What We Saw at the Occupy Wall Street Protest

Down with banks, student-loan debt, and expensive elections! Up with barter...capitalism...and...Mitt Romney?!?!

On October 4, 2011, Reason.tv visited the Occupy Wall Street protests at Liberty Square in Lower Manhattan, on Day 18 of the ongoing demonstration.

The crowd was relatively small at about 300, and included educated but unemployed workers, college students and recent graduates, homeless drifters, performance artists, 9/11 truthers, and a not-insignificant number of journalists.

The "leaderless" movement is made up of more than a dozen smaller groups, such as the "Information" group with Macbooks hooked up to generators who maintain the "OccupyWallStreet" Twitter feeds and liveblogs, a "People's Library" consisting mostly of donated leftist literature, and a well-stocked kitchen where organic vegetables are sliced for communal salads.

Student loan debt, campaign finance reform, and general anger with the sluggish economy were the more frequent grievances aired, but the demonstrators are hardly monolithic in their passions or opinions. Among the boilerplate anti-capitalist rhetoric included a lifelong Democrat professing his support for Mitt Romney, an unemployed aviation mechanic declaring his continued support of capitalism and disgust at corporate welfare, and a homeless man expressing skepticism that any of the protestors would remain in the park if just "one bad wind" rolled through the area.

Also in the crowd was Republican New York City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, who took all questions from the assembled crowd, and even won them over after forcefully denouncing taxpayer bailouts of corporations and eminent-domain abuse.

Though the message of Occupy Wall Street is muddled and the future of the protest remains unclear, similar "Occupy" demonstrations are popping up in cities all over the United States, and the quasi-anarchist community residing in Liberty Square shows no signs of relinquishing its post.

Reason recapped the list of demands of the self-professed "99%," which include free college education for all and a minimum wage of $20/hr. Read that at http://bit.ly/pcDOLc

And check out this riveting eyewitness account and analysis from NYC at http://bit.ly/nRR3Wf


About 6 minutes. Produced by Anthony L. Fisher, camera by Nathan Chaffetz.

Go to http://Reason.tv for downloadable versions, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive notifications when new material goes live.

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[SIrReedofHistory]

I wonder what it smells like at the protests. I'll tell you: butthole and armpit and onion and smelly feet and more butthole and all sorts of smelly armpit butthole.

[myusername0wns]

These protests are embarrassing and most of the people interviewed look like they can barely function as human beings.

[Shadows00001]

did this occupation change anything ? no , did you try something new ? no , you expect things to change ? yes

[shatley123]

2:12 what a douche

[MegaAstrodude]

Che Guevara expressed support for school integration in 1953. The US government declared all school segregation to be illegal in 1954. The majority of American states forced racial integration of schools by the early 1900's.

[ymjt99]

Che Guevara did not care for blacks when he was transitioning from his life of luxury to the revolutionary life. after his trip through south america he saw how they suffered just like everybody else if not worse and he changed his way of thinking about them. he even wanted to integrate schools long before the u.s. ever brought it up and fought with nothing but africans in the congo and his best friend was an african named pombo.. if you consider that racist then you obviously don't know shit.

[william reynolds]

get rid of big corp and make them play a 100 foe to the middle class

[HooptieHamburger]

Thanks. Since I left that post, I started using Firefox with Adblock, and it's worlds better. I'm still disappointed in YouTube for allowing their Internet Explorer users to be so bombarded by rude ads. Allowing ads that knock people off the page while watching videos should be out of the question.

[TheRetiredtrucker]

Stop using internet explorer, use FireFox and get the add blocker for it, no pop ups or waiting 30 sec for commercials before vids