It is not your typical cast of protesters: 66-year-old Nancy Pi-Sunyer, a retired teacher from Long Island; numerous 8-year-old school children; and a Christian high school dropout in Boaz, Ala., waving a sign that reads, "Do not rob the poor just because you can."
The Occupy Wall Street movement leans left, young and urban, yet one of the defining features of the protests has been its lack of definition. Protests are popping up in places like Pocatello, Idaho; Kalamazoo, Mich., and Bethany Beach, Del. Political differences don't necessarily matter. And participants range from kids to seniors.
"I've long thought that the only way that change would eventually be effective is if there were some sort of mass action," says Birmingham, Ala., resident Tom Ballock, 62, a reluctant recent retiree who has supported the movement on the street and online.
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Sometimes, just one or two supporters gather in front of a downtown bank, Ballock says, but "we've gotten favorable responses from passing motorists — often a horn honk and a wave or raised fist. There are a few who yell 'get a job,' but there appears to be a substantial amount of interest even in conservative Alabama."
The national movement hasn't won over all 99% of the constituency it purports to represent. A CBS News/New York Times poll last month found that 43% of Americans agree with the views of Occupy Wall Street protests, while 27% disagree.
That leaves nearly one-third (30%) unsure. And that is who many outlying Occupiers are trying to reach. In Bakersfield, Calif., events tend to be more educational, less confrontational.
"We didn't want to be an abrasive presence," says Bakersfield resident Lynnette Rena Whygle, 22, who grew up in a blue-collar household and is spearheading local rallies between jobs at Starbucks or babysitting.
Coordinators of Occupy Wall Street say the national movement borrows tactics of the Arab Spring, a wave of demonstrations and civil uprisings that has spread through Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and beyond.
Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism who teaches at the City University of New York, also sees shades of the demonstrations that were held in Wisconsin last winter. College students camped out alongside state workers in the state Capitol to protest Gov. Scott Walker's bill to strip most state workers of their collective bargaining rights.
"We're seeing something similar happening with Occupy Wall Street. A lot of folks are the kinds of people you'd expect to see at a protest, people who know how to do this stuff. But there are a lot of people who don't fit that mold," he says.
A sampling of activity off the beaten path:
In Boaz, Ala., (population 9,551) police last month ticketed nine young adults for protesting without a permit but later dropped charges, says Levi Gideon, 19, a self-employed Web designer and high school dropout. As a Christian, he has used Scriptures to grab the attention of passersby.
"People are more likely to open their mind when you approach them in a way that they have known their whole life," he says.
Reaction has been supportive, he says, but adds that Alabama's tough new immigration law has created some confusion. "We've actually been mistaken for the anti-immigration protest," Gideon says.
In Pocatello, Idaho, (population 54,255), as many as 150 people have shown up at rallies, held twice a week, and snow last Friday didn't deter about 10 protesters who have been camped out since last Wednesday. "Our numbers here pale in comparison to New York but we have a lot of heart," says Scott Richardson, 28, who works full time in customer service and hopes to get a bachelor's degree in physics. He and friends have talked for years about starting a protest movement locally "but we were just waiting for that time to come when the world would start waking up, and it did."
In Bakersfield, Calif., (population 347,483), an influential student group at California State University declined to participate in a walk-out planned for early October, but supported a sit-in a few weeks later that at its height drew about 140 students, including large numbers of Muslim and Hispanic students.
"Most times it's really hard to get anybody to get out on anything, even if it's for any kind of conservative issue," says junior sociology major Ericka Hoffman, 26. "It's interesting to see such an eclectic group pushing for something like this."
While dozens of colleges nationwide held events last week, including teach-ins, students are not leading the Occupy Wall Street movement in many communities, local organizers such as Whygle and Richardson say. And many students say the protests have not changed their minds.
"Absolutely not," says Harvard junior Jeff Homer, 21, co-president of the Harvard Investment Association, a student group. "People looking to go into finance on campus are not being deterred by the protests. It's nothing new that people don't like Wall Street."
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