Occupy NH Mic Checks President Obama

When President Obama traveled to Manchester today to present the case for his American Jobs Act, he was interrupted by a “mic check” protest organized by Occupy New Hampshire. The call-and-response protest demanded the President speak out against the “campaign of fear and intimidation used against Occupy protesters.”

”Mr. President. Over 4,000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While Banksters continue to destroy the economy. You MUST stop the assault on our First Amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable.”

The President stopped speaking and listened to the protesters before they were drowned out by the audience. He later acknowledged the Occupy movement in his speech:

“A lot of the folks who’ve been down in New York and all across the country in the Occupy movement, there is a profound sense of frustration, there’s a profound sense of frustration about the fact that the essence of the American dream, which is that if you work hard, if you stick to it that you can make it, feels like that’s slipping away, and that’s not the way things are supposed to be, not here, not in America.

“This is a place where your hard work and your responsibility’s supposed to pay off, it’s supposed to be a big, compassionate country where everybody who works hard should have a chance to get ahead, not just the person who owns the factory, but then men and women who work on the factory floor.”