coming up, the head of the service employees international union was arrested today at occupy wall street protests. we ll look at labor s support for the 99% movement as protesters swarmed wall street. the fox newsers said the movement was dead. filmmaker robert greenwald on fox s occupy lies. a stanford university study shows the middle class is disappearing. maybe that s why the folks are in the street. and the income gap is growing. one of the study s authors is here with the details. and rick perry wants to debate nancy pelosi. now, i d pay to see that. her response puts him in psycho talk. stay with us. we re right back.
occupation of several banks along with more arrests. in washington, d.c., protesters marched on the key bridge, stopping traffic along the way. protesters took to the strip in las vegas. one of the cities hit the hardest of the housing market. across the country voices of the 99% are being heard. it has cost people their home and their jobs and we are here to say we have had enough. the government pro-e bailed out the banks and we are foreclosing on our house. . they are not going to take it anymore. don t you think this movement is entering a new phase, the tent city portion of the protests? it s over now i guess you can say the action starts. we shouldn t be surprised. we have been through this before as a country. all of this happened in the
what resources is your union prepared to devote to the 99% movement? every resource we have. every one of our members that s struggling to try to win a decent life does this mean you re going to be out there monthly? weekly? how often is this going to happen? daily. we were all over the country today, over 300 cities. we will be there day in and day out. this is not this is an attack on the middle class in this country that s been going on for 40 years. i certainly hope it doesn t take 40 years to turn it around. but we re going to be there every day to do just that. you know, your president, mary kay henry, who was just arrested, has said that supporting the movement and endorsing the president of the united states are complementary but they re separate. explain that. you re the first union to come out in this election season.
this evening was amazing. it would have warmed your heart. john, what is going on at zuccotti park at this hour? not much going on at zuccotti park at this hour, ed and i they is symbolic. zuccotti park is where the movement started but really it has spread throughout this whole part of manhattan and throughout the whole country. as we speak, ed, there s tens of thousands of people up at foley square. many of them waiting hours just to cross brooklyn bridge in a symbolic protest saying this bridge where official initially weeks ago so many people were arrested. today we will walk peacefully across it. they are chanting occupy wall street, all day, all week. they are making the bridge a symbol of that for a number of reasons. mary kay henry told me it was very, very important that this protest go out of the parks to the bridges and the streets.
it suggests that this is not just a movement of some you know, some folks being told to go in but everybody s going in together. and i think the symbolism was very, very important. well, how often is this going to happen in your opinion? and do you think it will motivate other labor folks now that they ve seen a president get arrested to do the same thing? well, back in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s you started seeing some people step up, and it became a thing of honor to be arrested in an act of civil disobedience. i think we might well see some more of that. and i also think that it s not just about arrests. it is that when you see labor leaders in the front lines, when you see members of the city council, religious leaders in the front lines, that tells people this is a protest that everyone can come out and be a part of. it invites whole families into it. and i think it can t do anything but build this movement. john nichols, thanks for joining us again on the pr