(Community Matters) If I’d been in New York, I would have attended the Occupy Wall Street protest, but I am reluctant to participate in Occupy Austin.
Why? because the reasons stated in Austin condemn corporations too broadly – especially since corporations based in Austin are not among those I’d protest. While the branches of mega money center banks represent organizations I’d include among Wall Street, I know the leaders at many of these branches. They serve with me on boards promoting quality in education, promoting the arts, and financing & supporting small business entrepreneurs. None of the Austin-based presidents are executives who influence global & national policies or systemic operating practices of these organizations.
Wall Street? You bet. Here’s a group of New York bankers, traders and financiers who accepted taxpayer bailouts, turning around and using $2B+ of our money buying congressional votes against the American public and protecting their ability to gin the system. We’ve effectively given a taxpayer financed stop loss (a very lucrative social safety net for bankers) while they’ve turned every bit of might ensuring minimal regulation, oversight and greedily protecting all upside. Their addiction to leverage imperils not only the United States’ economic well-being but global financial solvency. On top of this, we’ve seen cases of rogue trading deliberately manipulating markets, if not institutional sanctioned manipulation. I’m not sure the combination of instantaneous & other programmed trading as well as too-often insider-led hedge fund bets, credit default swaps and other derivatives don’t yield volatility that threaten corporate and sovereign solvency. We know the financial services sector sucks up too much profitability from national GDP, diverting it unproductively. We know too many of our best and brightest college graduates are diverted from more productive careers. Americans protesting a financial sector greedily sucking up 50% of all US profits prior to 2008, now one-third, you bet!
Community Matters 
Not buying your distinction here. The occupy Austin effort is in support of Occupy Wall Street, not a separate indictment of local entities. We are protesting exactly what you say in your last paragraph. Come on down!