Dylan went to Occupy Wall Street this weekend on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and is returning tonight to talk more to the people who are there. Here’s what he had to say about it on the show today.
In this city, New York, right now, there are demonstrations about 70 blocks south of us on Wall Street and they, like you and me, are “mad as hell,” whether you believe it or not. In fact, those demonstrations spontaneously swept dozens of cities this weekend and resulted in 700 arrests here in new york on Saturday.
When I saw all this going on Friday, I went to their website to see what these people were all about. Their mission statement simply said, “the only thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% who will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.”
That’s how they presented themselves. I read it, I thought, yeah, I agree with that. So since I live about five blocks away from Zuccotti Park, I went down there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to talk, debate and hopefully find common ground with folks who I thought shared my frustration. Here’s part of what I told them — you can watch the entire video of my exchange with them — fast forward to 6:00 in to see what I discussed with folks at the park.
As Calvin pointed out in his YouTube video, “The Tea Party believes it’s the government. And that’s not true. It’s the banks. Standing behind me is Wall Street. And that’s the people who have stolen our country away. Who bought it up and they’re selling it off to the highest bidder.”
My point is simple. This movement can be marginalized, it can be misconstrued, it can be written off. But as a reporter, I’m here to tell you that I agree with the people in that square and that the people in that square have very little in common with each other, other than their agreement with me on the single principle and the rising wave that a bought government is something that we will confront in the next year.
We are witnessing those waves, whether it’s our own campaign that began last Tuesday, which now has 82,000 petitioners after less than a week. We’ll be in Washington later this week, I imagine, whether it’s Occupy Wall Street, whether it’s the Tea Party, whether it’s the Rootstrikers, I don’t care how you identify yourself, this is a movement that needs to come together to affect positive change in 2012.
We have a chance. We will not let this moment pass us by. If we can seize the moment and build towards making a cohesive push — collectively — for a constitutional amendment to get the money out, we have something to do for the next year.
Click “Show Transcript” for text of Dylan’s conversations at Saturday’s General Assembly and in conversation with occupiers at Zuccotti Park.
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