Occupy Wall Street events in the Triad - North Carolina NPR News

Occupy Wall Street events in the Triad

October 10, 2011 | Audrey Fannin

The anti-Wall Street protests that started in New York and spread to dozens of other U.S. cities are finding a voice in North Carolina. Hundreds of people converged on downtown Charlotte this weekend to march to Bank of America's corporate headquarters. Charlotte is the nation's second-largest banking hub. The protest has spread to the Triad as well. Occupy Winston-Salem held its first meeting on Oct. 1, drawing about 20 people. Saturday, the group drew about 150 people to its first public meeting, where they made plans to protest corporate greed at the Bank of America branch on Stratford Road next Sunday. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, the group also plans lunchtime protests at the Wells Fargo building downtown.

Plans are underway for protests in Greensboro as well. John Wright says he got involved in Occupy Greensboro because he wanted to do something more than just comment on the internet. He says the group will meet next Saturday at 3 p.m. at Government Plaza downtown and will march past the Civil Rights Museum where they will pause for a moment of silence to recognize the efforts of Civil Rights protestors. From there, Wright says they'll head north past several bank buildings, and end in Festival Park where they'll set up their New York-style occupation.

Robert Whaples, chair of the economics department at Wake Forest University, says that Wall Street has made itself an easy target for the Occupy Wall Street protestor's anger. He says neither the Tea Party nor the Occupy Wall Street movement alone has the answer to the country's economic problems, but he suspects the protestors will have little effect. "The main reason is that those are a series of problems that our government has already done a lot to address, especially the Obama administration with health care reform. And the political tide seems to be running in the opposite direction, with the off-term elections and Republican gains and big worries about the size of the federal debt."

Wright says that how those bills are ultimately implemented is a concern for the Occupy Greensboro protestors. "I think it's a false assumption that those things will be passed in a way that the people are satisfied with. We want those bills passed in the interest of the 99%, not exclusively in the interest of big business."

But Robert Whaples says there's no way for the regulators to stay ahead of the financial innovators. "There's legislation that get passed that really looks like it's going to solve the problem, but then someone really smart looks at it and sees a way to exploit it to their own advantage, and there's no way around that. So that's why we'll be having this same discussion 10, 20, 50 years from now."

Occupy Greensboro organizers plan to meet tonight (Monday) at Glenwood Coffee and Books. Both Triad groups are using the internet and Facebook to get the word out about their activities.