Fifteen years ago this week, thousands of activists marched on the Financial District in New York City. They formed the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park, launching a movement focused on economic inequality that spread across the nation and globe under the slogan, “We are the 99%.” Protesters would go on to sleep in Zuccotti Park for nearly two months before police raided the encampment.
“Occupy Wall Street changed the public’s common sense about class and class struggle and inequality in this country,” says Yotam Marom, who helped organize the Occupy protests in New York City. “It’s hard to see how you get a Bernie Sanders 2016 run without the public shifting its relationship to that story.”
Marom says Occupy participants were inspired by mass protests happening around the world at that time, including the Arab Spring and the anti-austerity movement in Spain known as the Indignados.
Still, “We got it wrong on a lot of things. We had a ton of internal conflict that really jeopardized the project,” he says.
Marom’s new book is For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Democracy Now! | Radio Free (2026-09-18T12:46:29+00:00) “We Are the 99%”: 15 Years Later, Occupy Wall Street’s Impact Is Still Being Felt. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2026/09/18/we-are-the-99-15-years-later-occupy-wall-streets-impact-is-still-being-felt-2/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.