One of the attacks the corporatists launch against the 99% movement is that it 'has no demands'.
When civil rights leaders marched for years in the late 50's and early 60's, what were their demands?
A strike over worker issues here, the right to ride in the front of the bus there, the right to pump gas or eat at a lunch counter or enter the state university.
Tell me what the demands were of the protestors:
That's not a protest with demands - it's a protest against an injustice.
It took years for these issues to result in a specific agenda and set of demands, the Civil Rights bills proposed by JFK and passed by LBJ.
The movement is about the injustice of the 1% taking the wealth and political power of the 99% - the demands will come later. The first ones are already under discussion.
Here is one set of initial policy demands suggested by Matt Taibbi - this is like an early demand to let blacks eat at a lunch counter:
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.
3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.
5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.
Another demand under discussion is for a constitutional amendment to take the money that gives the 1% control of our elections out of politics.
When Carter and Reagan ran for President, they accepted no donations for their campaigns. They campaigned on the $2 donations from taxpayers to campaigns.
This year the sides each hope to raise a billion dollars IIRC, largely in anonymous donations from the 1%.