A protest movement that claims to borrow tactics from Arab Spring demonstrators is moving beyond New York City to include events across the country, including Austin. Organizers are meeting at 6 o’clock tonight at Austin City Hall to plan a protest outside the building on Thursday.
“There’s just a level of frustration about the future,” explained Carl Lindemann, an Austin marketing consultant “with some gray hair” who is lending his support to protest organizers. “This is really the voice of the millennial generation coming forward.”
The leaderless Occupy Wall Street movement has produced this this proposed list of demands being considered for adoption. The proposals include calls to limit corporate contributions to political campaigns, restrict the influence of lobbyists on Capitol Hill, and raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
Some users on the Occupy Austin Facebook page say they plan to use Austin City Hall as their launching point to demonstrate at Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase Morgan and other financial institutions in the area.
Austin is one of many cities across the United States where mostly young, progressive activists are taking inspiration from a three-week old New York City protest against the influence of money in politics. Occupy Wall Street supporters were galvanized this weekend by the arrest of more than 700 people on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Here’s video of that event from a protestor who was there:
Some of those demonstrating in New York are Austinites themselves. The Wall Street Journal’s Metropolis Blog published this Reuters photo of Austin resident Nathan Hendrix lying on a mattress in Zucotti Park.
