Standing amid 100 tents crammed on a small lawn on the Los Angeles City Hall grounds, Clark Davis is asked a simple question about the 200 or so people who have set up camp around him.
Are you the anti-tea party?
“I wouldn’t say that we’re the anti-tea party. I wouldn’t say we’re anti-
anything. I would say we’re for things, we’re not anti-anything,” said Davis, the media director for OccupyLA, one of several protest movements around the country aimed at Wall Street and the wealthy. “We’re not really thinking about the tea party right now.”
So what are OccupyLA, Occupy Wall
Street and other movements like them? What do they think about? Where do they hope to get?
“Our message right now is very vague. It’s left vague, slightly intentionally,” Davis says as passing cars honk in support and news cameras lurk nearby. “What we’re trying to do is unify a voice.”
Such is life in New York, Los Angeles and other venues throughout the U.S. for those that have taken up this “vague” cause that seems to have put a bulls-eye on Wall Street’s back. Bands of mostly young adults are gathering in normally peaceful settings to generally express their outrage over the inequity between the haves and have-nots.
At New York City’s Zuccotti Park, talk among the Occupy Wall Street protesters repeated similar themes from the start of the effort last month: the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. and how the 2008 bailout of Wall Street didn’t really help Main Street, and the lack of jobs and opportunity afflicting the shrinking middle class.
What they want to do about it is unclear just yet. There is no specific agenda. There isn’t a hierarchy.
“There’s no leadership — it’s decentralized,” said Aaron Griffin, a 19-year-old from West Virginia, who joined the New York protest a week ago and has been sleeping in Zuccotti Park.
But the numbers getting involved in the movement seem to be growing. Protesters also claimed that similar actions are taking place in more than 200 cities around the U.S. and the world.
In some cases, political leaders seem perfectly willing to let it happen. Several Los Angeles City Council members professed support for the group last week, along with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. And OccupyLA seems resilient and willing to stay in it for the long haul.
“I live here now. I gave up my place,” said Liz Savage, a 32-year-old from New York who had been living in the L.A.’s San Fernando Valley for the past year.
In New York, protests were mostly contained within the environs of Zuccotti Park this weekend, but protesters dug in for an effort with no apparent end in sight.
Approaching its third week just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, the protest seemed to go about its business at a low-key level.
No crowds or sign-holders were visible at the closest subway station on Fulton Street and at the New York Stock Exchange. And no marches or confrontations with authorities were taking place, although police completely blocked off Wall Street and Broad Street to pedestrians.
Many protesters were of college age or in their 20s, but many other age groups were represented.
At the entrance to the park off Broadway and Liberty Street, David Heath, 51, of Syracuse, N.Y., held up a sign that said “Disabled Veterans Against Wall Street.”
He criticized talk in Washington about no longer allowing disabled veterans to collect both Social Security and disability payments, and said corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes. He said he has slept one night at the park.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for a large movement like this,” he said. “Veterans are scared and upset.”
Olga Guitterez, who works nearby in the Financial District, said she stopped by on her lunch break for the fourth time to show her support.
“This is a wonderful thing,” she said. “We’ve been telling our kids to be aware of what’s going on in this country and a light bulb finally went off. We’ve been telling them that they need to go to school and work hard, and then they get out of school and they can’t get a job.”
There are no shortage of supporters in Los Angeles, and they sometimes can be pretty high-profile. Actress Rosanna Arquette reportedly stopped by to show her support during the week. On Friday, PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley showed up alongside civil rights activist and Princeton Professor Cornel West to speak to the crowd.
West, a leftist philosopher, said the Occupy movement is indeed progressive-based while the tea party is conservative, but the two are divergent.
“I think the moment that the Tea Party emerged is very different than the moment right now,” West said, noting that the Tea Party has ties to big business. “Here, this is just spontaneous and leaderless.”
And serendipitous, it would seem. In L.A., a group calling itself Refund California got a fair amount of attention by staging protests in banks and at the stately homes of bank executives in tony suburbs such as Bel-air and San Marino while OccupyLA was encamped at City Hall.
A coalition of several activist groups, Refund California has been demanding that banks renegotiate home loans for those foreclosed upon.
“The relationship (between the two groups) is that more and more people across the country realize Wall Street banks are to blame for the economic crisis,” said Amy Schur, state director of the Alliance of California’s for Community Empowerment. The group is one of several tied to Refund California; also involved are the Service Employees International Union and several community groups.
OccupyLA protesters say, however, that they’re accepting support from unions and other groups but they’re not letting anyone “hijack” their cause.
Not everyone is entirely supportive of the Occupy-ers. A group of construction workers stood at the end of Zuccotti Park in New York while they ate their lunch.
“Their methodology is questionable,” said one construction worker. “They’re not a representation of Middle America.”
Meanwhile, the real estate firm that owns the park where protesters are camped is losing patience.
“Zuccotti Park is … intended for the use and enjoyment of the general public for passive recreation,” said Andrew Willis, a spokesman for Brookfield Asset Management. “We are extremely concerned with the conditions that have been created by those currently occupying the park and are actively working with the city of New York to address these conditions and restore the park to its intended purpose.”
Last weekend, Occupy Wall Street made headlines after 700 people were arrested in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge. Labor unions around the region have been lending supporting to the effort in recent days.
Food, clothing, books and blankets are plentiful at Zuccotti. Protesters play chess, work on computers powered by generators, and follow a routine of regular meetings.
Acoustic music rings out at times, but no loudspeakers are allowed. Instead, announcements are made verbally, not unlike town criers of yesteryear.
In Los Angeles, groggy protesters spend their day organizing the day’s events and staging live feeds online through computers donated by local unions.
Sleep is coming at a premium for many, and it’s less than comfortable. Protesters must move their tents and a considerable amount of electronic gear off the City Hall lawn at night so that sprinklers can irrigate the property. They end up sleeping on the surrounding sidewalks.
Though it’s somewhat unclear exactly what they’re fighting for, that doesn’t seem to deter those from joining. OccupyLA’s Davis says specific causes will form once the groups grow and unite.
“When we start making demands, when we start talking about the issues that we feel need to be addressed, the of cities across America are going to speak with one voice,” Davis said. “We’re going to let this movement mature a little bit before we start making demands.”
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