Ron Paul a Key Inspiration to Occupy Movement

Oh, yes he was

On the very first night of the Zuccotti Park occupation in September 2011, when participants had scant conception of what Occupy would soon become, Ron Paul people showed up and argued with Marxists about whether they were entitled to stay. They stayed. One might say Ron Paul people played a more integral role to the inception of Occupy than conventional Democrats or liberals, many of whom scorned the inscrutable demonstration in its first weeks. The journalist Arun Gupta, who co-founded the Occupied Wall Street Journal in New York City and later embarked on a tour of Occupy sites across America, told me he'd see clusters of Ron Paul supporters and various libertarians virtually everywhere he went. Such folks "tended to be better represented and integrated in red states," Gupta said–Cheyenne, Boise, Tulsa, Little Rock, Louisville, Charleston, etc.–while in "blue states" they typically formed enclaves that were "tolerated" by the wider group.