The protesters moved into Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17, after discovering that the original site where they planned to camp was closed. Ever since, there has been a group of protesters in the park day and night.

The population changes from day to day, and week to week. Some people come for a few days—perhaps a weekend—while others have been there for weeks. Long-timers like to brag about the length of their stay. Many more people visit during the day, then leave once the park settles down at night.

Some residents are hardcore political activists. Others are college students. Some are people who have found themselves in dire economic straits. Still others are punk rock kids who usually can be found in the East Village's Tompkins Square Park.

The Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park has many of the features of a village, or even a household.

Various people in the park perform chores — cooking, cleaning, and ensuring that disputes are peacefully resolved — that we ordinarily associate with a municipality or a home. Because of this, the park is surprisingly clean and life there is surprisingly orderly, even after being occupied by protesters for four weeks.

Things are so well organized in the park that it is easy to imagine—if they are able to figure out a way to tough out the cold and snow of the coming winter—that Occupy Wall Street might last indefinitely.

A sanitation staff sweeps the walkways during the day, changes the bags in the garbage cans, and organizes recycling. They wear tape across their backs and chests reading “Sanitation.” And because the park is cleaned by fellow protesters, everyone in the park seems particularly mindful about keeping the place tidy.

“Littering isn’t even a question,” one protester told me. “You’d be shunned right out of here.”

A kitchen is set up near the center of the park. It serves three meals a day and takes in edible donations. The food is reportedly very tasty. The New York Times reportsthat it is so bountiful that some protesters are actually gaining weight during their stay in the park.

There’s a group dedicated to arts and culture that has been putting up art installations in the park. A makeshift library on the northeastern edge of the park lends out books. An archivist is busy collecting an oral history, as well as a sampling of the signs and pamphlets created as part of the protest.