On Tuesday, Your Ward Room Blogger was sipping tofu soup in the James R. Thompson Center food court (the most cosmopolitan food court in Chicago, by the way), when a group of Occupy demonstrators sat down next to me, to hold a strategy meeting. On the jacket of an Occupy South Side member, I saw this button: MAYOR 1%, with a photo of Rahm Emanuel.
This morning, during a protest outside the City Council chamber, I saw even more MAYOR 1% buttons.
The nickname looked familiar. It was the title of a blog post that appeared on Ward Room on Oct. 13, 2011, four weeks after the Occupy Wall Street protest began.
Since then, it has been used on Occupy Chicago press releases, and on the sites Common Dreams and Labor Notes. It has been applied to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, although in the Ward Room lexicon, he is “Mayor 0.1%.” Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been dubbed “Mr. One Percent” by his liberal opponents.
In other words, Ward Room wants a royalty every time the term “Mayor 1%” of “Mister One Percent” is used. Unlike Mayor 1%, we’re not greedy. One cent is enough.
