In the past four weeks, the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has gained national attention in downtown Manhattan, has finally made its way to Bell Boulevard.
It was a foggy morning on Thursday asstood outside the Bayside LIRR Station hoping to raise awareness and reach the hearts and minds of commuters and passersby.
“We need to take action and get the conversation going,” said Alex Trufel of Fresh Meadows who held a sign advocating a ‘Robin Hood’ tax for Wall Street speculators.
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The Robin Hood tax, according to Trufel, is a tax on financial speculators to minimize incentive for risky investments also known as derivatives the same type of investment that contributed to the market crash of 2009.
The advocacy group, MoveOn.org orchestrated the demonstration. Members with varying degrees of repulsion of capitalism and the electoral process came to Bayside to voice their opinions.
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William Hand was concerned about healthcare, “forty million people don’t have healthcare, including my son,” said Hand adding, “It’s like living on a tight rope."
Tom Hagan, a furniture salesman from Bayside has been waiting for three years to hold the banks accountable for collapsing mortgages.
“Take your money out of the big banks that bungled mortgages and sold them as AAA investments that we the tax payers ended up paying for,” said Hagan.
Some members were critical of banks, while others focused their critique on the electoral process.
“Banks and corporations take advantage of the system: the electoral process is not working. You have to sell yourself to the corporations and fat-cats,” said Manny Suarez a retired union painter and former DC9 Council Delegate.
John Kim, 28, of Bayside was not participating in the demonstration; he was waiting for his train. “It’s not that big of a protest and it doesn’t really bother me that they are protesting. I see both sides, I’m a welfare fraud investigator for the City.”
More than a dozen NYPD and MTA officers were on hand as the protest ran smoothly and without incident.