Liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore commemorated the fifth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street on social media Saturday, praising the movement for “permanently changing the conversation” regarding issues of income inequality and capitalism in America.
In a series of Twitter posts, the Where to Invade Next director noted that the social movement began five years ago on Saturday. As ABC News reported, about two dozen demonstrators gathered in Zucotti Park this weekend to celebrate the movement and the progress it claimed to have won.
“Occupy Wall St began 5 years ago today,” Moore wrote in the first of his Twitter posts. “It grew to hundreds of encampments and thousands of acts of civil disobedience in the months after.”
“All over the US & world, avg citizens rose up against corp greed, capitalism, the banks & “the 1%.” It permanently changed the conversation,” he wrote.
In every poll and survey now, more young adults say they favor socialism over capitalism. There's no going back. Thank u Occupy Wall Street.
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) September 18, 2016
“The following year Romney’s “47% takers” comment did him in & within 5 yrs a democratic socialist won the presidential primary in 22 states,” the 62-year-old filmmaker continued, referring to Bernie Sanders’s insurgent presidential campaign.
“In every poll and survey now, more young adults say they favor socialism over capitalism. There’s no going back. Thank u Occupy Wall Street,” Moore concluded.
Moore was one of Occupy Wall Street’s most vocal celebrity proponents. The filmmaker defended the movement in television interviews, and even appeared in Zucotti Park to address demonstrators.
“I’m so impressed by what I’ve seen here,” Moore tells demonstrators in a YouTube video from 2011. “You have done something very important and very historic. It had to happen somewhere. Might as well have been here.”
In an interview with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman that year, Moore defended the dozens of protestors who were arrested in Zucotti Park and ultimately evicted from the public park, having previously blamed President Obama for kicking them out.
“It’s highly ironic that now over a hundred of the protesters have been arrested, and not a single banker, a CEO from Wall Street, anyone from corporate America, nobody, not one arrest of any of these people who brought down the economy in 2008, who created schemes, financial schemes, that not only destroyed the economy, but took away the future of this generation,” Moore told Goodman.
Five years after the birth of Occupy Wall Street, Moore has continued to remain politically outspoken. During an appearance on HBO’s Real Time in July, the director predicted that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will win the White House over Democrat hopeful Hillary Clinton.
On Friday, Moore suggested the media refuse to cover Trump for two weeks as a way to get back at the candidate for his much-discussed press conference on so-called “birther” controversy.
If the media has ANY integrity, it'll refuse to cover Trump for a week as a response 2 him tricking them 2 go live w/ his "press conf" 2day
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) September 16, 2016
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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