We liked this article in this morning’s Herald so much, we’ll just repost the whole thing, despite the actual number for Friday night’s over-nighters being closer to 60.
BY Margery Eagan
OK, so only 40 or so mostly 20-somethings braved downpours Friday night to camp out in mud at Boston’s Federal Reserve Bank with Occupy Boston, our local branch of the nationwide group that’s protesting Wall Street greed.
And OK, among them was barefooted Charlie Hatch, 25, of Beverly, whose laminated “Ailments Helped by Seaweed Therapy” listed every disease known to man. And his own seaweed packets were available for purchase for $3.
Remember: The Tea Party started small and kooky, too.
The Occupy Boston crowd had reached nearly 1,000 Friday night. Neither the bad-weather defections nor Charlie’s seaweed passion made him wrong yesterday when he said he showed up because “nobody’s really in control and it’s scary for this country.” It’s particularly scary when you’re 20-something, up to your neck in college loans and unable to find a job.
Boston, in fact, had several modest protests this weekend. Twenty-four protesters were arrested peaceably Friday night at Bank of America’s front door. They were mad both about the bank’s foreclosures and its charging customers $5 per month to use bank-issued debit cards to get access to their own money.
Right to the City, a nationwide advocacy group for those with low incomes, planned a neighborhood sit-it yesterday at a Fowler Street home in Dorchester they claim was foreclosed on illegally by Deutsche Bank. Occupy Boston was planning an evening march to the Hynes convention center.
Something’s happening here and across the country, despite repeated dismissals of these protesters as the usual, disorganized and dizzy suspects in their “Arrest Bush and Cheney” T-shirts. They aren’t focused, critics say. They’re leaderless, tiny in numbers; a “bunch of spoiled brats” said the New York Daily News about the Occupy Wall Street protesters this week.
Well, I’ll take spoiled brats over the rest of us complacent sheep who just lie down and take what’s happened here: that is, a corrupt Wall Street that bankrupted millions of Americans, through no fault of their own. The financiers not only escape prosecution but get bailed out by taxpayers. Now these same financiers are underwriting campaigns of politicians who are supposed to fix this mess to benefit the public, not the high-rollers who stuff their campaign chests.
Without millions more spoiled brats — and their parents — fighting back, I doubt anything will change.
It was widely reported this week that the 12 congressional members of the deficit-fixing so-called super-committee have received at least $41 million in campaign contributions from financiers over the years. And super-committee members have more than two dozen current or former aides who have represented Wall Street as lobbyists.
The Herald reported just yesterday that one Republican consultant expects each side in the Scott Brown Senate race to spend close to $30 million.
I wonder: How much access and influence and even votes can all those millions buy?
Standing in the mud yesterday, Occupy Boston’s Nadeem Mazen, 28, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and Cambridge small businessman, said he got involved because money is corrupting our system in ways we’ve never, ever seen it do before. Nadeem Mazen is right.
Photos by Tullianography
