Occupy Wall Street protesters march to join a union rally at Foley Square in New York earlier this month. The protests have gathered momentum and gained participants in recent days as news of mass arrests and a coordinated media campaign by the protestors have given rise to similar demonstrations around the country. AP Photo | Seth Wenig

OWS, also known as, is a movement currently sweeping across America featuring activists using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, meetup.com and the Tumbir blog as a megaphone to dramatize the economic woes and perceived social injustices in America.

OWS is mirroring that classic 1976 movie, "Network": "We're mad as hell and we are not going to take it any more."

The OWS movement began small less than a month ago and may emulate Mao's famous saying, "Even the smallest spark can create a raging forest fire."

Tom Watkins

Once the icon of the world, Wall Street has now become synonymous with greed and wealth creation for the few at the expense of the poor, middle class and disenfranchised -- a bulls-eye for the pent up frustration that Americans are feeling during this prolonged recession-without-jobs.

There seems to be a sense that America is losing its ethical moorings -- the values that once caused fellow citizens to help one another. Has social trust has been shattered?

This should come as no surprise to anyone as much of the economic moorings that working and middle class people have striven for their entire lives has been pulled out from under them.

New research focuses on the pain that working Americans feel and are now demonstrating about -- household income declined more in the two years after the recession officially ended than it did during the recession itself. The author of the study called the decline "a significant reduction in the American standard of living."

Once a concerted mass of people believes the system is not working for them, then societal change begins to boil. The political talking heads are dismissing the anger expressed by the OWS demonstrators as being a bunch of malcontents, or socialist, anti-establishment types - a movement that will dissipate in due course.

Wrong.

People across the American spectrum are angry and have a right to be so. Most have played by the rules, saved for a home, worked hard, put money away in a 401(k) only to see it washed away.

There is a palpable feeling that Wall Street got the gold mine and the middle and working classes got the shaft.

Middle America is angry because the dreams they built are delayed at best or vanished at worst and the youth of today see their futures mortgaged to the hilt.

Young people looking to begin the climb up the American Dream ladder can't even reach the first rung. The number of college grads serving lattes at local coffee houses is frightening.

Those without an education and skills are without hope or opportunity in a changed world where ideas and jobs move around the globe effortlessly.

Jobs, incomes, savings, home equity and hope -- all have been vanishing.

If the political elite had been paying attention, they would have noticed the American anger Richter scale has been vibrating uncontrollably for some time now.

Citizens - from the middle class on down - feel that Wall Street and inept political self-dealing in Washington has created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Wall Street bankers were bailed out and have moved on, their now richer lives content, even as Middle American lives have been left in tatters.

OWS demands are all over the map. This is to be expected in the spontaneous, combustible, beginnings of any political movement. Movements are by their very nature disorganized and chaotic -- right up until the message gels and leaders step forward with a coherent agenda.

Political leaders thought they had dodged a bullet when the ground first began to shake over the greed on Wall Street when anger was steered into the creation of a right leaning Tea Party.

But the Tea Party to date, has seemed like the little jiggler on top of my mom's old pressure cooker -- allowing just enough steam to escape to keep the entire pot from exploding.

Now the OWStreeters are adding more heat to the fire.

Much of the anger that has been boiling because the economic collapse has been about mistakes of the past.

Where the OWSers can help change the tide is by re-directing their anger from mistakes of the past to leadership and a plan for the future.

We need to get America working again. There is a need for a new American Covenant that citizens can believe in. A shared vision and common agenda for future greatness.

Time will tell if the anger gels from a small and growing movement to redirecting the course of America.

Remember the powerful words of anthropologist Margaret Mead, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Wall Street and Washington politicians created this mess -- and they have a responsibility to clean it up.

Tom Watkins is a former Michigan state superintendent of schools who now serves as an education and business consultant. His columns appear occasionally in AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at: tdwatkins88@gmail.com.