This week Time magazine anointed its 2011 “Person of the Year” award to an individual making an impact in places such as Tahrir Square in Cairo, Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, and in public places in almost every major city in the Western world. Time’s Person of the Year is the world’s Protester, unified by an effort to move toward (or back to) democratic principles.
Occupy Wall Street begins a march through Manhattan
FORA.tv recently featured a live event, The Rise and Fall of Wall Street, presented by The Culture Project that discussed, in part, current efforts by the Occupy Wall Street movement. On stage was activist and de facto Occupy Wall Street spokesperson Jesse LaGreca, along with former Bush administration Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind.
If there is a singular moment in the Occupy Wall Street movement that helps to define the motivations of the protesters, it was Jesse LaGreca’s interview with a Fox News producer in Zuccotti Square in Manhattan who asked about the movement’s endgame. LaGreca, who has since championed the movement’s ideals on several mainstream news shows, offered a trenchant analysis of the frustrations of the so-called 99 percent, and also gave scathing criticism to mainstream media companies like Fox News that seem to perpetuate an already corrupt system (Watch LaGreca’s interview with Fox here.)
At the FORA.tv event, LaGreca said that the majority of Americans feel disenfranchised from the system and that their votes have been rendered useless by the power of large corporations and special interest groups.
It’s untrue, he said, that protesters are vilifying the 1 percent of income earners. “Our concerns are with the 0.01 percent, who are the people who use power and influence to buy lobbyists and influence government and regulators. They have ultimately disenfranchised people who can’t ‘buy off’ government so easily.”
What lit the proverbial tinderbox that sent so many people into the streets in anger? The 99 percent, have suffered economically over the last three years because of the recklessness of the financial industry, said LaGreca. “We are the first generation of people who being told our future will be bleaker than our fathers. Until people are held accountable for this disaster, many will continue to protest and voice their frustrations.”
Watch LaGreca, O’Neill and Suskind: The Rise and Fall of Wall Street on demand at FORA.tv.