Protesters Against Wall Street – NYTimes.com.

This is a big victory for the Occupy Wall Street movement.  To move the staid NY Times from complete indifference to disdainful incomprehension to vigorous approval in the space of just three weeks is truly remarkable!

Haven’t I been saying that the young people today are the sleeping giant that needs to awaken, stretch and roar?  Any subordinate class (and make no mistake, the young ARE a subordinate class) is only kept down through ignorance of the true extent of their power.

In the past, it’s usually been a charismatic leader who has seized the microphone and shaken the masses out of their beaten-down stupor.  Think Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King Jr., for example.

With Occupy Wall Street, we’re onto something new: a “leaderless movement,” without microphones, but with the extraordinary amplifying power of the World Wide Web.

Social media couldn’t have done it alone–we need the resolute presence of those flesh and blood people down at Liberty Square and in parks and street corners all across America.  But their resistance is exponentially strengthened by the social network around them, spreading like wildfire throughout the country and the world.

President Obama responded at least obliquely in last week’s press conference, showing at least a glimmer of understanding of what the movement is about.

If he had a shred of political sense, he’d be looking for ways to harness the intelligence, social commitment and determination of these young people to stand up to the Tea Party crowd and the drill-and-kill Republicans who have shown themselves again and again to be against social equality in any way, shape or form.

This could turn into the political juggernaut needed to push the Republicans back into their holes, and give the Democrats some much-needed backbone.

One thing is certain: these kids are not backing down, and they’re not going to be fobbed off with half-hearted gestures of appeasement.  They are after real social change, from the ground up.

What was it Arundhati Roy used to say?   “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.  On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Yes.