Showing muscle, raising big funds

Associated Press

NEW YORK

The Occupy Wall Street movement has close to $300,000, as well as storage space loaded with donated supplies in lower Manhattan. It stared down city officials to hang on to its makeshift headquarters, showed its muscle Saturday with a big Times Square demonstration and found legions of activists demonstrating in solidarity across the country and around the world.

Could this be the peak for loosely organized protesters, united less by a common cause than by revulsion to what they consider unbridled corporate greed? Or are they just getting started?

There are signs of confidence, but also signs of tension among the demonstrators at Zuccotti Park, the epicenter of the movement that began a month ago today. They have trouble agreeing on things such as whether someone can bring in a sleeping bag, and show little sign of uniting on any policy issues. Some protesters eventually want the movement to rally around a goal, while others insist that isn’t the point.

“We’re moving fast, without a hierarchical structure and lots of gears turning,” said Justin Strekal, a college student and political organizer who traveled from Cleveland to New York to help.

Even if the protesters were barred from camping in Zuccotti Park, as the property owner and the city briefly threatened to do last week, the movement would go on, Strekal said. He said activists were working with legal experts to identify alternate sites where the risk of getting kicked out would be relatively low.

Wall Street protesters are intent on hanging on to the momentum they gained from Saturday’s worldwide demonstrations, which drew hundreds of thousands of people, mostly in the U.S. and Europe. They’re filling a cavernous space a block from Wall Street with donated goods to help sustain their monthlong occupation of a private park nearby. They’ve amassed mounds of supplies. Supporters send about 300 boxes a day, Strekal said.

The space was donated by the United Federation of Teachers, which has offices in the building.

Close to $300,000 in cash has been donated, through the movement’s website and by people who give money at the park, said Bill Dobbs, a press liaison for the movement. The movement has an account at Amalgamated Bank, which bills itself as “the only 100 percent union-owned bank in the U.S.”

Strekal said the donated goods are being stored “for a long-term occupation.”

“We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!” Kara Segal and other volunteers chanted in the lobby as they arrived to help.

On the streets, moments of madness can erupt in the protest crowd, but order prevails at the storage site.

It doubles as a sort of Occupy Wall Street central command post, with strategic meetings that are separate from the “general assembly” free-for-alls in the park. One subject Sunday was data entry: Protesters are working to get the names and addresses of donors into a databank.

The movement has become an issue in the Republican presidential primary race and beyond, with politicians from both parties under pressure to weigh in.

President Barack Obama referred to the protests at Sunday’s dedication of a monument for Martin Luther King Jr., saying the civil-rights leader “would want us to challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing those who work there.”

Many of the largest of Saturday’s protests were in Europe, where protesters involved in long-running demonstrations against austerity measures declared common cause with the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Rome, the demonstration caused what the mayor said was at least $1.4 million in damage to city property.

U.S. cities large and small were “occupied” over the weekend: Washington, D.C., Fairbanks, Alaska, Burlington, Vt., Rapid City, S.D., and Cheyenne, Wyo. were just a few.

About 175 people were arrested in Chicago late Saturday, and there were about 100 arrests in Arizona. About two dozen people were arrested in Denver, and in Sacramento, Calif., anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was among about 20 people arrested after failing to follow police orders to disperse.

In Richmond, Va., about 75 people gathered Sunday for one of the “general assembly” meetings that are a key part of the movement’s consensus-building process. Protester Whitney Whiting, a video editor, said the process has helped “gather voices” about Americans discontent, and that she expects it will eventually take the movement a step further.

“In regards to a singular issue or a singular focus, I think that will come eventually. But right now we have to set up a space for that to happen,” Whiting said.