NEW YORK – Chanting and cheering down Wall Street on Saturday to mark six months since the birth of the Occupy movement, some protesters applauded the Goldman Sachs employee who days ago gave the firm a public drubbing. He echoed the movement’s indictment of a financial system demonstrators say is fueled by reckless greed.
“I kind of like to think that the Occupy movement helped him to say, ‘Yeah, I really can’t do this anymore,’ ” retired librarian Connie Bartusis said of the op-ed piece by Goldman Sachs manager Greg Smith, who claimed the company regularly foisted failing products on clients as it sought to make more money.
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Carrying a sign with the words “Regulate Regulate Regulate,” Bartusis said the loss of governmental checks on the financial system helped create the climate of unfettered self-interest described by Smith in his piece, although Goldman’s leadership suggested he had not portrayed the bank’s culture accurately.
“Greed is a very powerful force,” Bartusis said. “That’s what got us in trouble.”
On Saturday, six months after the protesters first took over Zuccotti Park near the city’s financial district, the protesters gathered there again, writing slogans in chalk on the pavement and waving flags as they marched through lower Manhattan.
With the barricades that once blocked them from Wall Street now removed, the protesters streamed down the sidewalk and covered the steps of the Federal Hall National Memorial. There, steps from the New York Stock Exchange and standing at the feet of a statue of George Washington, they danced and chanted, “We are unstoppable.”
Police say arrests had been made, but they didn’t yet have a number.
As always, the protesters focused on a variety of concerns, but for Tom Hagan, his sights were on the giants of finance.
“Wall Street did some terrible things, especially Goldman Sachs, but all of them. Everyone from the banks to the rating agencies, they all knew they were doing wrong. … But they did it anyway. Because the money was too big,” he said.
Dressed in an outfit that might have been more appropriate for the parade going on uptown, the 61-year-old salesman wore a green shamrock cap and carried a sign asking for saintly intervention: “St. Patrick: Drive the snakes out of Wall Street.” He said Smith’s editorial came just as the Occupy movement is again gaining ground.
“It’s changed the language,” said protester Stacy Hessler. “It’s brought out a lot of issues that people are talking about. … And that’s the start of change.”
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