Who is Occupy Wall Street? After six weeks, a profile finally emerges.
| Los Angeles
The "Occupy Wall Street" signs in New York鈥檚 Zuccotti Park may be catchy, but they tell little about the nitty-gritty of the rank and file. Now, six weeks into what is becoming a global movement, pollsters and online data sources have begun to answer some basic questions about participants: What are their political beliefs and who is supporting them?
鈥淲e have had a lot of speculation about who these people are,鈥� says Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Fordham University in New York whose team of 15 researchers surveyed some 300 New York City protesters between Oct. 14 and 18.
鈥淪ome of what we found reinforced what many already believed, and some results were surprising,鈥� says Professor Panagopoulos. While 60 percent of protesters said they voted for Barack Obama in 2008, 73 percent said they disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling his job as president.
Not unexpectedly, given Occupy Wall Street鈥檚 assertion that the US political system is adversely affected by an improper distribution of political power, nearly all (97 percent) of those surveyed disapprove of how Congress is handling its job.
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Nevertheless, says Panagopoulos, 42 percent of the protesters said they will vote for the Democratic candidate for the US House for their district. Fewer than 2 percent of those surveyed said they鈥檇 vote for the Republican.
鈥淭here seems to be a surprising confidence that Democrats will be responsive to their concerns, despite the fact that a Democrat has been in the White House during the past three years as all this has built up,鈥� he says, noting that more than three-quarters (78 percent) believe the economy has gotten worse this past year.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, 75 percent of those surveyed said they view the tea party movement unfavorably, he says.
The average age of the demonstrators, meanwhile, was higher than expected, notes Panagopoulos. 鈥淲e thought it would be mostly people in their 20s,鈥� he says, but the average age is 33. 鈥淭hat means for every college student you have a mid-career professional in their 40s,鈥� he adds.
Another somewhat surprising aspect of the movement regards its financing. According to the online pay site wepay.com, its donation numbers show that the overwhelming online support comes from 鈥渁verage, middle-class donors,鈥� says wepay.com chief executive officer Bill Clerico.
鈥淭he vast majority of those giving have incomes in the $50,000 to $100,000 range,鈥� he says. The median donation amount is $22, while the average rises to $60, which shows that there are a few 鈥渧ery large donations sending the average amount higher,鈥� adds Mr. Clerico. To date, his company has processed more than $325,000 in donations to Occupy Wall Street. Wepay is releasing its latest data on Occupy Wall Street on Tuesday.
The money, he says, comes from 37 countries. The average distance from donor to demonstration for donations given to any campaign is 862.5 miles. 鈥淲hat this shows is that the support really is grass-roots and widespread,鈥� he adds.
However, attempts to pin the demonstrators down may miss the point, says Villanova University Prof. Matthew Kerbel.
鈥淚t鈥檚 important to remember that OWS is offering an economic critique that doesn鈥檛 fit neatly into the red/blue boxes we鈥檙e used to using to describe our political debate,鈥� he says. 鈥淭heir focus on economic inequality indicts both parties for being unduly influenced by the top 1 percent.鈥�
Indeed, adds Brooklyn Law School Prof. Jonathan Askin, quantitative data on the movement may be interesting, but it misses the larger point of the group action.
鈥淭he 鈥榬eal political opinions鈥� of the Wall Street Occupiers are largely irrelevant to a consideration of the role that the Occupy Wall Street movement will play in the 2012 elections,鈥� he says via e-mail, adding that Occupy Wall Street is a transformation in the process of civic engagement and political participation.
The movement is a forum to make government 鈥渕ore directly and precisely answerable to the needs of the people,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hrough online social media tools, the people may now monitor and respond to government behavior, and make our elected officials directly answerable to the people, rather than exclusively answerable to the historically more powerful special interests.鈥�
