Almost immediately after espying this nascent protest movement I left for a three-week business trip to Asia. I was asked on several occasions overseas about the growing movement. From afar in East Asia, I noticed Occupy Wall Street has done several things right. Some were a result of sheer luck (read: police over-reactions), while others showed a measure of tactical skill. A couple of the initial pepper spray incidents went viral on YouTube, one showing very young women screaming hysterically while penned--or is the term for this 'kettled'?--by bright orange police mesh. Here the "luck" of brute force helped create outsize publicity by a media that had mostly ignored the going-ons up to that point. These could be our own daughters, after all, and it offends basic sensibility to see hapless young women sprayed in or near their faces by male police officers twice their age (see the footage here).



Another key moment in the growing tide of the movement was the incident of mass arrests in and around the Brooklyn Bridge (again, footage available here for those who are curious). This was partly a result of the confusion among some of the protesters (to be sure, perhaps a convenient confusion) about whether or not they had been granted access to the vehicular lanes rather than merely the pedestrian pathway on the bridge. Regardless of the merits, mass arrests on the order of some 700 or so individuals on an iconic New York landmark will engender healthy international headlines, boosting the nascent protest movement's profile very significantly, with this event likely having constituted the break-out.

Then, of course, there is Zuccotti Park, which Occupy Wall Street have renamed Liberty Plaza (the park's original name was Liberty Plaza Park). Here, the protesters have erected a steadily growing encampment, showing a canny resourcefulness, despite limitations on rights to pitch tents and such, as well as been denied access to more iconic locations such as the near-by actual Wall Street itself. Critically, the protesters have intuited from the get-go that they need to physically inhabit some patch of space literally around the clock, otherwise police will likely sweep in and deny them access, without the public relations boon of a forced deportation. This literal occupation is mission-critical to the branding of Occupy Wall Street, speaking to its passionate indignation, commitment and wherewithal to maintain a 24/7 presence. It echoes to recent revolutionary episodes such as Tahrir Square.

Their presence is being increasingly felt beyond Zuccotti Park, including their forays up toward Washington and Union Squares. This is tactically intelligent, since it garners more publicity, while testing how much the authorities will aim to restrict their movements. What's more, the group has metastasized with outcroppings in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago among many other locales reportedly nearing at this writing some 1,000. Also, and not unlike Egypt, the use of social media is playing a major reinforcing role leveraging the efforts of those physically on the ground.