December 05, 2011
Today is the first day of a week-long protest, “Take Back the Capitol” (#99inDC). A collaborative effort between grassroots organizations, Occupy movements and unions, this protest strives to bring attention to the amount of corporate control in politics, and demand that Congress represent the 99%. Today the protesters will arrive in the District and begin to set up the “People’s Camp,” located at 14th and Constitution Ave. NW. This will be the protestors’ home base, while they move about DC with a busy five-day agenda, including scheduled protests on Capitol Hill and K Street.
With many local governments recently ordering evictions of #ows camps, Take Back the Capitol’s short term stay is a smart tactic. The movement has great timing – unemployment insurance extensions are up for difficult debate on the Hill, and Take Back the Capitol is bringing the focus back to the job crisis, and getting Americans back to work. The unemployment rate did fall by 0.4 percentage points in November – however, this is no cause for celebration. A main factor for this decrease is that many Americans, mostly women, dropped out of the labor force – for more info on the latest unemployment numbers, check out CEPR’s recent Jobs Byte.
