NEW YORK: Saum Eskandani looks at the crazy quilt of fellow protesters, sleeping bags, and placards cramming into Zuccotti Park near Wall Street and sees unity.
"It is a microcosm of the world, everybody is different," Eskandani says.
Eskandani lives close to the protest camp and returns home each night to sleep a few hours.
But a protester sitting nearby, Lin Wefel, says she hasn't been home since discovering the permanent demonstration, which appeared on the square on September 17. "I was drawn like a magnet," said the veteran of protests against the Vietnam war.
Different in age, race, and background, some of the protesters are unemployed and others have stopped working to join. But what brings them all together is that they want the country to see fundamental change.
Here is a cross-section of the varied, but united Occupy Wall Street crowd:
Casey O'Neill: at 34, he quit his job as a data manager in Oakland, California, to join the anti-Wall Street camp along with his companion. "I didn't know how many we would be" here, he said.
He sees the task as changing a system where the very rich increasingly live according to separate rules from the vast majority, or what protesters call the "99 percent."
He sees the unsanctioned protest as inspired by the Arab Spring revolts against dictatorships and he is proud of the support they get. "It's amazing what we receive from all over the country."
A philosophy and political science graduate, he has only two worries: that they fail, or are taken over by politicians.
Lin Wefel, a retiree from Pennsylvania, came to check up on her daughter in New York and has stayed since. "I only missed a few days," she said. She stays busy handing out the free newspaper titled The Occupied Wall Street Journal.
Her own placard says: "Arab Spring, European Summer, American Fall."
Wefel says her protesting CV goes back all the way to the anti-Vietnam demonstrations. "I see our generation connection with the new generation," she said proudly.
According to Wefel, there is no need to come up with a stated goal for the protest. "They don't need anyone telling them what the goals are."
Pearle Moore: 17 years old, she lives in New York and has stayed at the camp for about 10 days already, armed with an inflatable air mattress.
Although she dropped out of school she is keen to study how to be a fashion designer and says she wants "to be part of the revolution. I want a future."
"Economics have affected my whole life," she said, describing her father's growing difficulty to sustain a family of five children.
Saum Eskandani: An Iranian-American, 27, he was brought up in Las Vegas and works as an actor and photographer. He lives in New York and decided to join the camp during a week off work.
As for a unified message, "we don't know yet," he said, but "the more we work, the clearer that message is going to come out."
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