An article in the York Daily Record states, “A local group will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the United Auto Workers hall, 3562 Gillespie Drive, West Manchester Township, to organize an “Occupy York” protest to coincide with the Occupy Wall Street movement and similar efforts around the country.

“Four weeks ago, hundreds of protesters began camping out in New York’s Financial District. Since then, the protest, targeted at corporate greed, has spread to at least two dozen cities, including Philadelphia.

“‘It is leaderless and that will be the sustainability of the message,’ said Maria Payan, a local activist and one of the protest organizers. ‘It is a social movement that fits everyone under the umbrella.’”

[EDITOR’S NOTES: We have used the above photo which is “borrowed” from Cole’s Website; Cole’s photos from his visit to Wall Street appear here. An Occupy Lancaster article appeared earlier at Columbia news, views & reviews.]

What’s driving Occupy Wall Street?

According to the official Website, the foundation of the organization:

“On September 17, 2011, people from all across the United States of America and the world came to protest the blatant injustices perpetuated by the 1% – the economic and political elites – whose actions affect all of us, the 99%.

“We spoke out, resisted, and successfully occupied Wall Street. Today, we proudly remain engaged in non-violent civil disobedience while building solidar­ity based on mutual respect, acceptance, and love.

“We are the 99% and we have assumed full responsibility for the future of our society, our culture, and most importantly, our own lives.”

In spite of the statements made by several political “public service” candidates defining supporters of the “Occupy” movements as “mobs” and “blame yourselves” poor and unemployed, supporters include a diverse mixture of concerned individuals voicing similar concerns.

“According to capitalist economic theory, a business will expand as long as it costs less to sell one more item, than the price they can get for it. In text book talk, businesses will operate at the size that marginal costs equal marginal revenue.

“This economy of scale is different in different types of business. There are many small pizzarias, but only a few oil companies. Capitalist textbooks say that many businesses competing for many customers works well, but when only a few players dominate a market, they will create a shortage to increase profits. They only entity that has the power to step in and fix those markets is the government.

“As far as unrestrained growth, there has been an assumption that increasing the GDP is the main goal of the economy. Actually making people free and happy has been seen as a by-product to ever increasing GDP.

“Unfortunately, the world has a limited amount of resources and having everyone constantly buying more an more stuff (much of which they don’t even need or use), will not work in the long run as more and more countries try to catch up to the US. For example, last I heard, China was adding 25 million new cars to the road every year.

“There is a movement now to reevaluate the way we measure the health of an economy. One that looks at the well-being of the citizens instead of overall output. People can be happy and productive with less stuff, but we need to change some of the assumptions about what makes us happy (the rich actually have higher rates of suicide). I don’t actually think that the details of the economic system are as important as the way.” (SOURCE: blog commenter, John McG, nycga.cc –Nycga.cc, is the official website for the New York City General Assembly at Occupy Wall Street.)

This Washington Post opinion column, “The Occupy protests: A timely call for justice,” also appears in today’s Intelligencer Journal/New Era.