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Occupy Wall Street is running out of money and will be broke in three weeks, according to the group's accounting committee.
The report said, "At our current rate of expenditure, we will be out of money in THREE WEEKS."
The report - posted on the group's websitewww.nycga.net - showed $1,556 had been raised that week, while $14,942 had been spent on the group's kitchen, street medics, New York bus and subway passes, and printing costs.
The latest donation total constrasted sharply with the estimated $500,000 the group raised within weeks of setting up camp at Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17.
Since Occupy Wall Street began, it has received more than $730,000 in donations, according to the accounting group. It has a fiscal sponsor, the Tucson-based Alliance for Global Justice, which allows donations to be tax exempt.
Critics say the Occupy movement lacks direction and specific demands and has lost momentum. Occupy protest crowds in New York and other U.S. cities have tended to number only in the hundreds, despite the group's social media savvy.
But Occupy Wall Street spokesman Ed Needham said, "The success of the movement has never depended on money."
"Occupy Wall Street is about our abundant human resources - the creative talent, dedication and sweat equity of people here and elsewhere that have decided to stand up against a corrupt and unjust society run by a powerful elite few," he said.
Inspired by the pro-democracy Arab Spring movement and Spain's "Indignados" movement, Occupy sparked a national debate about economic inequality and has influenced the political debate in this year's U.S. presidential election campaign.
The Occupy movement, which prides itself on being leaderless, has struggled to grow beyond the initial protest camps that sustained it.
For a "leaderless" group they sure have figured out how to spend a lot of money. That $700,000 is a lot of scratch and given that there were complaints last fall about some Occupy people staying in expensive hotels and the accounting committee not telling anyone where the money was going, one can imagine that at least some of that cash has been misused.
And as far as influencing politics, the Democrats and President Obama have adopted the rhetoric of the group but have tiptoed away from endorsing them after the crime, the riots, the vandalism, and the general wackiness became apparent. When the group re-emerges in the spring, the Republicans should make every effort to tie OWS to the Democrats because all that's left are hard core lefties whose agenda is poison to mainstream Democrats.
