If traveling to Washington from New York for Thanksgiving week sounds like a nightmare, try doing it on foot.
A group of 22 Occupy Wall Street supporters arrive in the district on Tuesday after two weeks of walking along the highway from New York City. The group’s name, of course, is Occupy the Highway. They will meet up with other protesters this afternoon for a press conference in McPherson Square followed by a rally outside of the U.S. Capitol.
The group timed the arrival with the failure of the super committee, a result that the protesters found inevitable and something of a coup for their message.
The only way the super committee could have been deemed a triumph by the Occupy Wall Street movement would have been if it agreed to significantly raise taxes on the richest Americans. Since that never seemed to really be an option, the best success was failure.
“Increasing taxes on the 1 percent would have been a great outcome, but that was never really the intent of the committee from the get-go,” Ed Needham of the OWS PR team told National Journal. “It was destined for failure from the moment it was conceived. This was the best outcome we could expect.”
For Michael Glazer, an organizer of the hike and an unemployed actor from Chicago, the super committee failure “highlights exactly why [they] are marching."
“It says they are not leaders but children,” Glazer continued. “Not solving anything, but taking their ball and going home, that’s how children act.”
The two-week walk from New York included stops at Occupy Trenton, N.J.; Occupy Delaware; Occupy Philadelphia; and Occupy Baltimore. The point of the walk, Glazer said, was to get on to main streets and “shine a bright light” on the failings of the nation’s leaders.
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