiage on their signs this morning. Because if they really do take over Wall Street, what will they do with it? Do they plan to run the exchanges by leaving their tents for the working day and running the massive electronic systems, making international stock trades, floating new issues and trading on the various floors?
And how about the guy whose sign reads "Enough is Enough"? He didn't go into much detail in his verbiage, so my query is: Enough of what? I could list a thousand things he might have had too much of, and might even agree with him if I knew what he meant. However, unfortunately for him, I doubt he knows what he's had enough of either.
Then there are the ones who shout "Resist austerity. Rebuild the economy. Reclaim our democracy," because I actually do understand their point. But someone ought to give them a map and some education because they're tents are in the wrong city. They should get themselves down to DC and protest outside the White House and Congress.
But if they actually do that, and want credit for their efforts they better do it quick. Because if the protesters don't get those bums out of government right now, the voting public's going to do it next November, once again doing the protester's work for them and carrying these cop-out, crying losers on their shoulders like always.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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