Around 700 protesters descended on Zuccotti park in the center of New York’s financial district on September 17 in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest. The idea for the protest was sparked by Adbusters, an anti-consumerist activist group, and word was spread over the internet. The principle motive of the protest is fighting wealth disparity and corporate greed, hence the motto “We are the 99%,” referring to the bottom 99% of the population, which controls less than half the wealth in the nation. The number of protesters is still growing, with over 15,000 marchers in Lower Manhattan at last count, on October 6, and a spread to Times Square on October 15, according to the OWS media center and New York Police Department (NYPD) reports.

The NYPD has reacted strongly to this protest. Police have used violent tactics on the protesters, yet have made few public statements. The OWS media center and the New York Times have reported the use of “kettling,” where police use orange nets to corral protesters into smaller groups, make mass arrests, and push the entire protest to other areas. The New York Times also reported that over 700 people were arrested at once for crowding the Brooklyn bridge and blocking traffic. Many protesters, including Jesse Myerson, a media coordinator, have contended the police pushed protesters onto the bridge themselves. On two separate occasions, pepper spray was used. In one instance, protesters had approached police barricades separating them from the New York Stock Exchange. In the other, officer Anthony Bologna nonchalantly sprayed a group of about 4 protesters and walked away, according to the Guardian. Both were caught on video.

Critics of the protest, including Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson, have commented on the lack of organization and any specific demands among the protesters, along with their violation of laws. Many have used this to boost the Tea Party based on its obedience, and still others have called OWS “the liberal tea party.” Still, As Jon Stewart accurately remarked, OWS is a misdemeanor, but the actual Boston Tea Party was a felony. Also, the OWS media center has stated that the protests are not intended to have political affiliation like the tea party, but are instead intended to start a conversation. Glenn Beck gave the protesters a little more credit than other critics, saying that capitalists should not negotiate with the protesters, as they would be putting their assets at physical risk.

OWS organizers have been running a large internet and media campaign to encourage the spark of more Occupy movements across the world and to convince U.S. residents to participate in a bank boycott. In this boycott, residents are to move all of their financial obligations and accounts from large banks to local credit unions in order to strangle the banking industry. This works because banks are required by the Federal Reserve to have an amount of actual money proportionate to their loans, and banks operate very close to this threshold. If a large amount of money is withdrawn from the bank, it dips below the reserve requirement and loses its power to make loans. Since banks only make money from loans, they will essentially lose their entire profit.

OWS protesters have repeatedly defended their lack of unified demands. Mike Bray, a press coordinator for OWS, said that "making a list of three or four demands would have ended the conversation before it started." The general assembly of the protest has actively solicited demands from protesters, and several lists are maintained on the protest’s website. Demands on these lists are actually quite specific, such as passing bill HR 1489, the “Return to Prudent Banking Act.” But if the major demands needed to be identified, the most prominent ones would be more equal taxation on the rich, and fixes for high unemployment, corporate greed, and the wealth gap, said CNN. Many protesters are even demanding revolution, be it peaceful or violent.

Occupy Wall Street has spread, too. Over 1,500 cities across the globe and 100 in the US have had Occupy protests begin, according to the OWS media center. They said prominent locations include Berlin, Athens, Sydney, Ottawa, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Tokyo, and Seoul, and in the UK over 3000 people attempted to occupy the actual floor of the London Stock Exchange. The Electronic Frontier Foundation attributes the success to the use of mobile and internet technology, and has released an instructional list on how to protect one’s mobile device from illegal police inquiry.

Protesters have shown the ingenuity and capability for organization many times. For example, since a sound system is prohibited in the park, protesters have been using a technique known as the “human microphone,” where those who can hear the speaker yell what he just said so the entire protest can hear. Using local scrap, protesters have built a greywater system to water the park’s plants in the absence of maintenance crews. In defiance of an attempt to evict them for “cleaning” on the morning of Friday, October 14, protesters brought in cleaning supplies and had a mass demonstration of their ability to keep the park clean themselves. As of October 11, not a single complaint about park cleanliness has been received. The protesters have set up an advanced media center, containing gas generators running internet access, cell phones, wireless routers, and laptop computers. From this center, the protest updates its website, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, broadcasts a livestream, and conducts communications with other Occupy protests via email and Skype. Such feats are not only documented and published by the OWS media center, but are also advertised as a demonstration of solidarity. All of this is evident when analyzing video and pictures taken by protesters, a powerful tool for documenting any protest with which the police do not agree and wish to quiet.