September 17, 2011: Occupy Wall Street

September 17, 2011: The "Occupy Wall Street" demonstration began.

On February 2, Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist publication, called for "A Million Man March on Wall Street," intending it as a peaceful occupation of Wall Street, the street in Lower Manhattan that is home to the New York Stock Exchange, making the Street itself a metaphor for American capitalism. The idea was to protest corporate influence on democracy, an increasing disparity in wealth, and a lack of legal consequences for the perpetrators of corporate malfeasance.

The original location planned was One Chase Manhattan Plaza, home of the world's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, formed by the 2000 merger of J.P. Morgan & Co. and Chase Manhattan. That's at 28 Liberty Street, across the street from the New York branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, and 2 blocks north of Wall Street. The backup location was the "Charging Bull" statue in Bowling Green, about a 5-minute walk from the Stock Exchange. The police found out about this, and fenced both off. So they went with Plan C: Zuccotti Park, in front of One Liberty Plaza, at Broadway and Liberty Street, 3 blocks north of Wall Street.

In response to the charge that the Republican Party's tax cuts were designed for the top 1 percent of richest Americans, the demonstrators came up with the slogan, "We are the 99 percent." The conservative response to the protests was to use some of the lines they used on the 1960s' Hippies. They were Communists, or Socialists. They were dirty. They should get a haircut, take a shower, and get a job. The liberal response was practically nonexistent.

That seemed to fit with what the Occupy movement thought about the liberals. The "populist left" in America seems to hate the Democratic Party as much as the "populist right" does. It's because they view the Democrats as their oppressors.

They view them this way because the evidence shows it to them. Think of the defining moments in America's populist left:

* The populist left identified with the Civil Rights Movement, even though their contributions to it, and especially those of a then-young Bernie Sanders, have been seriously overblown, and even lied about. In 1963, the civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama had police dogs and firehoses trained on them. At the time, the President was John F. Kennedy, a Democrat. And the Police Commissioner in Birmingham was Eugene "Bull" Connor, a Democrat.

* In 1968, the populist left protested at the Democratic National Convention, over the Vietnam War, and the Chicago Police beat them. At the time, the President was Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat. And the Mayor of Chicago was Richard J. Daley, a Democrat.

* It took a long time for there to be another defining moment for the populist left in America, but it came in 1999, in the protest of the World Trade Organization conference at Seattle. At the time, the President was a Democrat, Bill Clinton. 

* And the most recent major formative event for them, in 2011, was the Occupy Wall Street movement, where the police moved in and beat them. At the time, the President was a Democrat, Barack Obama.

It doesn't seem to have occurred the populist left that, in some of these cases, in some of these cases, it was a Republican Mayor or a Republican Governor sending the big boys in to beat them.

Nor does it seem to have occurred to them that, when it was a Democratic Mayor or Governor, it was a more conservative one than the liberal Democrat who was President at the time period.

Another thing that does not seem to have occurred to them is that, in each of these cases, the President of the United States didn't have a damn thing to do with the harm that was caused to them and their movement. 

But these people are so thick, all they saw was the top of the org chart: President, Democrat, liberal, not progressive, not one of us.

They either saw the President as ordering this (which he didn't), or approving of it, or standing by and letting it happen to them and doing nothing about it. 

That's why they see the Democrats as the greater enemy than the Republicans, even though it's not even close to being true. These people are just that thick.

The editors of Time magazine had named "The Protestor," as a generic representative of various causes, as their Person of the Year for 2011. Occupy Wall Street was a part of that. By the end of 2016, with Donald Trump in the White House, in large part because of many Occupiers helping Bernie Sanders undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign, a self-inflicted wound, the hope was over.

*

Over the next few days, shouting matches between demonstrators and uniformed police officers led to several arrests. On September 30, over 1,000 demonstrators marched on NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza, half a mile away. The next day, they marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, and over 700 people were arrested.

Eventually, they were met with counter-protestors, sort of. One guy in a suit held up a sign that said "GET A JOB." That was the whole point: Those people destroyed their jobs. Maybe the Occupy people were doing their cause more harm than good with the way they were demonstrating, but one thing nobody could seriously call them was "lazy."

On October 10, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that as long as the protesters operated under the law, they would not be arrested. Three days later, he contradicted this, saying that Zuccotti Park had to be cleared so it could be cleaned. The protestors refused to leave.

The park cleaning was continually delayed, until November 14. At 1:00 AM on November 15, the police cleared the park. On that occasion, they would return, but the momentum was lost.

Result? Within a year, President Barack Obama won an overwhelming victory against his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, a former Governor of Massachusetts, a predatory businessman who called himself "severely conservative." Four years after that, an even more corrupt businessman, Donald Trump, took the Presidency, in part due to the resentment of rich people against the demonstrators, and of "Heartland" America against "coastal elites." Four years after that, Trump got his ass kicked by Joe Biden, who won in large part because, like the Occupy movement, he made a big deal of showing empathy.

And on the 10th Anniversary of the initial demonstration, income inequality has gotten worse. Obama wasn't able to do much about it. Trump refused to. Biden? We shall see.

*

September 17, 2011 was a Saturday. College football? Number 1 Oklahoma beat Number 5 Florida State, at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, no less, 23-13. Alabama, then Number 2 but ending up as the National Champions, beat North Texas, 41-0 at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa.

Notre Dame, unranked, beat Number 15 Michigan State, 31-13 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. Here in New Jersey, Rutgers had the week off.

And a full slate of Major League Baseball games was played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Toronto Bluey Jays, 7-6 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Alex Rodriguez and Curtis Granderson hit home runs. Bartolo Colon allowed 6 runs in the 1st 4 innings, but the bullpen allowed just 1 baserunner thereafter, and reliever Aaron Laffey got the win.

* The New York Mets beat the Atlanta Braves, 1-0 at Turner Field in Atlanta. Tim Hudson allowed 4 hits over 8 innings, with Craig Kimbrel completing the shutout.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-2 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Los Angeles Angels, 6-2 at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

* The Florida Marlins beat the Washington Nationals, 4-1 at Nationals Park in Washington. Donnie Murphy hit a home run in the top of the 13th inning.

* The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. This was in the middle of a massive collapse that saw the Sox go from 1st place on Labor day to out of the Playoffs completed, with the Yankees winning the Division and the Rays the AL Wild Card.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 10-1 at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Houston Astros, 2-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Minnesota Twins, 10-4 at Target Field in Minneapolis.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Chicago White Sox, 10-3 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Colorado Rockies, 6-5 at Coors Field in Denver.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 3-1 at Petco Park in San Diego.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-3 at the Oakland Coliseum (then named the O.co Coliseum).

* And the Texas Rangers beat the Seattle Mariners, 7-6 in 10 innings at Safeco Field (now T-Mobile Park) in Seattle.

Also, Arsenal lost to Blackburn Rovers, 4-3 at Ewood Park in Blackburn, Lancashire.