The Occupy Wall Street protest has surprisingly reached the one month mark. While the media at large still has not validated the protestors, it has taken more notice of them.
The protests, beginning on Sept. 17, started as a small grass roots idea. The concept was to get the power of governing back into the hands of the people and not let large corporations, mainly banks, be the only voices heard in Washington, D.C.
The ideas of the movement have spread across the country. Now there are active protests taking place in most of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and even more places throughout the world.
Yet, the biggest amount of attention is being given to the people set up within New York City. The base camp for the movement was Zuccotti Park. The choice of location was fairly literal and allowed protestors to physically occupy Wall Street or at least a very prominent portion of it. Now, not only is the movement in Zuccotti Park, the surge of the masses has spread to Foley Square, Washington Square Park, and most recently marched into Times Square, arguably the boldest action to date.
Originally, the mainstream media would stop by the campground occasionally, take some footage and do a few interviews. The lack of coverage might have been expected, since those large media corporations have important ties to the governing bodies and plan to stay in their good graces.
There was also a questionable choice for Twitter, owned partially by J.P. Morgan Chase, to not allow the hashtag “Occupy Wall Street,” or any variation of it, to become a trending topic. Undoubtedly if the movement’s title had trended, there would have been a surge in support at a much earlier time in the movement. But how foolish would J.P. Morgan Chase look if the very people in protest of the bank’s practices were using one of the bank’s very own holdings to retaliate?
The Swells look down on protestors (Source: The Washington Times)
Some of the most interesting media coverage has been reactions to the movement in recent weeks. There are the celebrities, like Mark Ruffalo and Russell Simmons who visit the protests on a regular basis. Then there are celebrities, such as Kanye West, Roseann Barr and Tom Morello , who have visited in more of a field trip manner. And, of course, there are the people who criticize from a far, the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters of the world.
But what about the guy they elected to run the city?
How is Michael Bloomberg taking to this? Well he seems to be bothered by the fact that the protestors could be disrupting the nature of Lower Manhattan. There are the obvious noise complaints and the physical obstruction to the way of life in New York City.
He has called in the police force, frequently, when protestors get a little too rowdy. The biggest problem that the Mayor has had is the arrival of a tent city in the streets. There are laws against the erecting of structures, but people of the movement have only chosen to loosely abide by these laws. Most recently, Mayor Bloomberg, urged by park owners, tried to exterminate them from their Zuccotti Park camp, in order to clean up.
So although the Occupy Wall Street protests have a valid point and are making actual strides to change the way of democracy, the media still treats them as a spectacle and the Mayor doesn’t like their tents. Basically, they are the gum stuck on the bottom of Lower Manhattan’s shoe and they have no intention of going anywhere any time soon. At least until winter, that is.
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