The Protest That Made Occupy DC Possible
As the protesters in McPherson Square enter their seventh week inhabiting a “city within the city,” what was the first national effort to Occupy DC – and how did it change the ways Americans saw their nation’s capital city?
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On a windy Easter morning in 1894, an unusual parade moved down the main street of Massillon, Ohio. The idea of an eccentric local businessman named Jacob S. Coxey, the parade featured an African American flag bearer, a hundred unemployed white men, and an infant named Legal Tender.
At the time of the parade, the United States was in the second year of a major economic depression and millions of Americans were unemployed; Coxey believed he had the answer to the nation’s economic woes. He proposed that the federal government issue $500 million in treasury bonds, that it apply those funds to initiate a