Nancy Pelosi Comes Out In Support of Occupy Wall Street, Kind Of

The dreaded political co-opting of Occupy Wall Street began in earnest yesterday when Nancy Pelosi appeared on Christiane Amanpour's Sunday morning show and (kind of) lent support to the Zuccotti campers. "I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen," she said. "We cannot continue in a way that is not relevant to their lives."

Of course, Pelosi is a part of the establishment the protesters are so fed up with. Thus far they've been aggressive about maintaining the political independence of their movement, or at least the appearance of it. At last Wednesday's union/OWS "megamarch," Michael Moore exhorted the crowd to avoid getting involved with mainstream politics. "Do not let politicians co-opt this movement," he said.

And this Reddit poster, who claims to be a disgruntled Tea Party member, gave the same kind of advice, predicting what would probably happen to OWS:

Someone in the Democratic Party will feign sympathy for the movement and falsely "non-partisan" entities provide tons of funding and unwanted organization, just as was done with the tea party movement by Republicans. Once people assume that the pro-corporate government operatives are their friends, they will hijack the movement and the threat of your movement will be neutralized.

With Pelosi leading the way, will other Dems follow suit?

Keep up with the Voice's Occupy Wall Street coverage here.

[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]

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