Gone Global

On October 15th, protests were held from North and South America to Asia, Africa and Europe, with over 1,500 events in 82 countries, as part of a global day of action.

Flourished with Diversity

Occupiers of different ages, races, walks of life, and political beliefs have joined the movement. The mix grew quickly to include students, elderly people, families with children, construction workers on their lunch breaks, unemployed Wall Street executives, Iraq & Afghanistan veterans, mothers, and many others.

Gained Support in the Heartland

Occupy actions are happening all across middle America, from Kethcum, ID to Kalamazoo, MI, from Orlando to Anchorage. Every day financial contributions arrive along with clothes, food, and notes of support from all across the country.

A couple from West Virginia who have been sending supplies to Liberty Square occupiers writes: “We are so grateful for all of you involved in this defence of America. We firmly believe this is ‘it.’ If we can't grab this democracy this time, we'll sink and it will be a long time before we will have this opportunity again. Thank you for taking time from your busy life to be there.”

Changed the Conversation

The people-powered force of shared anger at a broken system that profits the top 1% at the expense of the rest of us has shifted the national dialogue. The Occupy Wall Street protest has become a cultural phenomenon, mentioned everywhere from jokes on Saturday Night Live to the solemn dedication of the national memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by President Obama Sunday.

We, the occupiers, have shown our country how to come together and respect differences while working together to build a movement for change.

What a month, and we are only getting started!

Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally.

OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the actions against the greatest recession in a generation.

The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.

The tented city that has sprung up around St. Paul's Cathedral recently, is testament to the determination of people to organise against the depredations of the banking sector. Their rage against the financial sector is easy to understand, particularly now that governments are being forced to cut spending and raise taxes to repair deficits caused partly by the cost of bank bailouts. The protesters in New York, London, Frankfurt and around the world are right to ask whether we should rethink society's relationship with the banking industry.

The banking sector has brought it entirely on itself. Any analysis of what is wrong with the global financial system needs to take as its starting point the vast bonus payouts by the major investment banks in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Even more than the excesses of the booms, it was these gratuitous awards while the crisis was raging that showed something is seriously wrong with our financial system.

The banks had seized upon every policy response designed to spare the world the consequences of the banking system's failures—the bailouts, liquidity-support operations, fiscal-stimulus packages, low interest rates, quantitative easing—and trousered the proceeds for themselves.