US

Marchers head to Capitol to pray, protest

admin Contributor
Font Size:

WASHINGTON (AP) — It wasn’t the slick suits, pricey heels and sense of purpose of the congressional staffers that Susan Wilkinson saw this week on Capitol Hill. What stung about crossing paths with them, she said, was this: “They wouldn’t make eye contact with us,” the unemployed Seattle activist recalled Thursday. “When did I get invisible?”

Wilkinson was among hundreds of angry Americans who streamed through Washington and its corridors of power this week to command attention for the 99 percent of Americans that protesters claim are struggling to survive the recession. They were hard to miss.

Dozens were arrested for disrupting traffic. Others crashed a campaign fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Their fist-in-the-air chants — “We are united” — echoed through the canyons separating the Capitol’s office buildings.

The message to the power brokers: They should be making laws for people who can’t afford lobbyists. Much of it was taken from the Democrats’ playbook, like extending unemployment insurance, and making wealthy people pay more taxes.

“Things have reached a boiling point,” observed protester Ed Vining, a small businessman from Boise, Idaho, who took photos of his fellow protesters passing in near silence in front of the Capitol. “This (protest) is as American an act as you can imagine.”

Their top target: House Speaker John Boehner, the Ohioan from modest roots they accuse of making law to benefit of the richest 1 percent while nearly 1 in 10 American workers is unemployed.

Fresh off a night of political party-crashing, the protesters carried their message as close to Boehner as they could get, marching from a Senate park across the East face of the Capitol to a sidewalk outside his personal office building.

“One: We’re unemployed! Two: We are united! Three: Tell the speaker we’re not leaving,” they hollered. From the terraces of the House building across the street, business-suited people watched and took pictures.

Boehner’s office responded that he “understands that the American people want a government that listens to their concerns and works together to help create a better environment for job growth” and that the House would “continue to work to do just that.”

Dozens of police officers on foot, bikes and motorcycles kept a watchful eye, and eventually the crowd moved down the street, back toward their home base on the National Mall, under white event tents that the Service Employees International Union had helped provide.

Wednesday night, a few had dropped in on a candlelit fund raiser for GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich at one of Washington’s most stately hotels. “Hey you millionaires, pay your fair share!” they chanted.

Many others shut down the city’s K Street lobbying corridor at rush hour. More than 60 were arrested.

The protesters late Thursday moved to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building, site of a Christmas party expected to draw prominent lawmakers. The demonstrators staged a “human red carpet,” by lying in front of the entrance. The idea, organizers said, was to force Washington’s well-heeled partiers to tread upon the less fortunate.

The movement even followed much of the Republican political world to Iowa in advance of the Jan. 3 nominating caucuses.

“Put people first! Put people first!” the protesters yelled at an event in Des Moines featuring New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Christie laughed. “Work it all out, work it all out of yourselves,” said Christie. “You know what? We’re used to dealing with jokers like this in New Jersey all the time.”

The protesters say there’s nothing funny about being out of work, or of struggling to pay bills and reading about corporate titans who bring home eight-figure pay checks.

Wilkinson, a 65-year-old a former administrative assistant who’s lost her home and declared bankruptcy, said she was wearing her friend’s boots because she couldn’t afford her own. She said she felt the first real anger when she heard politicians saying the unemployed should blame themselves for their problems.

On Capitol Hill, she looked at the congressional staffers and thought, “God, I miss that. I miss having something I’m responsible for,” she recalled, like a job.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel