This is the resources web page for the “US Day of Rage” which intends to occupy Wall Street on September 17. According to the Business Insider website, the Day of Rage is supposed to be a day of non-violent civil disobedience orchestrated by such people as Stephen Lerner (Service Employees International Union – SEIU) and Association for Community Reform Now (ACORN) founder Wade Rathke. The resources web page gives some instructions on how to nonviolently commit civil disobedience, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there will be violence and destruction of property.
The article at Business Insider reports:
Now, the US Day of Rage protests, staged by a collective of activist groups allegedly in conjunction with Lerner and Rathke, are planning the actual “occupation” of Wall Street September 17, complete with a tent city set smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan’s financial district. Similar protests are purportedly set to take place across the nation — and even world– at the same time. Some Day of Rage organizers are even calling on activists to squat in Manhattan’s financial district for months.
The aim, according to Lerner, is to “destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement.”
“How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to, to be rich?” Lerner asked rhetorically in March.
It really does no good to interfere with the ability of the rich to be rich. Generally speaking, rich people hire people–if they are not hiring people to run a business they own, they are hiring people to clean their houses and mow their lawns. Rich people provide jobs. If you interfere with the ability of rich people to earn money, you interfere with the middle class’s opportunity to earn money. You are cutting your own throat.
I fear that September 17 will bring the kind of riots we saw happening recently in England. This is not a healthy thing. It can’t be stopped because protest is legal in a free society. I just hope that the amount of damage to people and property is kept to a minimum.
