Here's the Guardian on last night's march:
Thousands of Occupy Wall Street supporters have marched on Wall Street, swelled by the backing of more big US unions and backed by a national student day of action.
Amid fine autumn sunshine and in a festive mood, an estimated 15,000 protesters brought Lower Manhattan to a standstill.Our Teamster sister Joleen Metzger from Philadelphia was at the Occupy Wall Street march last night and posted an account on Facebook. We hope she doesn't mind us sharing:
Another great night for a solidarity march! I was overwhelmed by the number of Teamsters and Locals that showed up for today's event (10/5). A few times I found myself staring transfixed at this great crowd of tens of thousands of people waving their signs of support, greeting Brothers and Sisters from Unions across the country, and raising their cries of "This is what democracy looks like" to a deafening roar.
Luckily we were able to avoid the later part of the night when tempers flared, but it couldn't hold a candle to the beauty of the evening.Local 445 was there too. The MidHudson News reported:
A busload of members of Teamsters Local 445 in Newburgh joined the protest. “This is a huge opportunity for the middle class to stand up and show its discontent with what’s happening in America,” said Local 445 Principal Officer Adrian Huff. “The Great Recession was caused by lack of regulation of the financial industry, yet it is working people that are suffering the consequences. The middle class has become the ‘fall guy’ for the corporate class.”Paul Mutter at truthout spoke to one of our brothers from New Jersey:
Steve, a 65-year-old Teamsters retiree from New Jersey, told me that he, a retiree, has to help his daughter make ends meet because she cannot find a job teaching grade school in Portland, Oregon due to the financial crisis.
What he wanted to know was, “Who gives industry permission to shut down and move to Mexico?” But he doesn’t blame foreign workers for America’s economic problems, as many voters and pundits do. Steve says he blames the politicians and managers who take jobs outside of the US to cut their operating costs because it hurts both American and foreign workers.
“They’re looking to make us accountable,” he says in reference to the demands of conservatives to scale back union power, “so they ought to be too!”Teamsters will join Occupy Philly and Occupy DC today, and we're quite sure in other places as well. To find an Occupy group near you, check out http://www.occupytogether.org/.
