I went down to Liberty Square on the second night of the occupation of Wall Street and began talking to people, then found the Ridgewood angle (there’s an angle for every place). We published our story the following Friday. It’s here:
Wall Street ‘occupied’ to put focus on
struggles
Just a train ride away from Ridgewood, Wall Street has been inundated with thousands of demonstrators who are calling themselves “the 99 percent” – those who are struggling in the wake of the still-precipitous financial crisis and have organized to protest corporate greed.
One former Ridgewood resident is part of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, which began with as many as 5,000 people occupying the financial district on Saturday, and with about 200 long-term protesters keeping hold of Liberty Park throughout the week. About 12 people had been arrested by Wednesday; one woman reported being hit in the face by a police officer.
Joe Fionda, who graduated from Ridgewood High School in 2001, said the occupation, which organizers hope will gather as many as 20,000 people for a permanent Tahrir-like long-term protest, aims to make the financial industry and politicians more aware of how destructive the economic crisis has been and what they can do to promote improvements in Americans’ lives.
“It’s about having a presence to show the bankers down there that, yeah, you don’t see the problems because they are far away from you, but we’re bringing people here so you can see people are upset,” Fionda said. “We’re bringing it right in front of your faces.”
A major demand from the group is to end “corporate personhood” and curtail the influence of money in politics, which Fionda argued corrupts democracy and prevents real reform. Other issues are also discussed by different protesters, such as fair interest rates on credit cards and access to jobs. There were also calls for thorough audits of the Federal Reserve and the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had instituted checks and separations on banks until it was repealed 1999 – a decision that has been cited as contributing to the severity of the financial crisis.
Many Ridgewood residents work in the financial district, and some said this week they were unimpressed with the demonstrations so far.
“They’re very unfocused. It was difficult to figure out, exactly, what they were protesting or what issues they had, other than a dislike of corporations in general, which is a bit like saying you don’t like people,” said Bill Grae, who works in the financial district and also freelances as a photographer for The Ridgewood News. “There are good people and there are bad people. There are good corporations and there are bad corporations. You can’t really generalize.”
Grae added, though, that “there’s certainly an entertainment factor” to the occupation, pointing out a small contingent of nudists protesting without shirts.
Another Ridgewood resident who works as an insurance broker near Liberty Park, who did not give his name, said he believed protesters were “speaking over each other” and were not yet effective.
“I’m from the 60s, when protests really meant something,” he said. “I don’t think that these guys are getting anywhere with their protest. They think that they’re Egypt, that they’re Libya. I don’t see it.”
Fionda planned to camp overnight at Liberty Square after the work week, and anticipated that numbers of protesters would again swell on the weekend. He said it was difficult to maintain high numbers of people when many have other responsibilities.
“Yes, there’s a hard-core group on the square, but other people have to do stuff, they have to live,” he said. “You can do both, both be an activist and live your life. I work my job and still manage to do this.”
At first, the protests seem mostly filled with young people dissatisfied with the debt they’ve gone into and the lack of jobs available – something Fionda explained was a source of great frustration.
“I was unemployed, and it was horrible. People shouldn’t have to go without a job,” he said. “They shouldn’t have to be begging on the street with a master’s degree. Student loans are just out of control, too.”
On Sunday night, signs listed the amount of debt people had gone into – in one case, loans of $165,000.
Many of the protesters hailed from New York, but one woman, Kat Sluka, had traveled from Muskegon, Mich., a working-class suburb where, she said, “capitalism deserted us” following the economic downturn.
Another, who said his name was Walter, was a construction worker at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11 attacks, and now suffers from an auto-immune lung disease due to the dust and fumes he inhaled. He cannot work, and, with inadequate unemployment insurance and 9/11 first responders’ funding coming in, he said he was at the end of his rope.
“I used to work for the system, but now I’m on the other side,” Walter said. “I’ve been denied food stamps and workers’ compensation. I live on a double-edged sword every day…. I’ve had enough of not being listened to.”
E-mail: ebbels@northjersey.com
