One of the more important events in recent history Occupy Wall Street was a movement that highlighted corporate greed, economic inequality, and corruption.

The protest first came to be in September 2011 and we are still learning the facts and reasons behind the protest to this day. But considering that not everyone is familiar with the protest, we decided to give you the 6 things most don’t know about Occupy Wall Street.

So with all that said, let’s start.

The Organizers Were Canadian

Many remember Occupy Wall Street as a protest that marched against the before-mentioned reasons. And while that certainly is true, not many know who the organizers actually were. The original idea to highlight corporate greed, corruption, and economic inequality first occur to Canadian magazine founder Kalle Lasn. The founder of Adbusters and its editor, Micah White, agreed to launch the idea of a protest through a phone call. The Adbusters team was all in agreement that a change was necessary to stop the financial sector from influencing the US government.

The designers came up with the posters, while traction quickly picked up pace through social media. The Adbusters team used the hashtag #OCCUPYWALLSTREET and came up with a Twitter profile of the same name. In the following days, New York activists were quick to jump on board, and in just a matter of weeks, the protest came to be.

It All Started With A Blog Post

While Twitter became the main platform of the movement, the first time the protest saw progress was after Adbusters’s famous blog post. In the blog post, calls were made by the magazine for a shift in revolutionary tactics. The magazine asked protestors to peacefully protest in lower Manhattan by setting up tents in nearby parks. The goal of the protest, as per the blog post, was to occupy Wall Street for a few months. Hopefully, that would give protestors enough leverage for changes to be made.

Although Adbusters magazine started the movement, in their blog post, Adbusters say that there would be no leadership. Only the masses would agree on the appropriate course of action.

Anonymous Helped Spread the Movement

By August, the call for protest was already picking up pace. It won’t be a whole month until protestors would set up temporary tents and occupy the financial buildings. The movement gained support from police officers, normal people, politicians, financial experts, and Anonymous.

Anonymous is a notorious hacker group with a strong emphasis on activism. Through their Twitter and Facebook pages, the hackers offered support to the call for protest and change. Anonymous would put up a YouTube video saying that “they” (as in the people) would set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades, and occupy WS for a few months.

In their video, the organization described their movement as peaceful and nonviolent, claiming they will strongly condemn any acts of violence on behalf of the protestors.

Tim Pool Live Streamed the Event

Tim Pool was the first person to live stream the event. Before September 2011, Tim Pool was a skateboard videographer with zero experience in live streaming or investigative journalism. Nowadays, Tim Pool is a prominent political commentator on YouTube. He’s also been on the Joe Rogan Experience and heavily covered the 2016 and 2020 US Presidential Election. 

He quickly rose to fame during OWS when he spent 21 hours live-streaming the event. In an interview, he said that he used a Samsung Galaxy S II, energizer batteries, and streamed on US Stream. The main takeaway was the Tim Pool was challenging mainstream media by showing everyone what the media wouldn’t. Using amateur gear worth $500, Tim Pool managed to do far more than what mainstream news companies would on billion-dollar budgets, hundreds of film crews, helicopters, and expensive equipment.

Many are curious about the net worth of Tim Pool considering the protest. During the 21-house Livestream raid of Zuccotti Park, Pool managed to get 20,000 concurrent viewers.

The Protest Grew Throughout the US

While the protest initially started at Zuccotti Park, it quickly spread throughout the United States. Some of the more notable places where larger-scale protests took place were Denver, Oakland, and Miami. In many of these cities, the police were on the side of the protestors and the protests themselves were much more peaceful than in New York.

Attack On the New York Stock Exchange

This one is a subject of plenty of debate. On October 2nd, a YouTube video announces that the New York Stock Exchange would be erased from the Internet in 8 days (October 10th). In reality, the hackers launched DDoS attacks and took down the NYSE website for only a couple of minutes.

Many protestors denounced this move as it didn’t align with their interests. Furthermore, an investigation found out that the DDoS attacks could very well originate from within the US government. At the time, Anonymous was a serious threat to national security, and even Homeland Security got involved in dealing with them. The DDoS attacks were likely carried out to provoke the organization into revealing itself as malicious and harmful towards the US.

Jane