Six days after crowds gathered in downtown New York City to see the opening of the new 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, another crowd gathered on Wall Street and began the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstration.

Since that day two months ago, more than 200 movements like this one have spread across the United States, including Michigan. Cities like Ann Arbor, Brighton, Flint, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Marquette, Muskegon, Saginaw, Saline and Traverse City all have occupy demonstrations.

Occupy Wall Street was started by an activist group named Adbusters. Adbusters is a not-for-profit, reader-supported magazine based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The Adbusters’ mission statement on their website says, “We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we live in the twenty-first century.”

According the Occupy Wall Street website, the purpose is to fight 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 greatest recession in generations.”

This movement was inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. The Occupy Wall Street website described the protest as aiming to expose how the richest one percent of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy.

There is no leader, but the protest includes people of all races and political affiliations. The only common factor is that the protesters will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the one percent of people with the wealth. The creators of the Occupy Wall Street website wrote, “We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don’t need Wall Street and we don’t need politicians to build a better society.”

On Tuesday, Nov. 15, the police raided Liberty Square, also known as Zuccotti Park, the place Occupy Wall Street protesters have called home for the past two months. The raid included tear gas, pepper spray, bulldozers and police in riot gear. The Occupy Wall Street website had live updates so anyone not in the area could know what was going on.

The protesters were evicted from the park because a city judge ruled the park needed to be cleared and cleaned. The ruling allowed the protesters to return, but banned them from bringing tents, tarps and sleeping bags to stay overnight.

Nov. 17 is the movement’s International Day of Action. In New York City, protesters will be shutting down Wall Street at breakfast, occupying the subways at lunch and taking the square at dinner.

For more information about the Occupy Wall Street movement or to view a live steam of the activities and speeches going on in New York City, visit www.occupywallst.org. Anyone interested can also visit the locations of the occupy movements in the area to find out more from some of the participants.

[WRITER’S NOTE: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NOVEMBER 2011 EDITION OF “THE PULSE”]