newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The Occupy Wall Street Movement claims to be about the 99 percent. They say they are about the members of the struggling middle class affected most by the recession, while the wealthier one percent, represented in their eyes by Wall Street, has all of the cash.

The website We Are the 99 Percent says, “We are forced to choose between groceries and rent, and working long hours for little pay if we're working at all. We get nothing while the other 1 percent gets everything.”

A lot of people are saying the movement’s message is not clear. According to the Vancouver Sun, when the movement began, Keith Olbermann said on Current TV that if Tea Party protesters had gone to Wall Street to demanding answers from federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, they would have received media coverage everywhere.

Occupy Wall Street has been getting ideas for possible demands. Keith Harrington of the Huffington Post suggests the powers of corporations should be defined and limited by the constitution, all people holding an economic stake in a company should receive the same privileges as shareholders, and employees of a company deserve as much influence on the distribution of profits as members of a board.

Mainstreet says they should end the “too big to fail” bailout principle for banks, and try to get a stronger Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

David Weidner of MarketWatch calls Occupy Wall Street a Tea Party with brains. The movement is using You Tube and blogs, and have even begun publishing a newspaper. He says the confusion about the group’s message is because the press doesn’t get it.

Weidner explains that the movement is about money, wasting money, and greed. It’s also about how money is inequitably distributed.