Arun Gupta was enraged as he learned the details of Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson's plan to fix the U.S. banking system with $700 billion
in taxpayer funds. The 43-year-old copy editor and freelance
journalist, who publishes his own alternative newspaper, The Indypendent,
needed to channel his angst but couldn't find a live protest to attend.
So on Sept. 22, he sent an e-mail to some politically active friends in
New York. Within days, they'd planned a protest against the bailout in
New York and at 80 other locations in the U.S. on Sept. 25.
"I couldn't sit back while this plan gets rammed through Congress,"
says Gupta. "We live in a digital world, but change has to happen in an
analog world. We married the two-the Internet helped us organize like
wildfire." Gupta, now working with the online organization
truemajority.org, says he expects hundreds and possibly a thousand
protesters to converge at the protest near Wall Street.
Protesters plan to build a pile of "citizen junk" that the government
should also purchase in front of the iconic bull sculpture.
Much of the populist outrage against the bailout is building on the
Internet, in blog posts, and Web sites. And not all of the posts are
created by left-wingers like Gupta. The Internet is now swirling with
petitions, debates bordering on rants, and biting satire about
Paulson's plan and its potential consequences. The calls to arms come
from across the political spectrum-from right-wing enemies of taxes to
libertarians and left-wing progressives. They demand that Congress
amend, scale back, or scrap the plan altogether.
FULL STORY:  https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/25