Ashley Gilbertson

Ashley Gilbertson's photographs from Iraq, where he worked almost exclusively from 2002 until 2008 on assignment for The New York Times, gained him recognition from...

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#OccupyWallStreet

on 12 December 2011 by Ashley Gilbertson

As the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have mushroomed into global protests, the nucleus of the movement remained in Zuccotti Park, a small, windswept plaza a few blocks north of Wall Street.

There, since September 17, 2011, responding to a call to action from Adbuster's magazine, hundreds of people hailing from all over the U.S. have been living in the makeshift encampment. Every day they organize marches, social network, and generally attempt to act as a thorn in the side of greed, corporate influence and social and financial inequality.

The protesters have been criticized for lacking formal demands, though a unifying theme they gather under is the slogan, "We are the 99%", referring to the enormous income gap between the wealthiest 1% of and the rest of the population.

This work was (in part) assigned by The New Yorker, and ran alongside Mattathias Schwatrz's story outlining the origins and future of the movement, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_schwartz

It ran again later as a post on The New Yorker's Photo Booth blog, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/11/ashley-gilbertson-occupy-wall-street.html