In September, 2011, a small group of  protestors took over New York City’s Zuccotti Park, one block from Wall Street. They called themselves “Occupy Wall Street.”

This action was the first in a national and international Occupy movement that sprang up in parks and elsewhere, and lasted for months. I visited Zuccotti Park, as well as Occupy parks in Boston, Northampton (MA), and Montreal; it was clearly a powerful movement. It sparked global awareness that a lot of people, especially young people and people of color, felt pretty marginalized. It popularized “99 percent vs. 1 percent” organizing slogans. And it forced US President Barack Obama to move his rhetoric leftward, and to at least verbally champion the dispossessed.

That action continues to reverberate through American and world politics, four and a half years later. The movement around a $15 minimum hourly wage is just one of its legacies. Another is the amazingly strong presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an outspoken progressive. Sanders, with no ties to the power structure and no reliance on conventional political funding, was given no chance of even having an impact; now, he’s ranked as the contender likely to most easily beat either Trump or Cruz in the general election.

Two Bernie Sanders volunteers decided to set up a short-notice phone bank for Bernie…right in Zuccotti Park! The symbolism of raising money to fight Wall Street in Wall Street’s own shadow—and at the very scene where a bunch of “riff-raff” took on the power structure—is clear…and beautiful.

It’s been a good week for symbolism in the Bernie camp; a few days ago, a bird landed on his podium while he was addressing a rally, and he immediately dubbed it “a dove asking us for world peace.”

A bird lands on Bernie Sanders’ podium (PBS)

His campaign is gaining traction all the time. I hope the Democratic Party has the courage to let him be its standard-bearer this fall.

Subscribe at no cost to Shel Horowitz's monthly Clean and Green Newsletter and get these powerful bonuses: Seven Tips to Gain Marketing Traction as a Green Guerrilla, plus Seven Weeks to a Greener Business: tips on going greener with printing, energy saving, waste reduction, water conservation, transportation, going deep-green, and of course, green marketing (on tip a week for seven weeks). Plus, of course, the informative monthly newsletter, published steadily since 1997.

To sign up for the newsletter, opt in at the top-right corner of: http://GreenAndProfitable.com/
Follow Shel at: @ShelHorowitz