Michael Moore recounts his memories of Gore Vidal.

Longtime friends, colleagues and admirers of Gore Vidal gathered in the currently patriotically decorated Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre—where Mr. Vidal’s 1960 play The Best Man is playing through September 9—on Thursday afternoon to pay their respects to the recently departed writer. The mood was serious yet not solemn as many who were likely humbled to be counted among Mr. Vidal’s contemporaries took the stage to recount memories and share anecdotes from their own experiences with the man.

Reading selections from his own eulogy for Mr. Vidal and praising his friend’s great wit, Dick Cavett recounted many of Mr. Vidal’s most celebrated one-liners. His favorite, he told the audience: “Success is not enough. One’s friends must fail.”

“Whenever my friend succeeds, I die a little,” was another Vidal aphorism recalled to much laughter, and, reading a line from a message prepared by David Mamet for the memorial, Liz Smith decreed Mr. Vidal “smart enough to see through the self-interest of everyone except himself.” Yet none of this seemed to remotely deter the hordes of successful friends who seemed to be endlessly seeking his advice.

“In 2003, when I determined that I would run for president, Gore was my first call,” explained Dennis Kucinich. “I said, ‘Gore, I’m going to run for president, and I’d like your advice.’ Ever mindful of the great death of the American political state, he said, instantly, ‘You’ve got to do something about your hair.’”

Laughing good-naturedly along with the audience, Mr. Kucinich reenacted the conversation. “Gore, what, then, do you suggest?” he inquired. “A guillotine,” was Mr. Vidal’s response.

Michael Moore also shared some advice Mr. Vidal gave him over lunch in 2003. His 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine had been nominated for an Oscar, and Mr. Vidal wanted to know what Mr. Moore would say in his speech if he won.

“Finally, I said, ‘Listen, Gore, I think all I’m going to do is thank my agent and my stylist and get the hell out of there,” Mr. Moore said, drawing predictable laughs from the audience at the mention of a stylist. “He said, ‘No, no, you must quote Jefferson. He’s never been quoted at the Oscars."

“I thought he was going to give me a bit Jefferson line,” Mr. Moore continued. “And he begins, and he doesn’t end until four or five minutes later, just reciting one continuous Jefferson quote from memory, and he finished this as if I could remember it. And I just looked at him and said ‘If I do win, will you go up and accept it?’ He seemed to like that idea.”

Susan Sarandon took the stage to pass on “one pearl of parenting wisdom” Mr. Vidal had shared with her shortly after the birth of her first child. “I was struggling to be the best mother, and he told me, ‘Darling, it’s inevitable that you give your children neuroses, just make sure they’re productive ones,’” she recounted.

In her own tribute to Mr. Vidal, Elizabeth Ashley referred to a dictionary, explaining, “As many of you may know, after any conversation with Gore a lot of us have to go to the dictionary.” She read aloud the definition of “heretic,” and then asked the audience, “Remind you of anyone?”

“I didn’t meet Gore until the ’70s,” she told the audience, explaining that Tennessee Williams dragged her to the Carlyle to meet the man. “Now, Tennessee and I were in no condition to even be in public, let alone at the Carlyle,” she informed the crowd, laughing and explaining that when they arrived, Mr. Vidal “jumped to his feet, embraced Tennessee and kissed him full on the mouth, to the somewhat dropped-jaw constellation of patrons at the Carlyle in 1974."

“Tennessee and Gore talked for hours, and I just sat and drank,” Ms. Ashley remembered. “When we finally got in a cab, I said to Tennessee, ‘I just feel so stupid,’ and he said, ‘Oh darling, never mind, he’s just an old smarty-pants.’”

Ms. Ashley reached down to the ground to pull out a shot glass. “So here’s to you, old smarty-pants,” she said, raising the glass to the portrait of Mr. Vidal that adorned the stage. “We’re gonna miss the hell outta you.”

Dr. Adams, left, with Dennis Kucinich.

Patch Adams, MD, the clown doctor portrayed by Robin Williams in the eponymous 1998 film, has joined several dozen prominent figures of the American Left in asking Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa to grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum.

"The 'crime' that he has committed is that of practicing journalism," states the letter, delivered to the Embassy of Ecuador in London yesterday by American advocacy group Just Foreign Policy. 

Dr. Adams and the other letter signers are concerned that if Mr. Assange is extradited to Sweden, he will be imprisoned and re-extradited to the United States, where he's liable receive the same treatment as alleged leaker Private Bradley Manning. That includes "repeated and prolonged solitary confinement, harassment by guards, and humiliating treatment such as being forced to strip naked and stand at attention outside his cell." Many think the U.S. government has an indictment prepared already.

Other letter signers include the directors Michael Moore, Danny Glover and Oliver Stone; writers Naomi Wolf, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald; pundit Bill Maher, and other activists, whistleblowers and professors.

Ecuador is a strategic option for Mr. Assange right now because President Correa desperately needs to shore up his free press bona fides. After winning two high profile libel lawsuits earlier this year, President Correa pardoned the journalists under international pressure. He has been interviewed by Mr. Assange and publicly praised WikiLeaks.

Over the last decade, Clark's popularity waned as another new plucky, seemingly immortal Caucasian man named Ryan Seacrest generally took his place at the throne of organizing innocuous television that everybody you know watches, shame factor not withstanding. His most famous appearance in the final decade of his life may have been at the top of it, in Michael Moore's Oscar-winning 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine, in what is arguably one of the funniest scenes in the film: Dick Clark escaping Michael Moore by yelling at his associates to jump in a van, and then speeding away in it.

The set-up: Moore is describing the story of a Tamarla Owens, whose six year-old son took a gun to school and shot a young classmate with it, killing her. Owens, from Flint, Michigan, worked at a mall in a wealthy suburb 60 miles away from where she lived, for up to 70 hours a week, at two separate jobs. One of those jobs was as a waitress at Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill, a chain of restaurants that Clark had a stake in, in exchange for branding use of his likeness and endorsement. The company had applied for tax breaks for taking on welfare recipients as employees; Moore explains that Tamarla Owens couldn't make enough money to pay her rent, was evicted, and moved into a relative's home (where he son found the gun he ended up bringing to school).

Plenty of people had plenty to say about the merits of Owens' case; what's indisputable was Clark's desire to avoid the topic entirely, as evidenced by Moore's movie.

Moore flew out to California to speak with Clark for the film. He doesn't say whether or not he attempted to contact Clark to interview him prior to rushing him in person, but either way, he gets what he wanted: The moment Moore mentions Tamarla Owens' name, Dick Clark shouts for whoever is with him to get in the van, which speeds off as soon as humanly possible (clip with Dick Clark begins at 7:08).

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Screengrab from TimCast on UStream

In case you thought the Occupy Movement had somehow vanished during the cold but relatively brief Winter, Occupy Wall Street protesters returned in force Saturday to familiar locales, apparently determined to make sure we knew they were still around and still D.T. P. (Down To Protest).

The Times reported early Saturday night that protesters "embarked upon a winding march" which led to a few arrests in and around the original home of the protest, Zuccotti Park.

The Times also noted Saturday's action was familiar:

In several respects, the march on Saturday was similar to the inaugural one. The crowd was on the small side but spirited and marched past the bronze sculpture of a bull at Bowling Green, which had served as a mustering spot for the first march. The marchers were accompanied by police officers on foot and on scooters who at one point blocked access to Wall Street, just as they did on Sept. 17...

Around 8 p.m. on Saturday a text went out stating "Liberty Square is being RE-OCCUPIED! 500+ people and growing! Come on down! Bring blankets & food!"

There was a brief celebrity appearance by Michael Moore, who endured some heckling from the assembly over his personal wealth. Code Pink, "a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement" dedicated to ending United States-sponsored war and occupation was also in evidence.

500+ RE-OCCUPYING LIBERTY SQUARE RIGHT NOW! JOIN US! #OWS #SPRING

— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallSt) March 18, 2012

The crowd appeared to grow throughout the night, as evidenced by live footage broadcast over journalist Tim Pool's UStream page. Mr. Pool aired a "human mic" invoking calls for a "general strike" as well as an instance of a form of "direct action"--protesters linking arms and charging across Liberty Square at a full run.

Waves of marchers continued to fill the park well into the night. Around 10:30 p.m. it looked as though some protesters were attempting to set up tents as chants such as "We are not leaving" and "Occupy the food supply" rippled through the crowd.

A man with a US dollar bill taped over his mouth joins members of trade unions join "Occupy Wall Street" protesters during a march to Foley Square on October 5, 2011 in New York. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

UPDATE: This story was revised October 18 with new information including an updated number for the total amount of funds raised by the protest. It was originally posted on October 14 and ran in The New York Observer print edition Wednesday, October 19.

“George Soros money is behind this!” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners two weeks ago, feeding speculation that the “99 percent” agenda espoused by the Occupy Wall Street protesters has filthy-rich backers—a claim picked up by Reuters and heatedly debated in the media. Soros money? If only. Around the time Reuters was walking back its headline, “Who’s Behind the Wall Street Protests,” later revised to “Soros: Not a Funder,” protesters were voting on whether to spend $3,000 on brooms and trash cans to clean up the occupied plaza in order to avoid eviction by the city.

Back in July, when local activists hammered out the logistics of the Occupy Wall Street protest, they were planning for little more than an urban camping trip. Committees were established to handle security, medication and sanitation. Nourishment was a major concern. Fundraising was an afterthought.

Still, onlookers are rightfully eager to follow the money. Politics have been so dominated by financing for so long that a major movement without major backers seems unthinkable. Last week, Republicans announced a new Super PAC determined, according to The New York Times, to “raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to defend the party’s majority next year”; meanwhile, President Barack Obama raised more than $42 million for his re-election campaign over the last three months.

Donations are flowing into Occupy Wall Street as well, though on a much smaller scale; as of Tuesday the protest’s general fund has raised approximately $294,000, according to members of the finance committee on Tuesday (although the committee is still refining its balance sheet in advance of giving it to a CPA). That’s enough to keep the demonstrators well-fed and livestreaming, but it’s not Soros-level treasure.

More than 4,000 donations ranging from $5 to $7,000 and totaling about $214,000 have been collected online. About $1,000 in cash comes in every day through the empty five-gallon water jug at the ersatz cafeteria in the middle of the plaza and three duct-taped paint buckets stationed at the information booths. Michael Moore gave $1,000 after a book signing. An anonymous donor gave $5,000 after a fundraising pop-up art show, entitled “No Comment,” held at the historic JP Morgan Building. The General Assembly, the group’s open legislature, voted en masse to decline a donation from music mogul Russell Simmons, who wanted a hand in helping the protest shape demands (spawning a rumor that he’d asked the protest to endorse an album in exchange for $20,000). The total on-site donations, cash and check, is about $80,000. And that’s just the general fund; more has been raised for tangential projects. Staffers of the free paper The Indypendent garnered $75,690 to print The Occupied Wall Street Journal via the crowd-funding site Kickstarter; another group has raised $2,971 on the crowd-funding site IndieGoGo to send “radical barbers” and “progressive tailors” to make over the protesters.

Meanwhile, organizers have had a crash course in money management. “It’s radical finances,” Victoria Sobel, the 21-year-old Cooper Union art student who served for a few weeks as Occupy Wall Street’s unofficial CFO, told The Observer Sunday during an evening rendezvous at the protest’s off-site conference room and facilities, McDonald’s.

The group resisted temptation when it came from Mr. Simmons. But how can the decentralized movement, encompassing many varieties of purist from anarchist to libertarian to vegan—one protester told The Observer she maintained a strict alkaline diet—remain uncorrupted? Occupy Wall Street has to keep its books clean in order to avoid going the way of Al Capone. But it’s also had to justify working with the banking establishment to its radical congregants, 24 of whom were arrested over the weekend during a mini-run on the LaGuardia Place Citibank. It’s a delicate line to walk, especially when every major decision and any purchases over $100 have to be approved by the General Assembly, sometimes twice. The sanitation working group recently brought a simple proposal: the purchase of storage bins in order to tidy up the park. It passed, but only after a member of the assembly attached a friendly amendment stipulating that the bins should be certified Fair Trade. When attempting to purchase Fair Trade storage bins, the sanitation committee discovered they do not exist. The proposal had to be passed again.

The movement is also large enough that many people in positions of responsibility don’t know each other, adding to the difficulty of establishing a financial infrastructure. When we first met Ms. Sobel, a young protester seated nearby couldn’t help but overhear. “Hey, are you on Finance?” he asked. “I’m at the info booth, and we like, get a lot of money? What should we do?”

The movement has also inspired unaffiliated websites, claiming to be collecting funds for Occupy Wall Street. There are more than 200 occupation-related campaigns on the fundraising website WePay; some are rumored to be fraudulent, others merely unauthorized. The organizers behind OccupyWallSt.org started raising a separate fund for their own expenses, for $6,000, causing a kerfuffle with the finance committee. Meanwhile, people at the camp are “always trying to steal the buckets,” Ms. Sobel said, and well-meaning protesters as well as opportunists have been seen walking around with their own buckets.

Fortunately for the activists, a mutual friend introduced Ms. Sobel to Elaine Brower, a peace activist who lives in Staten Island and works in the city controller’s office. Ms. Brower is the treasurer for October 2011, a movement which had been planning to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. for the ten-year anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, independently of Occupy Wall Street—although the groups eventually started collaborating­­.

“Thursday, the 23rd,” Ms. Brower said, consulting her notes when The Observer called. “We sat in McDonald’s—that seems to be the official headquarters over there—and I’m trying to explain to them the ups and downs of accounting and financing.” Ms. Brower detailed the difference between a not-for-profit and a nonprofit to Ms. Sobel and organizers Chris Biemer, Pete Dutro, Darryl Price, and “Robert,” and warned them not to personally accept money because of the risk of taking on unwanted liability.

“I love the whole lateral decision-making process,” Ms. Brower said, referring the protest’s hyper-democratic means of deciding action—“but without any type of leadership they could really get themselves into trouble.”

Ms. Brower arranged for a fiscal sponsor, the nonprofit Alliance for Global Justice, through which the Friends of Liberty Plaza can receive tax-free donations, about a week into the protest.

But the group was still playing catch-up. There was only one venue for fundraising, which was tied to the personal bank account of Mr. Biemer, a 23-year-old Florida transplant and member of the local chapter of Food Not Bombs, the non-profit known for canvassing grocery stores and restaurants for discarded food to repurpose for the homeless. Mr. Biemer was heading up the food committee for Occupy Wall Street, whose original plan was to solicit food donations and find free leftovers by dumpster diving. But on July 29, he wrote an exhaustive letter on the group’s website in which he estimated that the amount of peanut butter sandwiches needed to feed the expected 20,000 people—figuring a typical peanut butter sandwich requires two tablespoons of peanut butter and the stuff is available in 45-lb. tubs—they’d need about $1,000. “Despite some outreach efforts, the total amount of money raised by the Food Committee so far equals $0,” he wrote. “So, we need money.”

Mr. Biemer registered an account at WePay.com to accept donations for food, with the expectation that it would never exceed $2,000 and thus avoid inviting an audit. But after the protest started, they were getting so much donated food that there was no need to dumpster dive, and on the fourth day, Mr. Biemer’s WePay account had collected about $10,000.

In the first week of the protest, around the time they realized they had money, the protesters realized they needed to spend money. Tarps, coffee and other staples that weren’t being regularly donated were in high demand, as were dry socks and underwear after it rained. There was a march planned for Saturday, the protest’s first big weekend, and organizers needed funds to cover bail and medical supplies such as gauze, which was soaked in vinegar and handed out to marchers in case of tear gas. The money was sitting in Mr. Biemer’s account, but there was no legal entity to transfer it to. Meanwhile, some wondered whether it was ethical to spend money people had ostensibly donated for food on other necessities instead. At the same time, protesters on site were grumbling about the funds. “People were really freaking out,” Ms. Sobel said. “’Where’s the money? How much is there? Why can’t I see it?’ I was extremely discouraged. We were kind of screwed.”

Considering the time crunch, Ms. Brower offered to move some money through October 2011. Mr. Biemer overnighted a check made out to the nonprofit for $5,000 and Ms. Brower delivered the cash Saturday morning so an invigorating breakfast could be bought for the plaza in advance of the march. “I told Victoria to make sure she locked it up somewhere,” she said. The money did get locked up, in a safety box at One Police Plaza, after Ms. Sobel was arrested with the remaining $4,300. It was returned when Ms. Sobel was released, with a receipt and a raised eyebrow.

Since then, Occupy Wall Street has opened two bank accounts in the name of its unincorporated association, Friends of Liberty Plaza. The first was at the Lower East Side People’s Credit Union—the most ethically-palatable solution within a reasonable commute. CEO Linda Levy was surprised to see the protesters walk into the bank. “We asked how they had found us, and they said they found us on the internet,” she told The Observer. “We were actually really pleased that they decided to open an account with us. The fact that they would pick us to have their account would reflect that we’re not like other banks. A lot of times there are progressive movements that complain about the banks but they still keep their money in the banks.”

The credit union has made “Occupy Wall Street” an honoree at its upcoming 25th birthday party, she said.

About two weeks ago, Occupy Wall Street was approached by another financial institution: the union-owned Amalgamated Bank at 52 Broadway, four blocks from the protest’s headquarters at Zuccotti Park. The finance committee members were having trouble making it up to the Lower East Side by 4 p.m. in order to deposit, so they opened a second account at Amalgamated, which has a big, red, branded banner in the window: “Amalgamated Bank Supports UFT and the Occupy Wall Street Movement.” (Another possible wrench in the process: Amalgamated is under a consent order by the FDIC for not discharging delinquent loans in a timely manner. If it doesn’t satisfy the FDIC’s requirements, it could be in line for receivership.)

But even as things tighten up on the accounting side, the General Assembly, which now attracts a thick crowd that takes up half the park, is becoming comically inefficient. The group has no sound permit for a PA, so each committee’s proposal must be amplified by the “human mic,” in which a speaker says a few words at a time which are repeated by the audience seated immediately nearby, then echoed in concentric rings. A scribe also transcribes the proceedings on a laptop which is projected onto a screen. And at the opening of each assembly, facilitators remind the crowd the hand signals: up spirit fingers for yes, down for no, and arms crossed in front of the chest to indicate a serious objection.

With waves of new protesters still arriving, it’s more likely that someone will block each motion. As a result, some groups are raising their own funds–creating resentment and potential legal implications. Suspicion isn’t limited to finance. “They’re having secret meetings,” one protester, who is establishing the plaza’s internet café, said of the media group. The arts and culture committee and media working group dominate the plaza as groups like Labor, Library and People of Color attract smaller numbers—although everyone seems to love the food committee.

The General Assembly passed a resolution to spend a hefty $3,000 to clean up the plaza Thursday when the N.Y.P.D. essentially angled to evict the protesters in order to “clean the park,” the same pretext that was used in June to shut down the union-instigated Bloombergville, an occupation near City Hall to protest budget cuts and layoffs. The body also recently approved a $25,000 budget for the media working group.

But due to the tedious approval process, expenditures are mostly happening only in small increments—petty cash expenses taken out of the on-site cash buckets. Meanwhile, funds are accumulating online. The amount donated per day keeps increasing. A technical team is building an accounting system using open source software, which will embed a balance sheet on the website for anyone to have a look.

“I’ve been trying to warn them to make sure that all of this is really kept aboveboard,” Ms. Brower said. “We know that the government is going to be looking at this at some point. Like, they have buckets around for donations. You really shouldn’t have buckets around. It’s just not a good thing. It’s a temptation and it doesn’t look right.”

We were assured the committee is replacing the buckets with lockboxes, we told her.

“Accepting cash in that situation could lead to problems!” she said. “When money comes into play, it brings out the worst in people.”

ajeffries@observer.com

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Ms. Brower used her own Haiti-based 501c(3) to help out Occupy Wall Street; on two occasions, Ms. Brower used the October 11 association to cash checks for Occupy Wall Street. The Observer regrets the error.

John Farley of MetroFocus, jailed for covering the protests (photo via MetroFocus/Sam Lewis)

(Though not all-inclusive, this page will be updated regularly. Have a suggestion? Leave it in the comments!)

Two months in, Occupy Wall Street media coverage has swelled from a fringe movement to the importance of a daily beat. To guide you through this media saturation, the Observer presents the best stories and angles from the worldwide OWS news desk, including coverage of the media “blackout” when the protests began in September. (But be sure to check out our coverage as well.)

October 31

The New York Times "With Generators Gone, Wall Street Protestors Try Bicycle Power"

October 11

The New York Times "Want to Get Fat on Wall Street? Try Protesting"

October 4

Mother Jones "From Oakland to Melbourne, Over 2,000 Occupy Arrests (Map)"

The Media Blackout

While supporters can no longer complain that there is a media blackout on "Occupy Wall Street," here's a timeline breakdown on some of the bigger media stories about the media's noncoverage of the movement from September.

September 17th (1st day of protest):

ABC blog: "Protesters Begin Effort to ‘Occupy Wall Street’"

CBS Local: "Demonstrators From Across Nation Descend On NYC To ‘Occupy’ Wall Street"

Bloomberg News: "Protesters Converge on Lower Manhattan, Plan ‘Occupation’"

New York Daily News: "Protestors joined by social media rail against Wall St. greed - forcing NYPD to lock down streets"

Even Fox News had a story the first day: Demonstrators 'Occupy Wall Street' to Protest Influence of Money on U.S. Politics

September 18th (2nd day of protest):

(A slow Sunday for the MSM.)

Huffington Post: NYPD Shuts Down Wall Street

September 19th (3rd day of protest):

Bloomberg News:  "Wall Street Areas Blocked as Police Arrest Seven in Protest"

The Guardian: "Wall Street protesters: over-educated, under-employed and angry"

The New York Times: "Wall Street Protests Continue, With at Least 6 Arrested"

The New York Observer: "Wall Street Faces the Wrath of Anonymous During Weekend Protest"

But with all that print news, it still took the networks a little longer to catch up. On September 20, Dylan Ratigan had a correspondent try to talk to the people involved, using the protests as a jumping off point for a roundtable discussion about America's economy.

One day later, Keith Olbermann took to CurrentTV to complain about the media blackout over the protests, and then called the institutions who were covering it a "piece of a crap." *Cough Cough*

Michael Moore came on Mr. Olbermann's show two days later to complain on the media about the media's blackout.

So we guess by Mr. Moore and Mr. Olbermann's own definition, it wasn't until Lawrence O'Donnell's wrathful indictment of the NYPD and Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna on his September 26 broadcast that the media blitzkrieg really started. But even when the shows started interviewing protestors, they were more focused on the actions of the police than what the protesters were fighting about.

Honestly, who could blame them? The collective known as Occupy Wall Street wasn't just one entity, but a collection of many different organizations and ad hoc groups, making it harder for the press to identify what, exactly, these people were protesting. Gina Bellefante from The New York Times took a pretty critical view of the entire spectacle in an article that ran on the September 23, summing up the protest as a cause that was "virtually impossible to decipher." She was missing the point, but the lack of a singular game plan or argument for the protesters baffled a lot of the media.

Then there's the blurry boundary between citizen journalism and the protestors themselves: John Farley of MetroFocus was detained and put in a jail cell for nine hours after he went to cover the September 24 protests. Wonkette's Riley Waggaman has reported live from the scene, but admits that he supports and identifies with Occupy Wall Street's ethos on corporate America. It's hard to remain a disinterested party when you keep getting mace in your eye, which leads to a somewhat OWS-skewed perspective. On the other side of the coin we see protestors like Nathan Schneider from Wagingnonviolence.org handling the P.R. for the OWS at their DIY press center while writing pieces for The Nation and the Huffington Post about the occupation. Objective journalism, this is not.

And then there were the comparisons: Was this how the lefties did a Tea Party? If so, the media certainly weren't treating the two with equal coverage, argued Anthony DeRosa at Reuters. Open-source guru Tim O'Reilly was actually surprised that the Tea Party wasn't attending Occupy Wall Street, since both organizations are (theoretically, at least) against the government taking money out of the hands of small business owners and using it to bail out banks. He also didn't like the way those damn kids dressed.

The protests have also been compared to hippie festivals like Bonnaroo and Burning Man, as was suggested in Thursday night's this Daily Show clip.

But it was OWS's self-comparison to the Arab Spring uprisings (since they both relied on new forms of social media activism) that drew the chilliest reception over at The Wall Street Journal:

In Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, young people put guns in their hands and their lives on the line. They dropped the keyboards after their Internet access was cut off. In contrast, America's Arab spring looks more like hibernation. It begins and ends with a social-media discussion thread.

That could change, of course, if the kids simply stop grumbling with their Facebook friends. They might try going out and taking it to their enemies.

Which, ironically, is exactly the one thing OWS did accomplish successfully: Taking it to the streets and organizing an IRL meet-up to face the enemy...or at least a national symbol of it...on Wall Street.

Finally fed up with the media's treatment (or lack thereof), Arun Gupta of The Indypendent started his own newspaper, The Occupy Wall Street Journal, which debuted Saturday, October 1.

Currently there are almost as many reporters covering OWS as there are actual protesters. Even Fox News has got in the game, though their attempts to dismiss the assembly by editing their interviews had quite a backlash. Greta Van Susteren was forced to comment after the New York Observer revealed an un-aired interview with an advocate.
The New York Times has also changed its tune, putting coverage of the protests on the front page of the paper. This may be due to the Brooklyn Bridge march that lead to over 700 arrests...and the fact that cuffs were slapped on one of their own freelance reporters. Gawker's Adrien Chen was allowed to go through.

Andrew Ross Sorkin from Dealbook made a surprisingly persuasive argument for OWS being more than "street theater," saying:

At times it can be hard to discern, but, at least to me, the message was clear: the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.

And that message is a warning shot about the kind of civil unrest that may emerge — as we’ve seen in some European countries — if our economy continues to struggle.

BY MONDAY NIGHT, the 10th day of the Occupy Wall Street protest, the miniature colony at Liberty Park Plaza was rather sophisticated. The “media tent,” which on Saturday had consisted of a MacBook and an umbrella, now looked like an amateur version of the CNN newsroom. Protesters crushed around a central table, tweeting, emailing and editing video, surrounded by a barricade of tables holding more computers, with the cracks in between filled in by sleeping bags, blankets and backpacks. One revolutionary with a hard face sat straight-backed, a cigarette poking sideways out of his mouth while he typed away. The computers and lights were powered by a generator, which briefly died when someone misplaced the gas can. The media center, as the always-lit hub of information and electricity, is the cornerstone of the encampment. Entry is restricted.

Next door is the kitchen, two rows of marble benches laden with pizza, fruit, dry noodles, bean salad and hot vegetarian chili with bread. Saturday’s dinner was self-serve; this time, a gentleman in a New York Film Academy T-shirt handed over The Observer’s brownie in a napkin. Next to the kitchen lies a field of protest signs—former pizza boxes—within easy reach. The rest of the park is residential, filled with sleeping bags, tarps, air mattresses and ordinary mattresses; a bench stacked with folded blankets for common use; and a living room complete with carpeting, chairs and a futon frame, which we observed being occupied by a family with three small children, and later by a pair of men bedding down in opposite directions. The east end of the park usually hosts the drum circle. The bathroom is located around the corner at McDonald’s, whose employees have been surprisingly accommodating, allowing protesters to come, go, use the electrical outlets and linger unmolested. The Burger King on the western border of the park, however, has reportedly told protesters they’re banned from making purchases.

The Observer arrived at Occupy Wall Street after chasing Monday evening’s march through the narrow streets of the financial district, following the group on Twitter and scrambling to catch up. The New York Stock Exchange—dead, but lined with cops. Bowling Green—quiet, no police presence. At Bridge Street, we noticed a helicopter above the skyscrapers. Heading up Broadway, we caught up with the motley but spirited crew of protesters bobbing their signs to the beat, and fell in between a pair of middle-aged moms and a boy with green-tipped hair in a ripped white T-shirt. Some people beat pizza boxes with empty water bottles. We spotted a sign: “Unfuck the world!”

As we rolled our eyes, we saw another: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Comparing the collection of apparent Burning Man refugees who have been demonstrating in Liberty Park Plaza over the past 10 days to the anti-colonial effort led by Mahatma Gandhi would be charitable. Even so, the Occupy Wall Streeters probably fit somewhere between Gandhi’s steps two and three. In the first week, media coverage was negligible. Then over the weekend, The New York Times’s Ginia Bellafante weighed in with a piece that the demonstrators found condescending, in which she called the protest “a diffuse and leaderless convocation of activists against greed, corporate influence, gross social inequality and other nasty by-products of wayward capitalism not easily extinguishable by street theater” and gave the final word to a floor trader who dismissed the movement because some protesters were using MacBooks.

Then on Saturday, a senior officer of the N.Y.P.D. was captured on camera spritzing pepper spray into the faces of two women. The video, along with reports of more than 80 protester arrests, gave the protest some legitimacy in the eyes of the media. While not especially impressed by the protest itself, The Atlantic’s James Fallows posted the video under an unusually sharp headline: “An Important Video to Watch: Pepper Spray by a Cruel and Cowardly NYC Cop.” Mr. Fallows explained his extreme reaction to The Observer in an email: “I am sure one reason is because I’ve spent much of the past five years in China,” he wrote. “I looked at that video and thought, how would I feel if I saw the Chinese cops doing that? Also, I have been on a slow boil about the security-state excesses of the past 10 years.”

Mr. Fallows is in exalted company. “Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street—financial institutions generally—has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world),” Noam Chomsky wrote in a letter to organizers Sunday. “The courageous and honorable protests underway in Wall Street should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course.” The rapper and 9/11 Truther Lupe Fiasco attended, sent a poem and has been tweeting vigorously for the cause; Brooklyn City Councilman Charles Barron spoke at the protest Tuesday morning. Michael Moore, who paid a surprise visit to the park Monday night, took a harder line: “Tax them! They are thieves! They are gangsters! They are kleptomaniacs!”

It was too bad Mr. Moore was not present for the march earlier; he would have enjoyed the dozens of cameras as well as the spectacle of protesters dancing down cobblestone streets. “Banks! Got! Bailed out! We! Got! Sold out!”

Across the street, about ten tight-shirted men stared from behind the window of a clothing store, frozen, so that at first The Observer thought they were mannequins.

“Hey, do you guys want to help me do a chant?” Green Hair asked the marchers around him. “You just say, ‘Occupy Wall Street,’’ okay?” He cupped his hands around his mouth and hoarsely yelled, “ALL DAY! ALL WEEK!”

The Observer felt ridiculous, but we didn’t want to be a square. “Occ-u-py-Wall-Street!”

The idea of occupying Wall Street originated with an email blast by the lefty magazine Adbusters, best known for not accepting advertising. Adbusters is based in Vancouver but two-thirds of its readership is in the U.S., and in July senior editor Micah White and writers called for a 20,000-strong extended occupation on Wall Street, with the hope that Americans, complacent in the throes of a going-on-five-year recession, might adopt some of the outrage and effectiveness of the Arab Spring.

“We’ve been kind of watching the Egyptian uprising and the Spanish uprisings and wondering, why aren’t Americans also rising up against the financial fraudsters that are ruining people’s lives,” said Mr. White, who lives in Berkeley and has not ventured to New York for the proceedings. “I think we wanted to catalyze a people’s democratic spring in America.”

The email went out to Adbusters’ 90,000 subscribers.

“The basic model is to combine the Egyptian Tahrir uprising with the Spanish acampadas,” Mr. White said, referring to a string of extreme sit-ins across Spain in May and June. “You hold a symbolic space and you hold people’s assemblies.”

Of course, the protesters aren’t technically holding a space on Wall Street. Liberty Park Plaza, also known as Zuccotti Park, is two blocks away from Wall Street, where police regularly patrol the barricaded area around the New York Stock Exchange, a security measure implemented after Sept. 11.

“Adbusters put out the call, but they had no idea what they were talking about,” said Guy Steward, an 18-year-old unemployed New Yorker in thick glasses and a blue bandana. He read about the local effort on Tumblr and has been involved since the first day. “They’re a bunch of Canadians. They were like, ‘Go set up tents on Wall Street!’ You can’t set up tents on Wall Street. You’ll get shot.”

The grassroots New York City General Assembly, a scattered but competent body of activists, sprang up Aug. 2 and starting hammering out logistics through a series of hyper-democratic meetings in which everyone is given a chance to speak, every proposal is voted on, nothing happens without consensus (reached when there is no outright opposition to a proposal), and individuals are not bound by the group’s decision. The process is painstaking, but it worked—the group picked a place and the memo spread via Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and word of mouth.

The protesters now hold General Assemblies twice a day. There are three key components to the meetings: the “human microphone,” in which the people closest to the speaker repeat his or her words in unison for the rest of the crowd; the “stack taker,” who manages the list of people who want to speak; and a set of hand signals that include “spirit fingers” to indicate assent and arms crossed in an X to indicate a question or objection.

On Monday after the march and pep talk by Mr. Moore, the crowd was feeling especially empowered and optimistic. “Mic check!” yelled a blond woman in a black tank top and yoga pants. “MIC CHECK!” the audience bellowed back. Lately, most of the business at the General Assembly has involved proposals for the formation of new committees. On Monday night, various protesters suggested an animal rights committee, a translation committee, a committee for “matching volunteers with tasks” and a diversity committee (most of the protesters are young, white English speakers). The “vision and demands” committee was slated to speak Monday night, but could not finish its highly anticipated proposal in time. “I must say—” one audience member said.

“I MUST SAY,” the crowd repeated.

“I am disappointed—”

“I AM DISAPPOINTED!”

“That we still do not have—”

“THAT STILL WE DO NOT HAVE!”

“A list of demands.”

“A LIST OF DEMANDS!”

Sure, there is an abundance of inarticulate hippie-types on hand, ever ready to assume the modified lotus and ostentatiously meditate. And yes, The Observer was forced to relocate to McDonald’s to write because three young men on the plaza wouldn’t stop crowing about how they were tripping on acid. But some protesters have managed to tow a more compelling line.

On Aug. 23, an activist—actually a reporter, who asked to remain anonymous because he was concerned about running afoul of his editor­—launched wearethe99percent.tumblr.com, which contains some of the stronger arguments for the Occupy Wall Street movement. “It’s time the 1 percent got to know us a little better,” the site says, referring to the nation’s richest percentile. Readers submitted pictures of themselves holding up signs. “I’m an unemployed college grad living with my parents,” read one. “Working 67 hours a week but can’t afford to buy school supplies for my daughters,” said another. “I’m 18, a college freshman. My dad has been unemployed for over two years and nobody is hiring. I haven’t been to the doctor’s since I was 14.” Most of the people pictured are 23 or younger. Student debt, health care and persistent unemployment are recurring themes.

The kitchen started serving coffee, juice and fruit at 6 a.m. as dawn broke over the plaza. Earlier, Mr. Steward had remarked that some pictures “made it look like a hobo camp,” which was exactly how the scene must have appeared to the business-attired professionals who were starting to appear on the sidewalk. At the west entrance to the plaza, a protester was sleeping in a chair with his mouth half-open, knees splayed apart, his head completely lolled to the right. Next to him was the orange poster bearing the day’s official agenda.

Correction: This story originally referred to Micah White as editor-in-chief of Adbusters; he is a senior editor. The Observer regrets the error.

Last night, The New York Observer joined hundreds as they marched, rallied, ate, and protested (generally) during the tenth straight day of Occupy Wall Street. Michael Moore was there. Depending on who you talked to, this event was set up by Adbusters, a group called General Assembly, or Anonymous. There was a press center, although not a lot of information being distributed. There was, at one point, free pizza.

But you don't need another eyewitness account of the bedlam down on Wall Street. Instead, we thought we'd do something a little different and show you the actual faces behind the protest...have them tell you what they considered the issues they were fighting for/against. Sure, the answers might be have been vague (at best), and apparently 90 percent of the current "Occupy Wall Street" crew ismade up of people who had heard something about it on the Internet, showed up as a bystander, and then decided to stick around. But as one of our more (in)famous faces would say, "At least they're not being complacent!"

(All photos by Marielle Solan.)

Meghan O'Hara, nominated for an Oscar for her work with Mr. Moore on the health-care documentary Sicko, said she is sending a film crew to Iowa next week to interview locals and to attend the sentencing by Judge Linda Reade.

The executive, Sholom Rubashkin, faces up to 25 years—an unusually harsh sentence—following a federal raid against his kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors. The F.B.I. raided Agriprocessors in May 2008 and arrested 389 workers who lacked proper documentation. Mr. Rubashkin later was charged with bank fraud. His case has prompted protests from rabbis across the country, who say he is being unfairly treated and faces a sentence that is disproportionate.

Ms. O'Hara, whose company Honest Engine is investigating the case, said while Mr. Rubashkin is "easy to vilify, it's the conflicted characters who are always the most interesting."

In addition to working with Mr. Moore on Sicko, she also has served as a producer on Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 911.

Who knew killing zombies was such a lucrative business? Zombieland squished the competition at the box office this weekend, placing first with an estimated $25 million. That gives the horror-zombie-comedy hybrid the second highest opening for a zombie-related film, behind only Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake. Elsewhere on the charts, it was mostly disappointment: Ricky Gervais proved he still isn’t an American movie star, as The Invention of Lying landed in fourth with only $7.3 million; while Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story and Drew Barrymore’s Whip It tied for sixth, each grossing a shockingly low $4.8 million. Though, to be fair, Ms. Barrymore’s Whip It failed in nearly one thousand more theaters than Mr. Moore’s new polemic. Ouch. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. Zombieland: $25 million ($25 million total)

This start for Zombieland is very strong for sure—to wit: it grossed more over the weekend than Shaun of the Dead did in its entire theatrical run—but the question to watch going forward is whether or not it can spawn a sequel. (Because, as Scream taught us, it’s all about the sequel.) If word of mouth is great, Ruben Fleischer’s sharp debut could reach over $80 million and we’ll see Zombieland 2: More Zombies; if not, we won’t. Along those lines, how long before the Sony marketing team puts the top-secret-celebrity-cameo-that-wasn’t-top-secret-because-it-had-been-on-the-Internet-for-months into the trailers?

2. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: $16.7 million ($82.3 million total)

Even when faced with the 3-D challenge of Disney’s Toy Story franchise, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs held up remarkably well, dipping just 33 percent and pushing its cume to over $82 million. As this sleeper smash marches its way towards triple-digits, remember that the next animated film coming to theaters is Astroboy on October 23. There are a lot more kiddie dollars for Meatballs to earn between now and then.

3. Toy Story / Toy Story 2: 3-D Double Feature: $12.5 million ($12.5 million total)

As if you needed further proof that the Pixar brand is bulletproof: Disney re-released 3-D versions of Toy Story and Toy Story 2—as an obvious money grab—and the two films still wound up grossing $12.5 million. The moral is simple: if you want your film to succeed, make sure it has an extra dimension.

4. The Invention of Lying: $7.3 million ($7.3 million total)

The good news for Ricky Gervais is that The Invention of Lying had a better start than Ghost Town did last fall. The bad news? That’s not saying much. As much as we love Mr. Gervais, he obviously isn’t capable of carrying a movie on his own shoulders. Clearly talent doesn’t translate to box office dollars.

5. Surrogates: $7.3 million ($26.3 million total)

Speaking of which: that the second weekend of Surrogates could top both Whip It and Capitalism: A Love Story feels decidedly unfair; the Bruce Willis bomb dropped 50 percent from last weekend and yet still easily handled the two films, which grossed $4.8 million each. For Whip It, there isn’t much to sugarcoat: Drew Barrymore can only hope her sparkling directorial debut can find an audience in college dorm rooms for the next decade. Meanwhile, Capitalism: A Love Story is fighting a battle against perception. A $4.8 million opening for a documentary about the financial industry has to be considered a huge win… unless, of course, Michael Moore is involved.