Well, it all started a couple of days ago. We at the Coalition for Peace and Justice had received a couple of emails from non-members announcing an Occupy Somers Point protest on Sunday.

If you read the Press of Atlantic City on Monday, you know how the protest went, except that by our count, about 40 people attended sometime between 3 and 6 p.m. Also, no mention was made that Democratic Assembly candidate Alisa Cooper stopped by.

It was a peaceful protest, meant to be in solidarity with the main Occupy Wall Street protests. It was held in front of the Bank of America branch to protest the bank’s new usurious $5-a-month fee on debit card transactions.

This event was a spontaneous grassroots event. We in the Coalition supported it, but were not the organizers. But I did call in to Pinky Kravitz’s radio show to announce the event, especially because his guests the previous hour were representatives of a local bank. Pinky was gracious as usual in taking my call, and basically agreed with the sentiments I expressed in last week’s column.

The next day, I happened to be listening to Harry Hurley's radio show because he was going to have Congressman Frank LoBiondo as an in-studio guest.  I very rarely call in to Harry's show or Don Williams’ show because they control the microphone and can be obnoxious to callers. It is very hard to get one's word (or even one word) out. But I figured that LoBiondo would be answering questions, and he has always been polite to me.

I also wanted to communicate to the tea party folks that the Occupy movement had room for them, too. Wall Street and the big banks and their poor fiscal decisions were one of the big reasons why the Great Recession happened.

So I called in and asked Congressman LoBiondo if he was planning to attend the Occupy Somers Point rally. After about 10 minutes of Harry attacking the Occupy movement as a "mob" (taken directly from the vast right-wing talking points of the day), LoBiondo answered my question. I'm paraphrasing here, but basically Congressman LoBiondo said that the there should have been a criminal investigation into Wall Street activity, that some on Wall Street should be in jail, and that President Obama made poor choices in his appointments, like that of Tim Geithner and others, that hindered the administration in getting us out of the recession.

That night, on one of MSNBC's shows, Bernie Sanders, the socialist-independent senator from Vermont, echoed LoBiondo's sentiments almost word for word. So is our congressman a socialist? Whatever; I, too, basically agree with his positions on the banks and Wall Street.

As to Harry's vicious attacks on the Occupy movement, here's some rationality from New York Times columnist Jonathon Alter:

"In Florida this week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was asked about the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. ‘I think it's dangerous, this class warfare,’ he said.

Romney’s right. It may be dangerous – to his chances of being elected.

Occupy Wall Street, now almost three weeks old, isn’t like the anti-globalization demonstrations that disrupted summits in the 1990s or even the street actions at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, though some of the same characters are probably in attendance. With unemployed young protesters planning to camp out all winter in Zuccotti Park (with bathrooms available only at a nearby McDonald's), it's more like a cross between a Hooverville and Woodstock: the middle-class jobless of the 1930s and the hippie protesters of the 1960s."

No mobs; just people who are jobless, scared and fed up with bank rip-offs like the one Bank of America is doing to its smallest customers. The left-wing "silent majority" is waking up. This does not bode well for Republicans. The Occupy movement is not thrilled with Obama, either, but if they vote in 2012, they will probably vote for Obama.

I urge you to call Bank of America at (609) 646-5544 and tell them to drop the $60 a year rip-off fee.

Norm Cohen is executive director of the Coalition for Peace and Justice and a coordinator for the UNPLUG Salem Campaign. Learn more at www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org and www.unplugsalem.org. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or (609) 335-8176.