Kolhatkar writes: "But if activists can combine the beautiful rage of Occupy Wall Street with some of the tried-and-tested methods of incremental political change, maybe someday justice will rain on Wall Street’s parade.
Rage: Occupy Wall Street protestors chant during a march in the Financial District, Monday, Sept. 17, 2012, in New York. (photo: AP)
Searching for Sustainable Models of Activism
21 September 13
hile economists are celebrating a tenuous recovery five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this week's U.S. Census Bureau report on poverty provided a sobering statistic: 15 percent of Americans are poor, a number that has remained the same since last year. It seems recovery is for the rich; the well-being of poor Americans does not enter into the equation of how we measure national wealth.
Meanwhile, Lehman executives who were responsible for triggering the Great Recession are back at work, most of them in Wall Street firms, comfortably ensconced in the income brackets of the 1 percent.
Despite public outrage over the crimes of Wall Street executives, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation was quietly swept under the rug and not a single Lehman employee was prosecuted. Huffington Post senior financial writer Ben Hallman told me in an interview that "we've seen again and again throughout the financial crisis that [government] authorities have been ... extremely, overly cautious when it comes to bringing charges. ... There's been a real risk aversion among federal prosecutors to bring up these types of cases."
Continue reading: Searching for Sustainable Models of Activism, Two Years After the Occupy Movement
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