Most are nestled among the throngs of protestors who are politically astute enough to recognize that Obama “can only do so much” to institute measures to stimulate an economic recovery and pass the hotly-contested jobs bill. They mostly reject the notion that this movement cast Obama in a negative light, that the president was not strong enough to stand up Wall Street’s omnipotence that they had to take to the streets to take on the barons themselves.
“I think this helps Obama because I think this helps push his agenda. And the Tea Party obstructionists need to untie his hands,” opines Paul Wint of Brooklyn, “so that he can he do his job, so that he can do the people’s job.”
Does the fact that the people are standing up to Wall Street, does this make Obama look weak?
“No, this shows that [Obama] has a voice, that [the masses] are listening to him,” Wint finishes.
Undergraduate student Myieven Starr says the public’s lack of understanding of our current economic crisis speaks directly to the atrocious educational system that fails to inoculate them with a basic understanding of the innerworkings of finance and government.
“It’s not [Obama’s] fault. If anyone knows — and this is why I feel this way about education — if you know your history and you know about the presidency, you know that the president can only do so much with the power that he has. If you want to get any power to do any thing or to make changes, then go to Congress. So don’t blame the president; blame Congress.
“I feel that Obama is not at fault,” she continues, “because Obama is trying. He only has so much power. He is trying to help out the middle class. But since he is [countered] by the Republicans, he can only do so much without being overrun by the people who feel the money in their pockets are more important than the money of the middle class and the people who are trying to make this country a better place.”
Mount Vernon, N.Y., resident Sparro Kennedy believes, like Dr. Cornel West of Princeton, that Obama is simply window dressing to the desires of the aristocrats who she says really run this nation.
“Obama is just a figurehead. So I don’t know if this [protest movement] makes him look good or bad,” she said, adding, “I believe there is a real issue of wealth concentration. If we look at, historically, the Latin American countries where you have such a high concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, you have issues of oligarchies. And then you have a problem of the people ever getting their say across because they don’t have any money. So before this becomes an issue here, let’s fix that problem.”
Beinbe Telewelle from nearby Newark, N.J., a naturalized American citizen from Africa, looked on at the spectacle with both amazement and disgust. “If this was all black people here, they would clean this whole place up. There would be blood on the ground and tear gas and they would stomp this whole place out,” he said, shaking his head. “But since it’s mostly white people, they are being allowed to stay out here. It’s two totally different things,” he finished as his wife was pulling him away from me. “I have to say what I say because we are all human beings,” he yelled out as his wife tugged him, glaring at me with sparks shooting from her eyes.
Telewelle’s sentiments was shared by Richie Williams of Upper Manhattan. “Without sounding racist, this [Occupy Wall Street movement] is only happening because it’s affecting white people. This has been affecting us since the beginning of this country,” said before squaring his eyes on mine. “The chickens are now coming home to roost, as Malcolm X once said.”
He also believes that Obama is not at fault for the disaster that is besieging the nation and impacting the globe. “Obama is the only hope we’ve got,” he said somberly. “And you know that we are in trouble if that’s the only hope we got. I’m going to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. Because if he gets a second term, then he’ll be able to show what he’s really about.”
And that’s what Obama’s enemies are trying to avoid at all costs, Williams says, even if they have to take down have the country and part of the globe to achieve that mission. And, more and more, it’s looking that way, that they’d rather destroy the country than allow anyone else to seize control of it, he surmised.
–terry shropshire
