Depending on who you ask, Occupy Wall Street is one of the following:
— a "leaderless resistance movement" trying to call attention to the improprieties of Wall Street, namely those that led to the current Great Recession, — a bunch of no-good hippies taking a break from their $45,000 Columbia or NYU educations to listen to Jeff Mangum play impromptu concerts, — an interesting piece of installation artwork that looks just as good from a corner office at Goldman Sachs as it does from the ground, — a great place to meet low-maintenance girls.
Whichever view you subscribe to, the protests have been ongoing since October 5th, 2011, and have led to the much-derided tactic of the New York Police Department reportedly corralling protesters onto the Brooklyn Bridge, where they were then cited and arrested en masse for obstruction bridge traffic. A similar action across the walkways was successfully carried out by the protesters on November 17th, after tens of thousands marched on Foley Square and Union Square.
Protests are centered around Liberty Square and Foley Square in the Financial District in Lower Manhattan, with occasional marches to other key locations in the general vicinity. A full list of actions and activities both planned and past are available on the Occupy Wall Street website (click the banner at the top of this page). No word on where the nearest bathrooms can be found, although word is that the nearby Burger King has been very laissez-faire about letting Occupiers occupy their toilets.