NEW YORK — They may not have been separated at birth, but these twins are a million miles apart.
Both are 23-year-old Ivy League graduates. One, Nicole Carty, is an impassioned soldier in the war for economic justice, on the front lines at Occupy Wall Street.
The other, Jill Carty, has a different reason to be on Wall Street: profit. As a consultant at a major financial services firm, she is well on her way into the rarefied air of the so-called “1 percent.”
It’s going to be an interesting Thanksgiving dinner at the Carty family table.
“It started as soon as we first got back from college,” Nicole told The Daily. “Right from the start, it was a screaming match. Even when we try not to talk about politics, one of us will say something to set the other one off.”
The sisters both graduated last year. Nicole, who is five minutes older, has a sociology degree from Brown, and Jill has dual degrees in international studies and business from the University of Pennsylvania.
Nicole took a job as an online content manager but committed herself to Occupy Wall Street after seeing video of penned-in female protesters being pepper sprayed by police.
Now she spends countless hours on the protest’s facilitation committee, allocating resources — including $500,000 in donations — and helping to steer the leaderless movement.
“It’s misplaced passion,” said Jill of her sister’s devotion to the struggle. “She could be even more powerful if she worked in economics, using the tools of Wall Street to fight back.”
The twins’ mother, Rhoda Carty, 58, also wanted Nicole to use her Ivy League education as a springboard into a more financially rewarding profession.
“If it were up to me, I would have liked her to study economics,” said Rhoda Carty by phone from her home in Atlanta, where she raised her girls after immigrating from the Caribbean.
“But my father was something of a revolutionary on Anguilla, and I think it may be in Nicole’s DNA,” she said. “She has her mother’s full support. I do feel that it’s time for a paradigm shift.”
Nicole talks of a “false consciousness” pervading American culture, and likens it to the antebellum South, when poor whites identified with rich plantation owners even though, economically, they had more in common with black slaves.
“That’s what’s going on right now,” said Nicole. “Many Americans still believe they will eventually attain great economic success, even though all the odds are against it.”
Jill agrees there are some serious faults in the nation’s financial sector, especially since both sisters witnessed what the financial crash of 2008 did to their mother, who had worked her way from a struggling immigrant to a position of being able to send her daughters to top schools.
Mom was living the American dream but now, years after the crash, she is “pretty much right back where she started,” said Nicole.
Yet Jill has no sympathy for Occupy Wall Street’s demands — varied and undefined as they are. Instead, she believes in a libertarian approach, where a laissez-faire government has little to no influence on business.
“The problem is not that corporations are buying politicians, it’s that politicians are worth buying,” Jill said. “My sister says the corporations need to get out of government. But I would say government needs to get out of a lot of things.”
Yesterday, Jill visited the encampment at Zuccotti Park near Wall Street for the first time.
While the drum circles and bandannas struck her as silly cliches, she enjoyed walking around with Nicole, who is something of a celebrity there.
“It’s cool that people recognize my sister and she’s found this sense of community,” said Jill. “I am a little concerned about the weather, that she might catch cold. Then again, she catches cold every year.”
Nicole’s mom is equally anxious about the impeding winter, when Occupy Wall Street is likely to face life-threatening conditions.
“Even at my age, I know something about social media,” Rhoda Carty said. “I’d encourage them to use it during the winter to keep their protest going. They can go back to the park in the spring.”