We. Are. The 99 Percent. (31 images)
On September 17, 2011 roughly 1,000 protesters marched through the streets of New York City to Zuccotti Park in the Financial District 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.
The movement itself is leaderless, a mass of people who, while being directed by a rotating group of "facilitators", are mostly left to express themselves as they...
more »On September 17, 2011 roughly 1,000 protesters marched through the streets of New York City to Zuccotti Park in the Financial District 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.
The movement itself is leaderless, a mass of people who, while being directed by a rotating group of "facilitators", are mostly left to express themselves as they wish. Much has been made about the protester's lack of focus, of being scattered and indeed ten different conversations with ten different people in the now renamed "Liberty Park" will likely yield ten different reasons why they have chosen to gather there. And with ten different corresponding solutions to their problems.
There is an undercurrent though, a theme that brings them all together, from the environmentalist to the anarchist to the libertarian- that something in the way that this country is run is wrong. That somehow we have been led astray and deceived, worst of all not under the cover of darkness but in plain sight and without shame. And so they gather. To talk, to organize, to begin a process. And no matter what their conclusions, no matter what their eventual demands are they have already won. They have shown the American people that they are in fact unified in their discontent with the powers that be. They have shown that democracy still stands for something. They have shown that there is another way of being, there is another way of gaining consensus, of governing a mass group of people that is above all things fair. And their voice is only growing.
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