What is Occupy Wall Street?

Occupy Wall Street was a hashtag-driven protest movement that started September 17, 2011 with an encampment in Zuccotti Park, near the New York Stock Exchange, aimed at corporate greed and money in politics.

Where did Occupy Wall Street come from?

The Canadian magazine Adbusters published a July 13, 2011 blog post titled '#OCCUPYWALLSTREET' calling for a sit-in on September 17, and co-founder Kalle Lasn told CNN the plan drew on Arab Spring protests like Tahrir Square.

What does Occupy Wall Street mean?

The phrase refers to literally taking over public space next to Wall Street to protest financial-sector power and demand political reform, and it became shorthand for the wider 'We are the 99%' movement.

How do you use Occupy Wall Street?

Online, people used '#OccupyWallStreet' to organize and live-report from the camp, and copied the '#Occupy[City]' template to launch sister protests in Boston, Oakland, London and other cities.

Is Occupy Wall Street still popular?

The Zuccotti Park camp was cleared by NYPD on November 15, 2011 and the on-the-ground movement wound down soon after, but the '99%' framing it popularized stuck in U.S. political language.

Occupy Wall Street

2011eventclassic

Published September 18, 2026

Occupy Wall Street kicked off on September 17, 2011 when a few hundred protesters set up camp in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park to rail against corporate greed and money in politics. The Adbusters-organized sit-in grew into a months-long occupation that turned '#OccupyWallStreet' and 'We are the 99%' into rallying cries across Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube.

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Overview

The occupation ran on a leaderless, social-media-first model. Adbusters, the Vancouver-based anti-consumerist magazine, floated the idea in July 2011 and let the hashtag do most of the recruiting1. The hacktivist collective Anonymous picked up the call and urged supporters to bring tents to Wall Street2, and by mid-September Zuccotti Park held a working camp with a kitchen, library and daily general assemblies.

The visual language traveled fast. Livestreams of NYPD arrests, footage of the 'human microphone' in use, and homemade '99%' signs circulated on Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube, making the protest look bigger online than any single day of foot traffic in the park3. Copycat encampments opened in Boston, Oakland, London and dozens of other cities within weeks, all riding the same '#Occupy' naming convention4.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Adbusters / Twitter (viral spread)

Creator

Adbusters

Date

2011

On July 13, 2011, Adbusters published a call titled '#OCCUPYWALLSTREET,' asking 20,000 people to flood lower Manhattan on September 17 and stay until President Barack Obama convened a commission to strip money out of Washington politics4. Co-founder Kalle Lasn told CNN the plan borrowed directly from the Arab Spring, and in particular the Tahrir Square sit-in that helped topple Hosni Mubarak earlier that year1.

The hashtag started trending on Twitter around July 26, 2011 after the newly launched @OccupyWallStNYC account began pushing logistics, with @USDayofRage joining the push4. On September 17, a few hundred marchers pushed past police barricades and settled into Zuccotti Park, which organizers rebranded 'Liberty Park' as a nod to Tahrir3.

How It Spread

Major TV networks mostly ignored the camp during the first week, but mass arrests and viral videos of NYPD confrontations drew wider eyes to Zuccotti Park3. Within weeks 'Occupy' encampments popped up in more than a hundred U.S. cities and internationally, with parallel tags like #OccupyBoston and #OccupyOakland showing up on Twitter alongside the original hashtag1.

Online supporters produced protest footage, marches and speeches from the park5, and the movement's Twitter accounts spent real energy policing impostors. BuzzFeed reported that the OccupyWallStreet team publicly shut down a parody Occupy Wall Street account trying to piggyback off the campaign6.

The NYPD cleared Zuccotti Park in a pre-dawn raid on November 15, 2011, and video of the eviction was uploaded to YouTube within hours7. Camps in other cities were dismantled around the same stretch, but the '99%' framing stuck in U.S. political speech long after the tents came down4.

Timeline

2011-07-13

Adbusters publishes the '#OCCUPYWALLSTREET' call, asking 20,000 people to occupy lower Manhattan on September 17.

2011-07-26

The #OCCUPYWALLSTREET hashtag begins trending on Twitter; @OccupyWallStNYC launches to run logistics.

2011-09-16

CNN publishes a profile of the planned protest ahead of the sit-in, quoting Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn.

2011-09-17

Protesters occupy Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, rebranding it 'Liberty Park.'

2011-10

'Occupy' encampments open in Boston, Oakland, London and dozens of other cities; parody accounts get shut down by the official OWS team.

2011-11-15

NYPD clears Zuccotti Park in a pre-dawn raid; video of the eviction circulates on YouTube.

How to Use This Meme

The '#OccupyWallStreet' hashtag was used as an organizing tag before September 17, then as a live-reporting tag from the camp. The naming template '#Occupy[CityName]' was copied by activists worldwide to launch sister encampments, and the 'We are the 99%' slogan was often paired with personal-story image posts on Tumblr.