Salman Rushdie is among the hundreds of writers, poets and playwrights who have signed a petition in support of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Salman Rushdie said in a message posted on Twitter that he went to Zuccotti Park in Manhattan, occupied by protesters for a month in New York. “Everything is so civilized and polite. Idealism is impressive here”, added the famous writer in his message posted on Sunday.
On their website, “Occupywriters.com“, created especially for this occasion, the writers, including feminist militant Alice Walker, novelist Jennifer Egan, British writer Neil Gaiman and Lemony Snicket, creator of “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, said: “We support the movement Occupy Wall Street and other movements against stock exchanges around the world”.
This site was created by writer Seff Charlet on October 9, after a dialogue with Salman Rushdie on Twitter, a spokesman said Monday. “The site aims to celebrate and inform about the progress of this movement in development”.
Demonstrations started in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan, just blocks away from Wall Street, have multiplied in several American cities. “We are the 99% that we will not tolerate anymore the greed and corruption of 1%”, says occupywallstreet.org site. The statement refers to the fact that very few Americans hold a disproportionately large share of the economy.
During 1993-2008, the richest 1% of American families have managed to 52% of total household income, according to an analysis of U.S. tax service data (Internal Revenue Service – IRS) conducted by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California. Following the financial crisis of 2007-2009, after two years of decline, total corporate profits reached a new high of $1,500 billions, 6.5% above the maximum recorded in September 2005.
Ordinary people failed to overcome the impact of the crisis. Average income of an ordinary American family was at the end of 2010, 49,445 dollars, lower than in 1997.