Occupy Wall Street Hits Miami

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Posted on Friday, 10.14.11

Slow to start, Occupy Wall Street hits Miami
 
Since protesters took over a New York City park, demonstrations have sprouted from Boston to Los Angeles and Detroit. In Miami, participants expect at least 500 to attend Saturday



Muhammed Malik is a former researcher with ACLU and an activist with Occupy Miami. He volunteers at a North Miami Beach unemployment center helping folks fill out their job applications.
MARICE COHN BAND / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

If you go

What: Occupy Miami protest

Where: Torch of Friendship at Bayfront Park, 301 N. Biscayne Blvd., downtown Miami

When: 1:30-3:30 p.m. Saturday; general assembly is 3:30-6 p.m.

Contact: www.occupymia.org




By Lomi Kriel


With his khaki slacks, black button-up, and white tennis shoes, Phil Brinkman, a 54-year-old nurse and former Nixon supporter, is not your typical protestor.

Yet Brinkman, who lives in the middle-class suburb of Miami Springs, said he has watched his purchasing power plummet while his credit card interest rates spiral out of control.

“I just can’t afford things the way I used to,” Brinkman said.

So when he heard about Occupy Wall Street, an ongoing series of demonstrations in a New York City park, Brinkman scoured the web to find its Miami equivalent. Since it began on Sept. 17, protests have sprouted from Boston to Los Angeles and Detroit. In Miami, it has been slow to start, but participants expect at least 500 to descend Saturday for a rally at the Torch of Friendship on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami. In Fort Lauderdale, a similar group will start at the federal courthouse on Broward Boulevard at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Across the globe, similar protests are planned from London to Frankfurt.

The protestors, who have no official leaders, have a broad list of grievances â€" from ending wars in the Middle East to skyrocketing student debt and what they say are egregious bonuses given to Wall Street executives.

In Miami, Brinkman acknowledges he’s a bit of an outlier in the group, which has 8,936 “likes” on its Facebook page and is mostly composed of students and 20- and 30-year-olds.. Still, participants say the group is not only growing but as diverse as its concerns. That characteristic of the nationwide movement at times makes it seem a like a free-for-all of complaints with no solutions offered.

That’s made it rife for criticism, with CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow, for one, suggesting it is “just your basic green, anti-capitalist, anti-bank, anti-Wall Street, anti-American demonstration.”

Protestors say they are tied by two common themes: discontent with the power of corporations and widespread alarm about the dismal economic outlook.

Muhammed Malik, 29, is a former researcher with Florida’s American Civil Liberties Union who said he was laid off several months ago. Malik and his wife, who works at the University of Miami, support her parents and his ongoing unemployment means they are eking it out pay check to pay check.

Malik, who has a graduate degree, said he has widened his search to jobs for which he is over-qualified.

The same goes for Kotu Bajaj, a 24-year-old New College of Florida graduate. The two, who are friends, recently applied for the same research assistant job at Florida International University, requiring only a high school diploma. They never heard back.

Bajaj said he has even applied for janitorial positions. For a time, the sociology major who planned to pursue social work considered an alternate career as a hairdresser. But he said the 56-week-long certification program at Aveda costs more than $17,000, practically doubling his $20,000 student debt.

Frustrated, Bajaj attended one of the first Occupy Miami rallies weeks ago, expecting it to be “college students, face painters, jugglers and yoga instructors.” Instead, one of the first people he saw was an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

“That’s when I realized this wasn’t just me and my friends trying to find jobs,” Bajaj said. “This is everyone.”

Certainly, there is cause for concern. Census figures released in September show that real median income in 2010 fell to the lowest it has been since 1997 â€" the largest decline in income in a single year of any recession since 1967. At the same time, poverty rates rose to record levels â€" the highest since 1993. More than 46 million Americans are living in poverty. Meanwhile, unemployment stayed stuck at 9.1 percent in October.

Yet the Occupy movement â€" so fractious, with such nebulous goals and no clear roadmap to attain them â€" has left those on the sidelines baffled. The group’s leaderless structure makes action seem slower and more difficult. On Occupy Miami’s Facebook page, Abel Duarte voiced a popular sentiment: “The rich may be greedy,” he wrote, “but ... come up with some real requests, some real changes to make to the system, then protest for those changes to take effect.”

Yet that very quality was shared by the civil rights movement, said University of Florida history professor Paul Ortiz, who takes his students to the Mississippi Delta every year to interview civil rights veterans.

“Every time they tell us, ‘we had no focus. In the beginning, we didn’t know what we were doing,’ ” Ortiz said. “But the movement had to start somewhere.”

Ortiz points to another example: After the 1929 Wall Street crash, Americans woke up to find their savings depleted. Angry and confused, they demanded city officials â€" who clearly had no power â€" do something. But out of that anger emerged the New Deal and the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., guaranteeing the safety of bank deposits.

“This is how all social movements start,” Ortiz said. “They’re unfocused because people haven’t figured out how to solve the crisis.”

Whether Occupy is, indeed, a social movement, or just a fad, is too soon to tell. So is whether it’s an answer to the tea party or the U.S. version’s of the Arab Spring.

For Brinkman, the nurse from Miami Springs, it’s at least a way to channel frustration at a system seemingly both so powerful and beyond reproach. As he’s watched the value of his home tumble, Brinkman said he has also lost about $50,000 in retirement savings held in mutual funds. His son, a freshman at Florida International University, already is in debt.

“I’m concerned about my children’s future,” Brinkman said. “They’re just nickel-and-diming us to death.”


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/14/2454562_p2/slow-to-start-occupy-wall-street.html#ixzz1ao9XNxMY


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/10/14/2454562/slow-to-start-occupy-wall-street.html#ixzz1ao9DKP00