Officially, the Occupy Wall Street movement began on Sept. 17, 2011 in the streets of Lower Manhattan's Financial District. But Egyptians who flooded Cairo's Tahrir Square, demanding the ouster of the dictatorial President Hosni Mubarak, provoked interest in a U.S. public uprising months earlier. On Feb. 2, 2011, while Mubarak clung to his final shreds of power, Adbusters staff writer Kono Matsu wrote an editorial blog post on the Web site of the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine, urging Americans to take a cue from Cairo [source: Weigel and Hepler]. Frustrated with the arguably toothless governmental response to financial organizations and corporations -- which many hold partly responsible for the U.S. economic recession and resulting high unemployment rate -- Matsu encouraged the politically radical readership to organize a "Million Man March on Wall Street" [source: Matsu].
Then, on July 13, after Mubarak had long since ceded government control to the Egyptian military, another Adbusters post sounded the official rallying cry with the Twitter hashtag "#OccupyWallStreet." Modeled after the social media strategies that assisted the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt especially, the "#OccupyWallStreet" hashtag was intended to quickly spread the word that on Sept. 17, 2011, 20,000 people should "flood into Lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street" [source: Adbusters]. In late August, activist hacking group Anonymous (its members known for wearing Guy Fawkes masks in public), published a video supporting the protest, and word about the burgeoning movement continued to circulate around Web sites and social media outlets.
Referred to both as Occupy Wall Street and the U.S. Day of Rage, the Sept. 17 protest attracted roughly 1,000 participants to Lower Manhattan. New York City police anticipating the rally barricaded off much of Wall Street, and protesters instead set up camp in Zuccotti Park (known as "Liberty Square" by activists reclaiming the financial district park's original name, "Liberty Plaza Park"), which would become the movement's home base. Media reports largely dismissed these activities as disjointed and the participants as leftist radicals. Nevertheless, in the following weeks, the determined gathering of anarchists, students, ex-hippies and hackers in Zuccotti Park gained more followers and traction. And despite criticism against Occupy Wall Street's initial lack of focus and clout, its populist slogan -- "We Are the 99 Percent" -- started to spread around the world.


Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Who is the 99 percent?

On Sept. 9, 2011, a Tumblr blog called "We Are the 99 Percent" went live, and people began sharing their stories of unemployment, staggering healthcare expenses, lack of access to quality educations and other grievances. The "99 percent" slogan refers to the imbalanced concentration of wealth in the United States among the richest 1 percent of the population. Just like the Adbusters post and Anonymous video that sparked online conversations about how, where and when to start a mass demonstration against economic power players, the Tumblr blog infused the political with the personal, providing human context for the protest.
But offline, who are the people who have shown up for the Occupy Wall Street movement?
Initially, the mainstream media painted Occupy Wall Street as a ragtag bunch of out-of-work college graduates, anarchists and aging hippies. Based on data gathered from OccupyWallSt.org, one of the most-visited Occupy-affiliated sites, the typical protester defies those initial stereotypes of an unemployed, over-educated mob. Rather, the average American Occupy activist appears to be a college-educated white male between 25 and 44 years old, who has a full-time job [source: Captain]. Additionally, Occupy Wall Street isn't comprised of self-identifying Democrats. Seventy percent of those included in the October 2011 survey described their political views as independent [source: Captain].
In its early phases, the protest also attracted influential support -- particularly that of labor unions. Occupy Wall Street's demands for better jobs, wages and benefits for middle- and low-income America resonated within the employee advocacy groups that have historically battled and negotiated with businesses and corporations on behalf of their "99 percent" members. As of Nov. 1, 2011, some of the largest unions associated with Occupy Wall Street efforts around the United States include the following:
  • AFL-CIO
  • United Federation of Teachers
  • Service Employees International Union
  • New York City Transit Union
  • Air Line Pilots Association
  • Amalgamated Transit Union
  • American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
Now that we know who, for the most part, makes Occupy Wall Street tick, how does this long-term protest movement work?