Occupy Wall Street came to St. Louis on Saturday–and to 85 other cities, Mike Kiepe (pictured in the first photo) was telling me as we stood in front of the Federal Reserve Building at 411 Locust. Protesters across the country say they are there for the 99 percent of Americans who are being slowly squashed by the wealthiest one percent. As Obama pointed out, if pointing out the greediness of the top one percent is class warfare, then we’re proud to be warriors.
Four Missouri Progressive Action Group members were the first on the scene, but that’s only because we and four other early birds didn’t check the Facebook page late enough to know that the bulk of the protesters were meeting first at a nearby bar before showing up en masse. The MOPAG people had to leave for their monthly meeting before the bulk of the crowd arrived, but before they left, STLToday stopped by, interviewed those who were there, and polished off their article with a quote from Susan Cunningham (on the left in the top picture).
Ironically, an EMT named Paul (in the plaid shirt) told us that he was the one who had gotten on the Occupy STL Facebook page and selected the Federal Reserve Building as the site of the protest, but then he and his wife, a nurse, missed the announcement of the general meeting first.
KMOV-TV perked up and took an interest:
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If you really want to know the latest on where the group is, go find them on Twitter. For one thing, it looks like the action is switching to Kiener Plaza–and to Bank of America close by.
And if you want to see the latest on Occupy Wall Street, look here, here, and here–among a host of places.
Protesters prepare for a sudden rainstorm
The New York movement caught fire when Tony Baloney pepper sprayed those young women, the videotape went viral, and the media finally had to take up the story. Marie Antoinette could have told Anthony Bologna that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. And that sometimes a bully’s action comes back to bite the entire top one percent in the ass.
Not one DFH in the first photo. Not one. What’s our useless old media to do?
…from another video of the protest: