It takes a good deal of bravery to speak out against oppression. As history has shown, by getting out there and publicly declaring, “What is going on here is wrong, and it will not stand!” one can put one’s reputation, livelihood, even one’s life in jeopardy, even here in America, the land of the free. Still, many find the courage to speak out: Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King Junior. Harvey Milk. And now, a group of Wall Street brokers and traders have banded together to protest the treatment they feel their sector is receiving from the government and the people. They’ve created a website, RestoreWallStreet.com, and yesterday, they took to the streets. Well, they almost took to the streets.
And so a rally was organized at lunchtime on the 23rd floor of 14 Wall Street, directly across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, in the cushy offices of John Thomas Financial, a three-year-old investment house. It was much more comfortable than, say, the street.
As Thomas Belesis, the 35-year-old chief executive of John Thomas who hatched the idea, put it, “It’s cold out.”
New Embattled Minority: Wall Street Brokers [NYT]
Restore Wall Street [Official site]
New Embattled Minority: Wall Street Brokers [NYT]
Restore Wall Street [Official site]
