Not only do the Occupy Wall Streeters get bodies, but the movement gains the organizational skills and money of these groups. A group of at least nine unions repurposed a previously scheduled protest for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The New York Transit Workers Union, which voted unanimously to support the protests, put out a Tweet to its six hundred followers endorsing the march, Franzen noted. And the event has a Facebook page with 148 attending guests.

Initially these groups shied from joining because of the muddled message, but as the protesters have gotten more attention the groups see it as an opportunity. "Their fight is our fight," Strong Economy For All director Michael Kink told The Huffington Post. "They've chosen the right targets. We also want to see a society where folks other than the top 1 percent have a chance to say how things go." TWU Local 100's spokesman Jim Gannon seconded that sentiment. "Well, actually, the protesters, it's pretty courageous what they're doing," he told the Village Voice, "and it's brought a new public focus in a different way to what we've been saying along." Yet, the message of Occupy Wall Street certainly hasn't changed since its inception, so why now? Massey ventures a guess: "They are motivated perhaps by a sense of solidarity and a desire to tap into its growing success," he explains. "But undoubtedly by something else too--embarrassment that a group of young people using Twitter and Facebook have been able to draw attention to progressive causes in a way they haven't been able to in years."

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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