Will Occupy Wall Street Reach India, One of the World's Most Unequal Countries?

India's main opposition party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stage a protest against corruption in Indore, India, October 2, 2011. (Photo: Sanjeev Gupta / EPA)

In India mass, non-violent protest is not only a founding national principle; it is a highly developed art form. Any journalist working here must quickly figure out the difference between a dharna (sit-down protest) and a bandh (a general strike), and learn the peculiar conventions of the "fast unto death": every hunger strike must include the manufactured drama of supporters visiting the faster to plead with him, on camera, to break his fast; when he does, cue the symbolism. (The anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare broke his 13-day fast earlier this year by drinking coconut water offered to him by  two little girls—one Muslim, one Dalit—to emphasize the inclusiveness of his movement.)

So why hasn't Occupy Wall Street spread to India yet? India has its own version of Wall Street—Dalal Street in Mumbai—and staggering inequalities of wealth. And yet the protests have so far gotten only as close as Hong Kong and Singapore. The Wall Street Journal reports that there is a group called Occupy Mumbai, but even it is directing its protests at politicians, not bankers. Dinesh Thakkar, head of Angel Broking, one of India's largest stock brokerage houses, reasons in an interview with the Hindu newspaper that India hasn't fully embraced capitalism, so it isn't yet an object of public anger:

"Caught between socialism and capitalism, India does not provide fertile conditions for mass resentment against capital markets....The awareness about capital markets is low even among the educated Indians which makes it a non entity in their lives. So there is no connect between an anti-capitalist movement and the daily grind of an aam-aadmi [the common man]."

It's an interesting analysis, particularly from a financial insider. And he is right about one thing: the vast majority of Indians live and work outside the formal economy, so the financial markets are much less important to them than, say, the price of petrol or the difficulty of getting a ration card, both of which are the responsibility of the state. That's why India's mass protest movement has channeled public anger mainly at the government.

That doesn't mean the Occupy Wall Street movement has left India untouched. It is getting lots of attention in the Indian press — India's largest circulation English-language daily, the Times of India, today floated the poll question, "Wall Street protest: Is it the beginning of the end of capitalism?" And the country's largest leftist party, the Communist Party (Marxist), is considering hitching itself to the 'Occupy' bandwagon to restore its faded popular appeal and credibility, according to a report in the Indian Express:

The ‘Occupy Wall Street' movement that is spreading around the globe has excited the CPM at a time when it is engaged in an exercise to redefine its ideological approach to keep pace with the changing times and counter the neo-liberal economic framework. It has decided to launch a campaign on issues that can appeal to the middle class besides the poor. Against the backdrop of the global agitation against corporate greed, the comrades felt it was time to “step up and broaden” the campaign against the “neo-liberal policies” in India. Assessing the impact of “globalisation” and prescribing credible policy alternatives besides stepping up its fight against imperialism were at the centre of the ideological resolution which the Politburo has finalised.

It's unlikely, though, that Occupy Wall Street will get to India via an established political party. The movement gets its energy from its spontaneity; trying to harness to a fixed political agenda is likely to drain its appeal. That is already happening to India's anti-corruption movement, which rode a wave of public sympathy this summer but since has devolved into a collection of competing egos and priorities. In the last week alone, one faction of the Anna Hazare movement's leadership claimed credit for defeating a Congress Party candidate in a state by-election while another faction quit over the "political turn" that the movement has taken. Meanwhile, a group of activists from Hazare's home village publicly complained about not getting an appointment with Congress Party scion Rahul Gandhi—sounding less like visionary reformers than ordinary political supplicants. That's a lesson the Occupy Wall Street movement might consider as it comes under increasing pressure to define its own policy agenda.

Hazare's movement has also failed to move beyond its lone demand for the establishment of a Lokpal—a new, indepenent, anti-corruption ombudsman—to look more closely at the ties between India's increasingly powerful industrial houses and the government. Many progressive activists, most notably Arundhati Roy, have criticized Hazare for letting corporations off the hook and, in fact, allowing them to co-opt the anti-government public mood to their benefit. Some observers have cast India's anti-corruption movement as an iteration of the indignados, a loosely defined Spanish protest ethos of which Occupy Wall Street is the latest. By that reasoning, the Hazare crowd would be enthusiastically "occupying" New Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai this week. That hasn't happened, and it isn't likely to. Indians may yet occupy Dalal Street — but it will take a new generation of protesters to do it.

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Israel: What Occupy Tel Aviv Can Teach Occupy Wall Street

Israelis sleep in a protest tent encampment in central Tel Aviv, Israel, July 2011.

The tents seem to be everywhere now — Wall Street, London, Hong Kong, Madrid — but very little really comes close to what happened in Israel this summer: thousands camping out, hundreds of thousands marching, a society transformed. "It's all part of the same thing. It's people saying, 'We want to be in charge,'" says Stav Shaffir, 26, one of the first Israeli campers. Says Yonatan Levi, also 26, and also an early organizer, on the comparison with the scale of things in New York City: "Sadly I think we were much more successful in transmitting our message and our ability to show up in great numbers. I mean, a half million to a million people!"

The tent protests in Tel Aviv began in muggy mid-July with a handful of young people pitching tents to protest the skyrocketing price of housing in Israel. (Tents, get it?) The first night the reporters outnumbered the protesters, but a chord had been struck. The focus quickly widened to take in a wide gamut of shared complaints about an economy that looked great at the macro level, but had created a growing gap between rich and poor. Inspired in part by the Arab Spring — "People thought, Wow, if they can do it, why can't we do it?" says Shaffir — and in part by Madrid's Indignants movement, the Israeli protests combined and managed the contagious spread seen in Israel's neighbors as well as the difficult economic and social issues similar to those that emerged in Spain. Ground zero, fittingly enough, in the Tel Aviv protests was Rothschild Boulevard, a shady walkway named for a fabulously wealthy family who helped found Israel as a state originally grounded in social welfare. Within two weeks, 40 camps had sprung up around the country. Two weeks later, the camps numbered 100 and marchers 350,000, a whopping turnout in a country of just 7 million.(See photos of Occupy protests from around the world.)

"The spirit of this was amazing," says Shaffir. "That's maybe something you can send to the people at Wall Street: happiness was the key. Journalists asked: 'Is it really serious? Because I see a lot of people smiling.' I said that's what makes it serious. People have hope again."

Another key: nonpartisanship. There was no room for labels and even less for parties in a protest that strove for a "new language" based on common ground staked out in group discussions, assemblies or councils. People shared with strangers what they were embarrassed about confessing to their children: We can't afford the expensive ice cream.

"The other thing that's very important is chaos," says Shaffir, who arrived for a breakfast interview after spending the night talking on Rothschild Boulevard, where a handful of tents had gone up anew, weeks after police dismantled the last vestiges of the main camp. "As a movement that goes up against the most powerful force, if you act like an organization, like an institution, you lose. If you have one head, they know what to cut off. You have to be like water, to be everywhere, to be unpredictable. We work like an open code. Everybody should act their part. Everybody should act like a leader."(Read about New York City protesters holding ground in Zuccotti Park.)

At one end of Rothschild, a headquarters of sorts went up, though it amounted to a few work stations under fabric stretched to keep down the glare on the computers that lay underneath it all. "I think in a way what we see in the streets today is a result of things we were trained for from using the Internet since age 5," says Levi. "I think these assemblies are chat rooms, wide open, with this sense of nonhierarchy, that everyone is equal in the kingdom of the Internet, where there are no kings or queens. We've taken these tools that we've acquired unknowingly — this generation of ours which was blamed for not doing anything in the world — and now we've taken these things we've learned out into the street. And it's pretty impressive I must say."

In Israel, the leap to the masses was both more challenging and, in other ways, a bit easier than elsewhere. Jewish Israeli society is relatively small and cohesive, united in a sense of nationhood and shared risk; almost everyone, for instance, serves in the army. But it is also riven by differences, between secular and religious, between Jews and the 20% of the population that is Arab, between recent immigrant and native-born. Only the black-clad ultra-orthodox religious, who gather in residential enclaves, started the summer with a community, Shaffir notes. "If you're secular, your community is your family, that's all."

"If we talk about tips, the most important thing is to connect the different groups, the different social classes," she says. "And that's the hardest thing."

Yet it happened. In just weeks, the protests that some conservative politicians reflexively dismissed as elitist or leftist swelled into a national movement, drawing Israelis from every class and cohort, all of them beaming as they found one another on the street together. In the tent cities, campers organized kitchens, kindergartens, trash removal, even electing representatives to reclaim a political realm that had grown alien and remote, the province of professional politicians. "And people were so happy," Shaffir says. "Israelis, for so many years, didn't feel like we could do anything."(Read about rioters hijacking Rome's Occupy protest.)

In time the political establishment scrambled to respond, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu naming a committee to list specific actions — more money for child care, less for defense — that many in the group call a misapprehension of what was, at bottom, something more diffuse: a remaking of the national consciousness. "The fact that we have no specific list of demands is very hard for them," says Levi, referring to the Knesset, the Israeli legislature. "I'm not sure we've directly affected the political system yet, but I'm sure we will. Because the people who elect these robots spent many hours in the tent cities. It was a learning experience."

The lessons continue. The other day organizers set out to secure Tel Aviv's main public gathering place, Rabin Square, for a follow-up demonstration. They learned it would cost them around $5,000. "That's a disgrace," says Shaffir. "It's like your right of protest is also privatized."

So they decided they didn't need the permission of the very people they were opposing. "We just told everybody we're going to reoccupy Rothschild," she says. "It made everybody happy, because we were getting back to the streets." — With reporting by Aaron J. Klein / Tel Aviv

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Why You Shouldn't Compare Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party

With the Occupy Wall Street protests gaining steam in the U.S., it seems obvious to link it with the other grassroots movement that recently shook up American politics — the Tea Party. My colleagues' pieces number among a flurry of others pondering the parallel. Michael Scherer recast Occupy Wall Street as the Tea Party of the American left. Roya Wolverson suggested how the two movements, coming from diametrically-opposed sides of the political spectrum, could find common ground (and perhaps actual policy influence) in their mutual distaste for a Washington dominated by the vested interests of corporations. But while the similarities are noteworthy, they obscure more relevant truths about Occupy Wall Street, the supposedly inchoate movement that has transfixed the American media in recent weeks. I enumerate these truths after the jump.

1. Occupy Wall Street is an expression of a global phenomenon. A cursory glimpse at newspapers over the weekend would have shown scenes of mass protest across European capitals and cities elsewhere in the world, all in solidarity with the anti-greed protesters in New York. The Tea Party, for all its early brio, commands no such solidarity, nor does it care for it. It's a hyper-nationalist movement in the U.S., lofting the totems of the Constitution and the flag. Few viable political factions across the Atlantic advocate the Tea Party's anti-big government, libertarian agenda (though the xenophobic, culturally-conservative wing of the Tea Party would perhaps see eye to eye with Europe's Islamophobic far-right).

Many of the Occupy Wall Street's participants, on the other hand, consciously see themselves as part of a worldwide uprising, a flame first kindled by the Arab Spring and borne across the Mediterranean by anti-austerity protesters in Europe. In all three settings, social media has played a vital role in mobilizing and organizing the disaffected and the disenfranchised. In all three settings, activists and protesters have drawn to varying degrees from a toolbox of leftist, anarchist protest tactics and made do with minimal institutional support or funds. And in all three settings, the protesters have pulled together sympathizers from across myriad political camps within their countries and somehow made a virtue out of their movement's lack of central leadership. The U.S. economy may not be facing the same existential pressures as those of Greece or Spain, nor are American protesters facing the sort of desperate brutality meted out on brave dissidents in Tunisia, Egypt, or Syria. But the call for social justice echoes the same across continents.

2. Occupy Wall Street is fueled by youth. Reporters covering the ongoing occupation of Zuccotti Park have encountered and profiled a host of characters from all walks and stages of life. One of my favorite interviews so far has been Marsha Spencer, a 56-year-old grandmother who can be found on weekends at the Park's western edge, knitting gloves and scarves for fellow protesters. She makes no bones about what's driving Occupy Wall Street — young people: college students saddled with years of debt, 20-somethings struggling to land a job, and an entire generation banging its head on what seems to be the ever-lowering ceiling of their possibilities. "It's all about them," Spencer told me on a rainy morning last week in Zuccotti Park.

Not true for the Tea Party, whose typical supporter is older, wealthier, and whiter than the American demographic average. It is a movement, by and large, of the haves — not the have nots. "It's essentially reactionary," says David Graeber, a professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, who helped set up Occupy Wall Street's much-heralded General Assembly and is one of the first people to push the movement's now ubiquitous slogan 'We are the 99%'. "The Tea Party core group is white middle-class Republicans who are angry that they seem to be losing their position of preeminence in society." The ranks of Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, are most heavily populated by young people, who, says Graeber, "are supposed to be the ones at the forefront, re-imagining their society." Their protest fits into a long continuum of student and youth rebellions, most recently seen in the Mediterranean rim countries mentioned above.

3. Occupy Wall Street may prove much harder to co-opt into the political mainstream. Many have speculated what direction Occupy Wall Street will turn as it picks up momentum and encroaches on the U.S. 2012 Presidential campaign. Will the protest get co-opted by the country's big unions? Will D.C.-based advocacy groups like MoveOn.org try to exploit for its own ends the success of motley, diverse bands of protesters occupying dozens of downtowns across the U.S.? And, most importantly, will Occupy Wall Street radicalize the Democratic base the way the Tea Party energized the far-right of the Republicans?

At present, it's hard to see how Occupy Wall Street can generate the left-wing, Democratic versions of Rand Paul or Michele Bachmann. Few of the protesters one speaks to have any tolerance for either political party, which they say are both equally enmeshed in a political system entirely beholden to vested corporate interests. The Tea Party, boosted by financial titans and one of the U.S.'s most influential cable news network, was able to make the leap from grassroots anger to effective Beltway politicking. Occupy Wall Street has no such benefactors nor mouthpiece, and will have to undergo a massive — and potentially divisive — transformation should it become the sort of tempered, streamlined (what many would deem 'compromised') political player that can actually throw its weight behind the Obama Administration. For the time being, it remains a social movement far more interested in the sort of "direct democracy" practiced during occupations than that which gets negotiated in the corridors of power in D.C. The sentiments below may have been expressed by an exasperated Greek blogger in June, but they reverberate around Zuccotti Park today:

We will not suffer any more so that we can make the rich, even richer. We do not authorise any of the politicians, who failed so spectacularly, to borrow any more money in our name. We do not trust you or the people that are lending it. We want a completely new set of accountable people at the helm, untainted by the fiascos of the past. You have run out of ideas.

4. Occupy Wall Street still believes in politics and government. And this is where another important line has to be drawn. Whereas much of the Tea Party's programmatic ire seems directed at the very idea of government — and trumpets instead the virtue of self-reliance and the inexorable righteousness of the free market — Occupy Wall Street more sharply decries the collusion of corporate and political elites in Washington. The answer, for many of the protesters I've spoken with, is never the wholesale dismantling or whittling away of the capabilities of political institutions (except, perhaps, the Fed), but a subtler disentangling of Wall Street from Washington. Government writ large is not the problem, just the current sort of government.

Because, at the end of the day, Occupy Wall Street, like most idealistic social movements, wants real political solutions. Excited activists in Zuccotti Park spoke to me about the advent of "participatory budgeting" in a number of City Council districts in New York — an egalitarian system, first brought about in leftist-run cities in Latin America, that allows communities to dole out funds in their neighborhoods through deliberation and consensus-building. It's the same process that gets played out every day by the activist general assemblies held in Zuccotti Park and other occupation sites around the U.S. To the outside observer, that may seem foolishly utopian — and impracticable on a larger scale — but it's a sign of the deep political commitments of many of the protesters gathering under Occupy Wall Street's banner. They want to fix government, not escape from it.

Occupy Wall Street Inspires 'I'm Getting Arrested' App

Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Got cuffed in Zuccotti Park? It's never been easier to let your friends and family know that you've been arrested, thanks to a handy app called “I'm Getting Arrested” for Android.

The app was developed with the protestors in mind, reports CNET. (“Inspired by a real Occupy Wall Street incident. Free to the other 99%,” the app's developer, Quadrant 2, writes on the Android Market's site.) The app allows users to send messages in a flash to friends, family, and “your lawyer,” by creating a custom message beforehand with a set of contacts ready to go.  So during your arrest following a demonstration in Times Square, you can quickly tap the bull's-eye on the app to notify everyone about your whereabouts.

This essentially functions as a mass text service, which both CNET and commenters on the app's site explain. Trying to notify a big group about last-minute changes in plans?  “I'm Getting Arrested” would be a perfect app to use in this case, but how does that differ from any other mass text message? The app is great for messages that you might need to send regularly—whether you don't want to type out directions to your home over and over again for friends, or you need tell your study group you're going to be late…again.

LIST: 25 Essential Apps for Travelers

Aylin Zafar is a contributor to TIME. Find her on Twitter at @azafar. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Hold Ground in Zuccotti Park

Occupy Wall Street protesters celebrate following news that the deadline for their removal from Zuccotti Park in New York's financial district was postponed on Oct. 14, 2011.

At 5 a.m. Friday, Oct. 14, an air of menace and anxiety gripped Zuccotti Park, the center of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Police officers stalked its periphery, some with bundles of white plastic handcuffs strapped to their belts. Parts of the park's interior resembled a panicked scene from a bustling Indian railway station: activists, many of whom have camped out in the plaza since the occupation began a month ago, lofted on their heads giant plastic sacks stuffed with their sleeping bags and personal effects. As they had been doing all night, protesters scrubbed and swept, their response to a mandate from the park's private owners, Brookfield Properties, to leave the site so it could be cleaned. One man stood on a bench, shouting over and over at those around him to "move your shit or we'll dispose of it."

The catch, as all were aware, was that those who followed the Friday-morning evacuation order would not be allowed to return with sleeping bags or tarps or to even lie down in the park. "This was never about sanitation. It was about a pretext for eviction," says Senia Barragan, a graduate student at Columbia University who is part of Occupy Wall Street's press team. Over the course of Thursday night and into Friday morning, hundreds squeezed into the park in support of Occupy Wall Street, not knowing what would happen come dawn. Tucker Mowatt, one of the protesters, blinks his bleary eyes when asked if he is willing to risk arrest. "Of course I am," he says. "The whole world is watching." (See photos from the Occupy Wall Street protests.)

And in the early-morning half-light, in the presence of a veritable army of journalists, Occupy Wall Street got to declare its first important victory. After a tense moment of silence, Nelini Stamp stood on a wall with a paper in her hand and called for a "mike check." She said she had a statement from Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway. The planned cleaning, which was to have been enforced by the police, was postponed. "Brookfield believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters," the statement read. The crowd erupted in euphoria. Raucous chants of "This is what democracy looks like" echoed off nearby buildings.

While the deputy mayor's statement said Brookfield would seek to work out an arrangement, there were no details on whether new rules banning sleeping bags and sleeping in the park would be enforced. "If they want to address our general assembly, we'll certainly welcome them," says Patrick Bruner, Occupy Wall Street's press secretary.

Many had been prepared for a far different scenario. At Thursday night's general assembly, a regular gathering where group decisions are made, the protesters discussed strategies for what to do when the police arrived to clear the park. There was talk of dividing the park into thirds, pushing the crowd into two-thirds of the space and allowing cleaning crews to work in the empty third. Other speakers wanted to form a perimeter and not cede an inch of ground, an action that would certainly have resulted in mass arrests. (See how protesters stopped the city's cleaning mission.)

By 6 a.m. Friday, it was clear that the one-third/two-thirds idea wasn't going to work. Zuccotti Park was packed with nearly 2,000 people shoulder to shoulder on the east side, near Broadway. One of the protesters on the direct-action committee explained what would happen when the police arrived: Those willing to be arrested would either remain, crammed together, in the middle of the park or link arms around its perimeter. Those rallying in support could assemble on a facing sidewalk. "Staying in this park in any capacity is arrestable," the speaker said. But when he asked who was willing to remain, nearly everyone in the throng raised a hand. (See the protesters' unofficial demands list.)

Solidarity Saturday: Occupy Wall Street Goes Global

A banner reading 'Revolution' is displayed in front of St Paul's Cathedral in the city of London on October 16, 2011 as part of a global day of protests inspired by the 'Occupy Wall Street' and 'Indignant' movements.

BEN STANSALL/ AFP

The Occupy Wall Street protesters have spent the past four weeks trying to make their voices heard. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands around the world responded.

Frustrated people the world over took to the streets to show solidarity with both the indignado movement in Spain and the occupations in the U.S. in what was called a “global day of protest”. Scheduled for Oct. 15 to coincide with a G20 meeting in Paris of ministers and bankers, the demonstrations took place in hundreds of cities including Hong Kong, London, Rome, Frankfurt, Toronto and Sydney, with hundreds – in some cases, thousands – of people turning up to protest economic disparity.

(MORE: Keep Calm and Occupy On: Protests Spread to London)

Madrid, home of the indignado movement, saw one of the largest protests as the city's Puerta del Sol square overflowed with upwards of 60,000 people demonstrating against the country's financial woes. Despite the anger and massive turnout, Madrid's occupation remained calm, as protesters expressed themselves with chanting, cheering and a rendition of Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”.

Across Asia and Canada – where the economic downturn has been far less critical than in other regions – smaller gatherings were staged. Nonetheless, protestors still maintained the movements' common threads of anti-capitalism anger and a mixed bag of demands.

While the demonstrations have been, for the most part, peaceful, there were some rogue outbreaks of violence. Tens of thousands of people showed up for what began as a placid affair in Rome, which turned sour when a small group of youths began rioting: breaking windows, overturning cars, setting fires and assaulting news crews. The police responded with tear gas and water cannons. Despite the protest getting out of control, even city officials were quick to point out that the majority of people had stayed calm. "I was very impressed by the reaction of the majority of the protesters," the city's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, said the next day. "Never before have there been cheers when the police intervened."

(MORE: How Rome's Protest Was Hijacked)

The police weren't as welcome in London, however, as some 2,000 protestors occupied the square around St. Paul's Cathedral near the London Stock Exchange. Though the demonstration was relatively calm, hundreds of police officers were present and accusations spread over Twitter that some were using unnecessary force. Still, only seven people were arrested Saturday – for assaults on officers and disturbing the peace – and no one was forced to evacuate the area. In fact, Monday morning saw more than 200 protestors still camped out and occupying the area.

Meanwhile, in New York City and Chicago, more than 250 people had been arrested by early Sunday morning, with three police officers in New York injured and sent to the hospital. In New York, where the occupation has just reached the 30-day mark, protesters moved from Zuccotti Park to Washington Square Park  then onto Times Square, with chants of, “We are the 99 percent” ringing strong along the way. In Chicago, about 175 protestors were arrested after they refused to leave occupied Grant Park for the 11 p.m. curfew.

Despite the arrests, however, the global response to the movement is likely to only buoy the protesters' determination even more. The Occupy Wall Street movement has already received widespread support in polls and from prominent endorsements: Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Salman Rushdie and Julian Assange have all praised those continuing the struggle against capitalism.  Thanks to Saturday's “day of global protest,” the Wall Street protestors now also know they have the world behind them.

Megan Gibson is a Writer-Reporter at the London bureau of TIME. Find her on Twitter at @MeganJGibson. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

PHOTOS: Occupy Wall Street Goes Global

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NYC Official: Occupy Wall Street Cleanup Is Being Postponed

Demonstrators with 'Occupy Wall Street' protest at Zuccotti Park in New York on October 13, 2011 the day after Mayor Bloomberg gave a message to Occupy Wall Street protestors that the park needs to be cleaned. Protestors, signs, and sleeping bags need to be temporarily vacated from the premises while the park's property owner can go in with a cleaning crew starting Friday.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

Updated: Friday October 14, 6.30am ET. As the days ticked by, September rolled into October and the Occupy Wall Street movement dug in at Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, a question loomed: How long would they stay once cold weather came?

But a potential flashpoint was averted early Friday. New York City Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway has confirmed in a statement that the proposed cleaning of Zuccotti Park has been postponed at the request of its owners Brookfield Properties. The news brought cheers from those in attendance, who believed the cleanup was a pretext to kick them out.

"Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park – Brookfield Properties – that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation," the statement read. "Our position has been consistent throughout: the City's role is to protect public health and safety, to enforce the law, and guarantee the rights of all New Yorkers. Brookfield believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation."

It's been reported that between 600-700 protesters had arrived by the early morning on Friday as they set about mopping, collecting trash and scrubbing the pavement.

Earlier in the week, on Wednesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office had released a statement that the park, where protesters have made their camp for more than a month, would be cleaned on Friday. The announcement said that the cleaning would be done in stages, and that afterward, protesters "will be able to return to the areas that have been cleaned, provided they abide by the rules" established for the park. The statement came just two days after the mayor spoke at the Columbus Day Parade and said that the protesters could remain indefinitely, but the harsh winter weather would likely drive them out.

(MORE: Why the Washington Establishment Is Heeding Occupy Wall Street)

The day after the mayor's speech, however, Richard Clark, CEO of Brookfield Properties, the company that owns Zuccotti Park, sent a letter to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly asking for assistance in clearing the park so that it can be cleaned. Clark's letter explained that the park is usually cleaned each day, and that they are concerned about possible damage from the month of occupation. The park has lighting in the ground, which if cracked, the letter explained, could cause an electrical issue with recent rains. "In light of this and the ongoing trespassing of the protesters," the letter said, "we are again asking for the assistance of the New York City Police Department to help clear the park," so that the company could undertake the cleaning.

While the word itself has not been used, the protesters saw the initial letter as a notice of eviction. The movement put out an "Emergency Call to Action" on its website, asking for supporters to come to the park Friday at 6 a.m. "to defend the occupation from eviction." And sure enough, they streamed there in their hundreds.

From their perspective, had they been forced from the park, the movement was worried that, even if they were allowed back in, their efforts to occupy the space may die. The OWS website says that the rules of the park include no sleeping bags or tarps and no lying down.

(PHOTOS: Labor Unions March with Occupy Wall Street Protesters)

If such rules are eventually enforced, it would mean an end to the occupation in its current form. At 2 a.m. Tuesday, my last trip to the park, people were sleeping in clusters around the trees, bundled up in sleeping bags against the chill. The NYPD forbids the erection of structures, but protesters have used tarps since the beginning days to protect themselves from the rain.

The NYPD had said that they will begin the clearing Friday morning at 7am. The response from the protesters on their Facebook page read, "We'll position ourselves with our brooms and mops in a human chain around the park, linked at the arms. If the NYPD attempts to enter, we'll peacefully/non-violently stand our ground and those who are willing will get arrested."

The Friday morning showdown could have been much ado about a spray wash, or perhaps a seminal moment in an increasingly growing movement. Despite the postponement, the same scenarios remain in play if and when the cleaning does eventually take place. If the protesters did decide to leave, it's not clear where they would go to continue their efforts. As the sun came up on Friday morning, Occupy Wall Street, in so many ways, has not been cleared up.

MORE: Police Use Pepper Spray on Wall Street Protesters

Nate Rawlings is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @naterawlings. Continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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Wall Street Protests Get Specific: November 5 Is 'Bank Transfer Day'

Participants of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement join union members in solidarity and march up Broadway in New York City.

The growing anger directed at U.S. banks (especially the big ones that took federal bailout funds) over recent fee increases coalesced this weekend into a Facebook-driven campaign urging Americans to close their accounts at large banks and move their money to credit unions by Nov. 5.

Though not initiated by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and other cities around the country, the effort has been embraced by the protesters, and their “We are the 99%” mantra is all over the “Bank Transfer Day” Facebook page — making this the first specific action by a political movement that has been criticized as unfocused and incoherent.

Bank Transfer Day was started by a 27-year-old Los Angeles art-gallery owner, Kristen Christian. She says she’s not affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street protesters but that many organizers of those demonstrations had reached out to her to express support.

(MORE: ING Direct Account Openings Skyrocket After BofA, Citi Fee Hikes)

Christian chose Nov. 5 because of its association with 17th century British folk hero Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up the House of Lords but was captured on that date in 1605. In an interview with the Village Voice, however, Christian and Occupy Wall Street leaders who discussed the effort to get Americans to move their money from large banks to small institutions emphasized that they weren’t trying to create a collapse of the financial system. ”I’ve been very careful to state that this is not … anarchy,” Christian told the Voice. “It’s shifting the money to a company people respect the practices of. It’s like, if you don’t like Walmart’s practices, shopping at a local grocery store instead.”

(LIST: 12 Things You Should Stop Buying Now)

The real question, of course, is whether enough people will close their accounts to persuade the nation’s largest banks to roll back their fees in order to keep customers. There’s no denying the populist appeal the movement has garnered: as of Sunday afternoon, about 14,000 Facebook users had RSVP’d to the event, and numerous other pages had been set up in support of the concept. But while plenty of people may like the idea of switching banks to avoid extra fees, moving the foundation of their financial life takes not only dedication but also time (a few weeks at minimum) and a fair amount of tedious paperwork.

Even if enough people decide it’s worth the hassle to make a stand, withdrawing their deposits isn’t going to make an impact on the proprietary trading, consulting, securitization and other businesses that big banks have been pursuing over the past decade or so. As Yahoo! Finance writer Dan Gross pointed out in a recent column, it’s largely these risky endeavors that brought the “too big to fail” banks to the economic precipice three years ago. And it’s these kinds of businesses that increasingly pull in the big money — not plain-Jane deposits and lending.

(MORE: Are Debit-Card Fees Meant to Get Consumers to Use Credit Cards More?)

So, will you be switching your banking to a credit union or smaller bank that hasn’t ratcheted up the amount it charges customers to use its money? Will you close your account on Nov. 5 as a symbolic move?

Wall Street Protests Get Specific: November 5 Is 'Bank Transfer Day'

Participants of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement join union members in solidarity and march up Broadway in New York City.

The growing anger directed at U.S. banks (especially the big ones that took federal bailout funds) over recent fee increases coalesced this weekend into a Facebook-driven campaign urging Americans to close their accounts at large banks and move their money to credit unions by Nov. 5.

Though not initiated by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and other cities around the country, the effort has been embraced by the protesters, and their “We are the 99%” mantra is all over the “Bank Transfer Day” Facebook page — making this the first specific action by a political movement that has been criticized as unfocused and incoherent.

Bank Transfer Day was started by a 27-year-old Los Angeles art-gallery owner, Kristen Christian. She says she’s not affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street protesters but that many organizers of those demonstrations had reached out to her to express support.

(MORE: ING Direct Account Openings Skyrocket After BofA, Citi Fee Hikes)

Christian chose Nov. 5 because of its association with 17th century British folk hero Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up the House of Lords but was captured on that date in 1605. In an interview with the Village Voice, however, Christian and Occupy Wall Street leaders who discussed the effort to get Americans to move their money from large banks to small institutions emphasized that they weren’t trying to create a collapse of the financial system. ”I’ve been very careful to state that this is not … anarchy,” Christian told the Voice. “It’s shifting the money to a company people respect the practices of. It’s like, if you don’t like Walmart’s practices, shopping at a local grocery store instead.”

(LIST: 12 Things You Should Stop Buying Now)

The real question, of course, is whether enough people will close their accounts to persuade the nation’s largest banks to roll back their fees in order to keep customers. There’s no denying the populist appeal the movement has garnered: as of Sunday afternoon, about 14,000 Facebook users had RSVP’d to the event, and numerous other pages had been set up in support of the concept. But while plenty of people may like the idea of switching banks to avoid extra fees, moving the foundation of their financial life takes not only dedication but also time (a few weeks at minimum) and a fair amount of tedious paperwork.

Even if enough people decide it’s worth the hassle to make a stand, withdrawing their deposits isn’t going to make an impact on the proprietary trading, consulting, securitization and other businesses that big banks have been pursuing over the past decade or so. As Yahoo! Finance writer Dan Gross pointed out in a recent column, it’s largely these risky endeavors that brought the “too big to fail” banks to the economic precipice three years ago. And it’s these kinds of businesses that increasingly pull in the big money — not plain-Jane deposits and lending.

(MORE: Are Debit-Card Fees Meant to Get Consumers to Use Credit Cards More?)

So, will you be switching your banking to a credit union or smaller bank that hasn’t ratcheted up the amount it charges customers to use its money? Will you close your account on Nov. 5 as a symbolic move?

From Europe With Love: U.S. 'Indignados' Occupy Wall Street

A Wall Street protester wakes up at Zuccotti Park that she and hundreds of other activists are occupying on October 3, 2011 in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

As the momentum surrounding the Occupy Wall Street protest grows, so too has the urge to frame it in the context of other struggles around the world. Already, Zuccotti Park, the patch of Lower Manhattan taken over for weeks now by the protesters, has been hailed as an American Tahrir Square, a font for a “U.S. autumn” as that plaza in Cairo was for the Arab Spring. Days of action and protest have been dubbed “days of rage,” a gesture to recent, far bloodier episodes of dissent on the streets of Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere in the Middle East. When some 700 activists were detained while marching across the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend, they were, according to some reports, “kettled” — a tactic used by London's Metropolitan Police against student demonstrators frequently over this past year. And a colleague of mine asked whether the protesters were the left's answer to the far-right U.S. Tea Party.

Yet no parallel seems more apt than what's been taking place immediately across the Atlantic in Spain. The indignados, the outraged, have massed in Madrid and other cities across the country since May, furious at the debt-ridden nation's turn toward austerity measures at a time of over 20% unemployment and enraged by the haplessness and incapacity of political leaders and prevailing global economic institutions to stave off catastrophe. The occupations of iconic squares like Madrid's Puerta del Sol are in some sense the template followed now by American protesters in a growing number of cities — around 148, according to organizers in Lower Manhattan — across the United States.

(PHOTOS: The Best Images from Occupy Wall Street)

“We see ourselves as the continuation of this global movement,” says Patrick Bruner, who, at the time of writing, was the designated press secretary of Occupy Wall Street. “And it's now springing up in a place where most of the world's problems originated — Wall Street.” Not surprisingly, sensing the importance of what's transpiring in Manhattan, organizers in Spain have already called for Oct. 15 to be a global day of action.

The similarities between the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the indignados are legion. Both in Spain and in New York, protesters have depended on social media to coordinate action and have embraced the chaotic, decentralized nature of their movements. The same frustrations and grievances animate the protests on either side of the pond. “Everywhere there is a great sense of confusion and disillusionment with traditional institutions of political and economic power,” says Vicente Rubio, a 32-year-old Spanish teacher in the New York City area originally from Zaragoza, Spain, and a regular now at Zuccotti Park. “There's a general sense that all the struggles are connected.”

And what's the aim of all this struggle? A visit to Zuccotti Park — and a scan of all the motley signs and causes hawked there — would give the impression that there is no central vision. “But,” says Rubio, “it's most important to consider this as a process rather than something with definite goals and demands. We're trying to create a productive means to channel this feeling of discontent.”

Throughout, activists and attendees speak of reclaiming democracy from the clutches of a plutocratic elite, and empowering that vast “99%” of the U.S. left behind by the excesses of the mega-rich and a government supposedly in the pocket of corporate interests. The rituals of the protest, from the open-ended commitments of volunteers to the free-for-all, twice-a-day forums known as the General Assembly, says Bruner, all speak to a “form of direct, participatory democracy” taking root in the movement.

In Spain, that idea has been furthered somewhat more concretely, with some pushing electoral platforms that would break the predominance of the country's two main political parties — one center-right, the other center-left — and allow more direct citizen engagement in the legislative processes of government. Whether any of the measures actually get implemented is uncertain, but according to some polls a whopping 80% of Spaniards agree with the indignados' demands.

Those rallying behind Occupy Wall Street may not be so numerous, but that could change. The protests have been boosted by the support of organized labor and other national-level activist organizations like MoveOn.org. And, despite dipping temperatures along the Atlantic seaboard, those camped out in Zuccotti Park and a growing number of other spots throughout the U.S. look prepared to tough it out. In Spain, says Rubio, the indignados gained traction in part because of the natural Spanish affinity for public space — something not quite matched in the U.S. But the fact that Occupy Wall Street is gaining steam nevertheless ought to be a sign for optimism. Rubio casts his involvement here as a means of tapping into a larger global uprising. “There is no inside or outside in this movement. As a Spaniard living in New York, [joining Occupy Wall Street] is my way of collaborating, my way of participating in the struggle back home.”

Standing in Zuccotti Park, with an ever growing pack of foreign and local press hovering in the margins, it's clear that there's a real spirit to the proceedings. Drum circles and elaborate theatrical costumes echo some of the festivities and hi-jinks seen at Puerta del Sol in Madrid. “Of course, the focus is on the very real grievances we all have,” says Bruner, the protest press secretary.  “But at a basic level, this is really about making people happy again.” And that's an aspiration which knows no bounds.