On September 17, 2011 roughly 1,000 protesters marched through the streets of New York City to Zuccotti Park under the banner of "Occupy Wall Street". That night an estimated 100 people slept in the private park and thus began the "occupation" of Wall Street.

While the group's beginnings can be traced to a proposal in "Adbusters", an anti-consumerist magazine, the movement itself is leaderless, a mass of people who, while being directed by a...
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On September 17, 2011 roughly 1,000 protesters marched through the streets of New York City to Zuccotti Park under the banner of "Occupy Wall Street". That night an estimated 100 people slept in the private park and thus began the "occupation" of Wall Street.

While the group's beginnings can be traced to a proposal in "Adbusters", an anti-consumerist magazine, the movement itself is leaderless, a mass of people who, while being directed by a rotating group of "facilitators", are left to express themselves as they wish. Ten different conversations with ten different protesters will likely yield ten different reasons why they have chosen to gather in the park (and with ten different solutions to their problems). They are joined together at a more root level - that something in the way that this country is run is wrong. That somehow we have been led astray, worst of all not under the cover of darkness but in plain sight and without shame.

The movement's main strength and weakness is the same: this mass appeal to all who sense that their needs are not being met. Once a particular set of demands becomes fleshed out (as it inevitably must lest the protest be marginalized as a general whining, a punk movement that is more ANTI everything than FOR anything) this thing that feels very powerful will possibly come fluttering to the ground as it becomes drowned in the inane way that most issues are drowned in this country. Perhaps this is why those "leading" this pack are loath to give that up.

Or perhaps this is missing the point altogether. Perhaps the very act of them unifying in the street with strangers, building a process entirely from the ground up, showing people that there is a different way of governance (or showing people the how democracy should work) is the point itself. No matter what their conclusions or possible demands, they have already made their point- that there are alternatives and that the people do still hold ultimate power.
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