Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with Occupy Wall Street

Up until last week, I had never been on an airplane before. As part of a quarter century life crisis, I saved enough money to go to where I always wanted to go: New York City. During my planning of the trip with a travel companion, the seeds for Occupy Wall Street were being planted. On Sep. 17, I watched over a thousand protesters descend onto the streets of New York City through streaming video on Live Stream. In the weeks that followed, I kept track of the protests and actions through social networking websites. As I watched the protesters demonstrate in support of a myriad of social justice issues, I knew I had to be a part of it somehow. This is going to be huge, I thought.

On Oct. 1st, I marched with over 3,000 protesters from Liberty Plaza to the Brooklyn Bridge. As we made it to the bridge, about 2,000 of us took the walkway as the rest spilled onto the roadway. Almost a thousand protesters that I had been walking with earlier were arrested on the road below us.