Peace group protesters and members of Occupy Wall Street stage a demonstration to mark the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan on Times Square in New York City on Friday. Photo: AFP
Anti-Wall Street protests continued in more than 50 US cities with people staging rallies and marches and shouting slogans against corporate greed, the high jobless rate, economic injustice and the income gap.
"We will be in a thousand cities in this country by the end of the month – hundreds of cities in other countries. We will see General Assemblies on six continents," said a statement issued on the website of Occupy Wall Street, a movement that started mid-September and entered its 20th day Friday.
They described themselves as a "leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions" who will "no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the one percent."
They were echoed by protesters in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, as the movement has gained increasing support from all walks of life, including Hollywood stars and labor union leaders.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the nation's largest trade union, has expressed support.
"People have every right to be angry," said Brown University international political economy professor Mark Blyth at a gathering in Boston, referring to the Wall Street bailout in 2008, which left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from the federal government.
However, some politicians voiced opposition.
"I am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and other cities across our country," Virginia congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Friday.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also accused anti-Wall Street protesters of trying to destroy jobs in the city as the protests "aren't productive" and weren't good for tourism, even as he said he was sympathetic to some of their complaints.
Mei Xinyu, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce, told the Global Times that the movement reflects intensified US domestic problems amid the financial crisis and ineffective adjusting mechanisms from the government.
"The fat cats represented by Wall Street powers failed to share responsibility for the crisis. Instead, it continues to grab capital bonuses, which ignited the hidden bomb of social anger," Mei added.
"Wall Street should be condemned and punished. It has not only dragged down the US but also brought losses to the world. Its people have woken up and the protest against it is appropriate," said Zhou Shijian, a senior researcher at the Institute of Sino-US Relations at Tsinghua University.
On Thursday, hundreds of people gathered in Zhengzhou, Henan Province and expressed support for US protesters.
They held banners and wore sleeve emblems saying, "Firmly support American people's Wall Street Revolution," according to video and photos submitted online.
The support came after a Senate vote Monday on the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011 that if passed, would slap tariffs on goods imported from countries the US deems to be undervaluing their currencies.
Washington has blamed Beijing for keeping the yuan's value low to gain the upper hand in trade, an accusation rejected by China.
Zhou said the vote showed that lawmakers in Washington were trying to use China as a scapegoat during the crisis.
"Seeking a scapegoat from outside has been a trick used by the US government when it finds itself under fire for the unemployment rate," Zhou said, adding that figures from the past 20 years have shown that there is no link between China's exchange rate and US unemployment.
Meanwhile, US scholars accused some traditional media outlets of showing bias as they kept silent or gave little coverage to the movement.
"After three weeks, the media began to pay attention to the Occupy Wall Street protests only to treat them like a circus and a collection of crazy people," Professor Kathleen Knight of the Political Science Department of Columbia University told the Xinhua News Agency.
Knight said that the foundation of this censorship is "corporatist bias, and the media, as a business institution, "fears that it can be blamed for making too much of the phenomenon."
On the afternoon of October 1 alone, nearly 800 protesters were arrested in a tense confrontation with police when their march spilled onto Brooklyn Bridge roadway in New York City.
Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia who tracks presidential and congressional races, told Reuters that it is too early to judge the impact the protests will have.
"Democrats hope this becomes the equivalent of the Tea Party," he said. "But that would require a lot more than carrying signs in the street. It'd require raising money, knocking on doors, organizing, going to the polls and voting."
