The policing of protest in America makes it clear that protest has become mere ritual, a farce, and that, by definition, it becomes illegal if it threatens to change anything or inconvenience anyone. In time, all the police announcements came to say the same thing to me. “You may go through your constitutional ritual,” they intoned, “but it must stop before anything of consequence happens.” We must, above all, preserve everything as it is. This is the lesson to be learned.
But it's a lesson that people have learned in the past, but we have forgotten it. The only way to really have a protest is with your pocketbook. When you stop spending money, people will listen. It's also important to have leadership, you can't have an empty flailing movement. Every circle needs a center, something that people know is the objective. Otherwise, nothing will get accomplished. If occupy Wall Street had been able to get every single person that had a bank account with one of the large banks, and were sympathetic to their cause to switch to a credit union, man oh man would it have shook things up. Then, they would've had a voice.