Is the American left and center-left finally feeling its oats? As the protests on Wall Street spread across the country, the world is taking notice . For Germany’s Die Welt, columnist Ansgar Graw writes that Americans who hardly know the meaning of thw word ‘demonstration’ have taken to the streets, and no one, least of all the protesters, knows where it will all lead.
For Die Welt, Ansgar Graw writes in part:
What we are witnessing here in New York City is the Tea Party of generation-Twitter. It’s a grassroots movement from the left this time around, brought together by an angry discontent with the status quo, and without any of the protesters knowing quite what will come next. They have no leader, no common idea and not even an agenda of demands. Under a common banner is united a diverse group of protesters: anarchists, libertarians, the unemployed, old and neo-Marxists, “arm chair indignants,” street performers and hangers-on; people who otherwise know uprisings only from watching the fall of the Berlin Wall or those in the Arab World on TV. But should something happen this time around – they want to be there. And they just may get their money’s worth.
Similar protests are being held in Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans, Eugene, Ashland, San Francisco, Chicago, Albuquerque, Tampa, Charlotte, Denver and Portland. Further protests are planned for Washington DC. It all began in New York City on September 17th with between 300 to a 1,000 protestors. This weekend there were about 2,000. They personify the discomfort of liberals (and in the U.S. that means the left) with the consequences of the 2008 Wall Street crash, their concern about a “double-dip recession,” and anger.
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