Letters: Occupy’s outcome

Re “At 1 year, Occupy’s effect is still hard to gauge,” Sept. 15

It is unrealistic to expect that the Occupy movement could achieve a “broad tangible result” in one year against a deeply entrenched and utterly corrupt political system.

Many people work inside the existing political parties in the hope that change can be achieved this way. The Occupy movement is working to change the corrupt system by acting from the outside. We in the movement realize that is a very difficult process that could take many years to show results. The change we want to see is breaking the stranglehold that billionaires and big corporations have on our politics.

The American people are kept unaware of the extent of this threat to their democracy. One of Occupy’s goals is to raise awareness, as it has already done with the issue of rising economic inequality in America, using the very effective catchphrase of the 1% versus the 99%.

Hans Grellmann

Palos Verdes Estates

The Occupy movement would not have even gotten a foothold had New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg stopped the protesters from camping overnight and breaking the law. This led other mayors to do likewise at great cost to the taxpayers — simply another case of elected officials not doing their job.

Bob Therrien

San Diego

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