Occupy Elk Grove?

Elk Grovians have plenty of reasons to be upset with Wall Street these days: falling property values and rampant foreclosures, shrunken 401(k) accounts. But are they mad enough to protest about it?

That’s the question that came to mind Tuesday when local blogger Dan Gougherty suggested on ElkGroveNews.net that Elk Grovians hold a protest in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s grabbing headlines nationwide. His proposed location was a symbolic one: the near Grant Line Road.

“I was semi-serious,” Gougherty told Elk Grove Patch. “If people in Elk Grove were upset enough, that would be the perfect place to have an Occupy Elk Grove.”

Besides putting Guy Fawkes/V for Vendetta face masks to ingenious use, the protestors who have been camping out in a New York City park since Sept. 17 have given voice to many Americans’ vague but sizeable anger at the banking industry and corporations in general.

A website connected with the encampment, “We Are the 99 Percent,” encourages ordinary Americans to post their stories about how the recession has affected them.

The protestors have inspired copycat actions around the country. An Occupy Sacramento encampment is set to begin Thursday morning in Cesar Chavez Park.

While some in the press are calling the movement a left-wing version of the Tea Party, protestors say it’s not about left vs. right. 

“We are not ‘like’ anything else and we will not be privatized by a label of left or right,” wrote one fan on the OccupySacramento Facebook page Tuesday. “We are united to stand against the injustice that has been perpetuated against 99% of the people by a mere 1%.”

That populist impatience with the small percentage of Americans who control a huge and growing share of the nation’s wealth appears to be on the rise among the general public as well. A new CBS/New York Times poll shows 64 percent of Americans support increasing taxes on millionaires to reduce the national deficit.

Elk Grovians, what do you think about the Occupy Wall Street movement? Will you head to Sacramento for Thursday’s protest? And could something similar ever happen here in Elk Grove?