乍一看，露宿于华尔街街头的示威者似乎并不是一股催生改革的可靠力量。但茶党（Tea Party）的集会最初也没有显露出有朝一日会改变游戏规则的潜质。

    这两个群体都崛起于政治和金融领袖未能解决美国摇摇欲坠的金融局势之际。他们都对未来忧心忡忡，但方式有所不同。

    茶党鼓吹财政改革，但最终的结局或许只是激化了政治僵局而已。诞生仅一个月的占领华尔街运动则旨在揭露并彰显严重的不平等问题，但目前还未能提出一套方案来颠覆美国日益分化的体系。

    占领华尔街抗议活动‘是针对美国领导层的一次明确而清晰的倒戈行为，”加州大学圣巴巴拉分校工作、劳工与民主研究中心（the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara）主任尼尔森•利希顿斯坦称。

    “抗议者正在寻找某种方式，来掌握自身的未来，”他说。“就某些方面而言，这个时期比上世纪30年代还要糟糕，当时的美国还具备生产能力和大规模生产率。但如今的体系并没有一个结构稳健的基础。”

    现在判断华尔街抗议活动会有什么结果还为时尚早，但此前有过全国性改革脱胎自这类无纲领运动的先例，北伊利诺伊大学（Northern Illinois University）研究劳工和社会运动的历史学教授罗斯玛丽•弗雷尔说。

    她说，肇始于19世纪90年代末期的平民主义运动针对强大的银行、铁路托拉斯和其他金融精英，但这项运动耗费数十载才有所作为。“直至上世纪30年代中期，华尔街才受到约束。”

    “运动启动之际通常并无目标和要求，”弗雷尔说,“这些运动往往以各种抱怨开始。关键在于人们持续聚集在一起。”

    当初，志同道合的共和党人孕育（甚至启动了）的茶党运动，如今的占领华尔街运动同样有可能在没有明确领导的情况下找到立足点。

    工会已经声援支持“99%人群”，甚至给祖可蒂公园露营地的抗议者送来了咖啡和甜甜圈，但劳联产联 （AFL-CIO）董事达蒙•席尔瓦说，工会组织非常小心，唯恐转移人们关注的焦点，稀释抗议者的讯息。

    抗议活动利用了公众普遍存在的情绪，即对金融行业的救援行动严重损害了其他人群的利益，让美国严峻的就业形势成为全国关注的焦点。这次抗议也揭露了政界的失败：迄今为止，他们未能采取任何措施来应对就业领域全方位动荡的局面。

    加州大学河滨分校（University of California, Riverside）教授迈克•戴维斯说：“美国很长时间没有针对就业问题进行过严肃的讨论了。”但这位专门从事经济史和社会运动研究的学者表示，就业问题并无轻而易举的解决之道，因为“没有什么政策能把我们近些年来丧失的550万个制造业岗位还给我们。”

    曾在1998年担任麦克阿瑟基金会（MacArthur Foundation）研究员的戴维斯说：“很重要的一点是，抗议者是否有能力将其思想扩散到全美的社会生活中去，这样抗议活动才不会被视为一场仅仅局限于精英校园和城市中心的运动。”

    他补充说，如果不能取得实质性的改变，抗议活动也可能会逐渐退潮，比如2006年洛杉矶爆发的以支持移民权利为主旨的大规模示威活动。现在距离那次示威活动已经过了几年的时间，“还没有取得进展，几乎未能催生出任何权利。”

    劳工历史学家和其他学者把占领华尔街跟过去的一系列运动【比如，1932年为退伍军人争取现金福利的酬恤金游行（the 1932 Bonus March）和民权运动（the Civil Rights Movement）】以及当代的抗议事件【比如，反对剥夺工会集体协商权的威斯康星州抗议活动和埃及解放广场（Tahrir Square）争取自由的示威活动】相提并论。这些示威活动都获得了不同程度的成功。

    At first glance, protesters camping on Wall Street's doorstep might not seem to be a sure recipe for reform. But Tea Party rallies initially didn't seem to be a game changer either.

    Both groups, worried about the future but in different ways, emerged as political and financial leaders failed to tackle the country's battered financial situation.

    The Tea Party plumped fiscal reform, but may have wound up simply solidifying political gridlock. The Occupy Wall Street protest -- only a month old -- is giving voice, and visibility, to serious inequalities, but has yet to arrive at a formula to upend the country's increasingly stratified system.

    The Occupy Wall Street protest "represents an explicit and clear defection from our leadership," says Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    "They are looking for some way to grasp their futures," he says. "In some ways, this period is worse than the 1930s when the country had production capabilities and enjoyed mass productivity. But now the system is not on a structurally sound basis."

    It's too early to tell what will come of the Wall Street protests, but prior national reforms have sprung from such unscripted movements, says Rosemary Feurer, a history professor at Northern Illinois University, who studies labor and social movements.

    The populism that began in the late 1890s, and aimed at powerful banks, railroad trusts and other financial elites, took decades to make a difference, she says. "It wasn't until the mid-1930s that limits were put on Wall Street."

    "Movements don't start with goals and demands," Feurer says. "They always start with grievances. The key is people gathered in a sustained way."

    Like the Tea Party, which was nurtured -- perhaps even launched -- by like-minded Republicans, the Occupy Wall Street movement could find its footing without overt leadership.

    Labor unions have expressed their solidarity with the 99 percenters -- even bringing coffee and doughnuts to their Zuccotti Park encampment -- but are wary of taking any focus away and diluting the protesters' message, according to Damon Silver, a director at AFL-CIO.

    By harnessing widely shared sentiments that the financial sector's rescue seriously damaged the rest of the population, the protest has cast a national spotlight on the grim American jobs picture. It also shined a light on the failure, thus far, of politicians to take any steps to deal with the across-the-board upheaval in employment.

    "It's been so long since this country has had a serious conversation about jobs," says Mike Davis, a University of California, Riverside professor who studies economic history and social movements. But, he says, there are no facile answers because "there is no policy that can bring back the 5.5 million manufacturing jobs that we lost in recent years.

    "Much will depend on the ability of the protesters to extend their ideas into the fabric of the country's life so it's not seen as being confined to elite campuses and cities," says Davis, who was a MacArthur Foundation fellow in 1998.

    Protest movements also can peter out without achieving meaningful change, he adds, pointing to the massive 2006 pro-immigration rights demonstration in Los Angeles. Now, just a few years later, he says, "there has been no progress and there are hardly any rights left."

    Labor historians and others compare Occupy Wall Street to a raft of past movements -- back to the 1932 Bonus March for veterans cash benefits or the Civil Rights Movement as well as current phenomena like the Wisconsin rebellion against bargaining rights-stripping and Egypt's Tahrir Square freedom demonstrators, which have had varied degrees of success.

    然而，占领华尔街抗议活动目前已经蔓延至美国数十个地区，它的口号“我们是那99%的人”可能会为它赢得动力，利希顿斯坦说。

    “这似乎是在重演18世纪的历史，”他解释说。他指的是美国宪法中所规定的财产所有者权利。白人、男性乡绅可以投票。其他85%到90%的人群则没有这项权利。

    “这不仅仅是收入问题，”利希滕斯坦解释说 。“有种观点认为，在当今世界，有少数生产者，如史蒂夫•乔布斯或沃伦•巴菲特，是有德行的但还有占据人口总数1％人，他们是一帮寄生虫。这种思想可以追溯至大英帝国时代“。

    “99%人群”表示，他们抗议的是一小撮控制着全美约三分之一财富，约20%收入的人。到目前为止，针对华尔街及其不端行径的怒火尚未取得进展，但威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校（the University of Wisconsin, Madison）研究20世纪历史的学者威廉•P •琼斯认为，占领华尔街的抗议者已经对政治话语产生了影响。

    “抗议活动开始后的一周之内，就有人提出要向富人征收附加税。这有助于促使人们关注财富的急剧集中问题，”他说。

    目前还没有哪位金融巨头在祖可蒂公园露过面。鉴于此，占领华尔街的示威者上周把他们的讯息带到了摩根大通（JPM）首席执行官杰米•戴蒙和为保守派运动提供资金支持的亿万富翁、实业家大卫•科赫的家中。此举是效仿2008年金融危机爆发之后的做法。当时，一些获得高报酬的银行家的住宅被示威者团团围住。

    花旗集团（Citigroup）首席执行官维潘伟迪本周在接受《财富》杂志（Fortune）主编赛安迪采访时，表示愿意跟示威者见面，但也仅此而已，而且会面时间和地点尚未确定。

    抗议活动到目前为止还相当文明，但令美国民众大为不满（尤其是在过去两年中）的一个热点问题有可能会再次露头。这就是华尔街从业者每年获取的高得令人乍舌的奖金：数十亿美元的现金和股票红利。

    华尔街发放奖金的日子通常在新年后，往往可能是在解雇通知书到达高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）、花旗集团和其他主要金融机构较下层金融员工的案头之后不久，因为这些金融机构的营收目前已经出现下降。

    然而，即使在最艰难的日子，华尔街的从业者每人平均获得的奖金金额也在40万至50万美元，即使是这个数字也可以很轻松地达到任何一位示威者薪酬的99倍之多。

    译者：任文科

    But the Occupy Wall Street protest, which has been burgeoning in dozens of other American locales, may gain traction with its slogan, "We are the 99%," says Lichtenstein.

    "It echoes back to the 18th century," he explains, referring to property-owner rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The white, male landed gentry could vote. The other 85% to 90% could not.

    "It's not just a question of income," explains Lichtenstein. "There was a view that there was a small group of virtuous producers, like Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett in today's world," he says, "and there was a parasitical 1% of the population, an idea that goes back to the time of the British."

    The "99 percenters" say they are rallying against the small sliver of people who control about one-third of the country's wealth and about 20% of its income. Thus far, the anger against Wall Street and suspected wrongdoing has made little headway, but the Occupy Wall Street protesters have made an impact on the political discourse, contends William P. Jones, a 20th-century historian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

    "Within a week after the protest started, there was talk of a tax surcharge on the wealthy. That helps to focus attention on the dramatic concentration of wealth," he says.

    No financial titans have been milling about Zuccotti Park, so Occupy Wall Street demonstrators last week took their message to the New York homes of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) chief executive Jamie Dimon and billionaire industrialist and conservative movement financier David Koch, taking a page from the post-2008 financial crash where some residences of highly remunerated bankers were picketed.

    Citigroup (C) CEO Vikram Pandit went so far as to say he'd be willing to meet with protesters during an interview this week with Fortune's managing editor Andy Serwer, but a time and place has yet to be set.

    So far, it's all been quite civil, but one of the flashpoints of discontent around the country, especially in the last two years, is about to recur. It's the jaw-dropping billions of dollars in cash and stock bonuses awarded annually on Wall Street.

    The award period typically arrives after the New Year, not too long after pink slips are likely to be arriving on the desks of lower-down financial workers at Goldman Sachs (GS), Citigroup and other major financial institutions whose revenues have dipped.

    But even on the worst days, the bonus payouts -- averaging around $400,000 to $500,000 per worker -- are easily 99 times those of any protester's paycheck.