In a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, replying to an Oct. 22 front-page article titled “Wall St. Protest Isn’t Like Ours, Tea Party Says,” Oberlin College professor of politics Stephen Crowley points out an essential distinction:

There is another crucial difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements, and one that is likely to be played down by Tea Party supporters.

As studies by political scientists and others have demonstrated, the Tea Party movement received sizable donations from wealthy backers seeking to use the movement to further their goals of tax cuts for the wealthy, the privatization of Social Security and the deregulation of the private sector. [our emphasis]

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been criticized for lacking clear demands, but with its unambiguous denunciation of large corporations, the financial elite and the 1 percent of wealthiest Americans, this is one movement unlikely to be co-opted by wealthy benefactors.

—Stephen Crowley  |  Cleveland Heights, Ohio  |  Oct. 22, 2011

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See other Letters to the Editor under the heading “Occupiers, Tea Partiers and a Dash of Star Power” published on Thursday, Oct. 27, here.

Among the wealthy backers of the Tea Party referred to by Professor Crowley, to name only a few, are the billionaire, pro-corporate activist Koch brothers, FreedomWorks, and Fox News. Explore further at Media Matters for America, Think Progress, and Right Wing Watch.