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Occupy Wall Street was a movement in Wall Streets financial district that was against social inequality and the lack of real democracy. The movement did make people notice what was going on, but nothing really changed.

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Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.

When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today's deeply unequal society. Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.

That share declined slightly as financial markets tanked in 2008, and updated data is not yet available, but inequality has almost certainly resurged. In the last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950, while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the mid-1950s.

Income gains at the top would not be as worrisome as they are if the middle class and the poor were also gaining. But working-age households saw their real income decline in the first decade of this century. The recession and its aftermath have only accelerated the decline.

Research shows that such extreme inequality correlates to a host of ills, including lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health and less public investment. It also skews political power, because policy almost invariably reflects the views of upper-income Americans versus those of lower-income Americans.

No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters - including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers' rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That's the job of the nation's leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

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Opinion | Protesters Against Wall Street

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Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment. When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today's deeply unequal society.

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On March 12, 1930, Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi begins a defiant march to the sea in protest of the British monopoly on salt, his boldest act of civil disobedience yet against British rule in India.

Britain's Salt Acts prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in the Indian diet. Citizens were forced to buy the vital mineral from the British, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also exerted a heavy salt tax. Although India's poor suffered most under the tax, Indians required salt. Defying the Salt Acts, Gandhi reasoned, would be an ingeniously simple way for many Indians to break a British law nonviolently. He declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme for his new campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience.

On March 12, Gandhi set out from Sabarmati with 78 followers on a 241-mile march to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea. There, Gandhi and his supporters were to defy British policy by making salt from seawater. All along the way, Gandhi addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the salt satyagraha. By the time they reached Dandi on April 5, Gandhi was at the head of a crowd of tens of thousands. Gandhi spoke and led prayers and early the next morning walked down to the sea to make salt.

He had planned to work the salt flats on the beach, encrusted with crystallized sea salt at every high tide, but the police had forestalled him by crushing the salt deposits into the mud. Nevertheless, Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud-and British law had been defied. At Dandi, thousands more followed his lead, and in the coastal cities of Bombay and Karachi, Indian nationalists led crowds of citizens in making salt. Civil disobedience broke out all across India, soon involving millions of Indians, and British authorities arrested more than 60,000 people. Gandhi himself was arrested on May 5, but the satyagraha continued without him.

On May 21, the poet Sarojini Naidu led 2,500 marchers on the Dharasana Salt Works, some 150 miles north of Bombay. Several hundred British-led Indian policemen met them and viciously beat the peaceful demonstrators. The incident, recorded by American journalist Webb Miller, prompted an international outcry against British policy in India.

In January 1931, Gandhi was released from prison. He later met with Lord Irwin, the viceroy of India, and agreed to call off the satyagraha in exchange for an equal negotiating role at a London conference on India's future. In August, Gandhi traveled to the conference as the sole representative of the nationalist Indian National Congress. The meeting was a disappointment, but British leaders had acknowledged him as a force they could not suppress or ignore.

India's independence was finally granted in August 1947. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist less than six months later.

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Mohandas Gandhi begins 241-mile civil disobedience march

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On March 12, 1930, Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi begins a defiant march to the sea in protest of the British monopoly on salt, his boldest act of civil disobedience yet against British rule in India. Britain's Salt Acts prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in the Indian diet.

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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Thursday, August 28, 2003 marks the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, an event led by Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders that changed the course of the civil rights movement.

On Saturday, political and religious leaders, along with a diverse crowd of several thousand marchers, gathered in Washington D.C. to commemorate the anniversary. Speakers included King's widow Coretta Scott King, and his son Martin Luther King III.

Thursday the 28th - the actual anniversary day - a march in King's hometown of Atlanta, Georgia will honor the man and the historic event.

History

Roughly 250,000 people marched through Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963. Called "The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," the event called the nation's attention to the injustice and inequalities that black Americans faced because of the color of their skin.

In support of civil rights for all Americans, the demonstrators made their way from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his memorable and moving "I Have A Dream" speech.

The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal." But even after the Civil War and the end of slavery, people of color found themselves treated unfairly. They weren't allowed in many public schools, they had to eat at separate restaurants and use separate bathrooms, and they had to pay taxes and pass literacy tests to vote. The idea was to keep blacks "separate but equal."

By the late 1950s a movement had started. People were demanding laws to protect their civil rights - rights that all free Americans are guaranteed as citizens of this country. One was Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer who went on to become the first black justice on the Supreme Court. Another was Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her bus seat to white passengers. One particularly influential speaker and activist was Martin Luther King Jr.

A man with a dream

King was a minister from Alabama who became one of the leading voices of the civil rights movement. One of his first successes was the Montgomery Bus Boycott - a 382-day operation that led to the desegregation of buses.

King was threatened with violence and jail, and his house was even bombed, but this did little to stop him.

From then on King was at the forefront of the civil rights movement. He traveled across the country, organizing protests and marches to call attention to the struggle of black Americans.

Though on several occasions King was thrown in jail, he maintained a philosophy of nonviolence. King believed that fighting back would only make things worse, and the true path to victory could be achieved through preaching truth and acceptance.

The march

In late 1962, civil rights activists started to organize what would become the largest civil rights demonstration in the history of the United States. It took awhile, but by June of 1963, they had put together an impressive group of leaders and speakers - including King - to help them.

The organizers of the march had to make sure people had a way of getting into the city. They had to make sure marchers knew where to go and what to do once they got there. They had to have doctors and nurses in case anyone needed first aid. They had to provide water, security, and be ready for any emergency. And they needed some way to pay for all of it. It was going to take fund raising, planning and lots of work.

On Aug. 28, the city swelled with marchers. They drove in. They bussed in. They took trains. Three student marchers walked and hitchhiked 700 miles to get there. A quarter million people waved signs and cheered and listened to speakers address the civil rights problems challenging America. The last speaker was Martin Luther King Jr.

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation," King began. His ensuing speech is remembered as one of the corner stones of the civil rights movement.

A year later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made segregation in public places illegal, required employers to provide equal employment opportunities, and protected the right to vote of every American, regardless of the color of their skin.

- Compiled by Chris Nammour for NewsHour Extra

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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom | PBS NewsHour Extra

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Thursday, August 28, 2003 marks the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, an event led by Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders that changed the course of the civil rights movement. On Saturday, political and religious leaders, along with a diverse crowd of several thousand marchers, gathered in Washington D.C.

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Martin Luther King Jr. was a man from Montgomery, Alabama who was fighting for equality for African Americans by having peaceful marches and small acts of civil disobedience, such as the Montgomery bus boycott.

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Contents

1. Rosa Parks' Bus

2. Montgomery's African Americans Mobilize

3. Integration At Last

4. Bus Boycott Meets With Violence

5. Boycott Puts Martin Luther King Jr. in Spotlight

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system, and one of the leaders of the boycott, a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr., emerged as a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks' Bus

In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the front half of the bus, reserved for whites, was full.

But on December 1, 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks was commuting home on Montgomery's Cleveland Avenue bus from her job at a local department store. She was seated in the front row of the "colored section." When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Parks and three others to vacate their seats. The other Black riders complied, but Parks refused.

She was arrested and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. This was not Parks' first encounter with Blake. In 1943, she had paid her fare at the front of a bus he was driving, then exited so she could re-enter through the back door, as required. Blake pulled away before she could re-board the bus.

Did you know? Nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery for the same act. The city's Black leaders prepared to protest, until it was discovered Colvin was pregnant and deemed an inappropriate symbol for their cause.

Although Parks has sometimes been depicted as a woman with no history of civil rights activism at the time of her arrest, she and her husband Raymond were, in fact, active in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), and Parks served as its secretary.

Upon her arrest, Parks called E.D. Nixon, a prominent Black leader, who bailed her out of jail and determined she would be an upstanding and sympathetic plaintiff in a legal challenge of the segregation ordinance. African American leaders decided to attack the ordinance using other tactics as well.

The Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of Black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system on December 5, the day Parks would be tried in municipal court. The boycott was organized by WPC President Jo Ann Robinson.

Montgomery's African Americans Mobilize

As news of the boycott spread, African American leaders across Montgomery (Alabama's capital city) began lending their support. Black ministers announced the boycott in church on Sunday, December 4, and the Montgomery Advertiser, a general-interest newspaper, published a front-page article on the planned action.

Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders-the majority of the city's bus riders-boycotted the system the next day, December 5. That afternoon, Black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands.

Initially, the demands did not include changing the segregation laws; rather, the group demanded courtesy, the hiring of Black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear.

Ultimately, however, a group of five Montgomery women, represented by attorney Fred D. Gray and the NAACP, sued the city in U.S. District Court, seeking to have the busing segregation laws totally invalidated.

Although African Americans represented at least 75 percent of Montgomery's bus ridership, the city resisted complying with the protester's demands. To ensure the boycott could be sustained, Black leaders organized carpools, and the city's African American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents-the same price as bus fare-for African American riders.

Many Black residents chose simply to walk to work or other destinations. Black leaders organized regular mass meetings to keep African American residents mobilized around the boycott.

Integration At Last

On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, adopted in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War, guarantees all citizens-regardless of race-equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws.

The city appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision on December 20, 1956. Montgomery's buses were integrated on December 21, 1956, and the boycott ended. It had lasted 381 days.

Bus Boycott Meets With Violence

Integration, however, met with significant resistance and even violence. While the buses themselves were integrated, Montgomery maintained segregated bus stops. Snipers began firing into buses, and one shooter shattered both legs of a pregnant African American passenger.

In January 1957, four Black churches and the homes of prominent Black leaders were bombed; a bomb at King's house was defused. On January 30, 1957, the Montgomery police arrested seven bombers; all were members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. The arrests largely brought an end to the busing-related violence.

Boycott Puts Martin Luther King Jr. in Spotlight

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on several fronts. First, it is widely regarded as the earliest mass protest on behalf of civil rights in the United States, setting the stage for additional large-scale actions outside the court system to bring about fair treatment for African Americans.

Second, in his leadership of the MIA, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement while also solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance. King's approach remained a hallmark of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.
READ MORE: The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired Generations of Civil Rights Activists
Shortly after the boycott's end, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a highly influential civil rights organization that worked to end segregation throughout the South. The SCLC was instrumental in the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, and the March on Washington in August of that same year, during which King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The boycott also brought national and international attention to the civil rights struggles occurring in the United States, as more than 100 reporters visited Montgomery during the boycott to profile the effort and its leaders.

Rosa Parks, while shying from the spotlight throughout her life, remained an esteemed figure in the history of American civil rights activism. In 1999, the U.S. Congress awarded her its highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.

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Rosa Parks' Bus Montgomery's African Americans Mobilize Integration At Last Bus Boycott Meets With Violence Boycott Puts Martin Luther King Jr. in Spotlight The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating.

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Born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, Mahatma Gandhi studied law and advocated for the civil rights of Indians, both at home under British rule and in South Africa. Gandhi became a leader of India’s independence movement, organizing boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms of civil disobedience. He was killed by a fanatic in 1948.

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In this quote, he is saying that even though he did not pay the poll tax, he felt like he was the only one of of his townsmen that did pay his tax, saying that since they could not actually punish him, they punished his body.

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Even when a just man is imprisoned, his voice can still be heard or his actions can still be respected. The people should rise up for what they believe in. If your going to vote for someone, vote for who you think will benefit the people, don't just write a name on a piece of paper. (Shawn's also)

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You don't have to respect, trust or support everything the government does. You have a conscience for a reason, to determine what's right and wrong and don't let them take that from you (Shawn's)

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In this quote, Thoreau says that that the government is best when it does the least, meaning the government doesn't do it's job, so it's better when he does almost nothing