BEBETO MATTHEWS - Associated Press Hundreds participating in the Occupy Wall Street protest continue to camp in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011, in New York. The protests started on Sept. 17.
About John Nichols
John Nichols, associate editor of The Capital Times, is the author of seven books on politics and the media. He writes about electoral politics and public policy for The Nation magazine, and is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times.
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The “Occupy Wall Street” movement’s political breakthrough came Wednesday as leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus joined Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in endorsing the burgeoning national challenge to corporate greed and corrupt politics.
On a day that saw thousands of union members, community activists and supporters of New York’s Working Families Party rally in solidarity with the New York protests, Congressman John Larson, the Connecticut Democrat who is the fourth-ranking member of the party’s House Caucus, announced, “The silent masses aren’t so silent anymore.”
Of the demonstrators, Larson said, “They are fighting to give voice to the struggles that everyday Americans are going through.”
Not surprisingly, it was Sanders who offered the most full-throated support of the movement. At the Campaign for America’s Future “Take Back America” conference, he declared: “We have the ‘crooks’ on Wall Street, and I use that word advisedly — don’t misquote me, the word is ‘crooks’ — whose greed, whose recklessness, whose illegal behavior caused this terrible recession with so much suffering. We believe in this country; we love this country; and we will be damned if we’re going to see a handful of robber barons control the future of this country.”
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