I recently returned from New York City, where I participated in the "Occupy Wall Street" movement that has now sprouted up in hundreds of cities across the country.

This is not a movement with one specific demand. It is an uprising, similar to what we saw in Egypt and Tunisia. The occupation is entering its sixth week now, and the corporate media has finally begun to report about it, often with disdain.

You may read or hear that the movement has no single demand, is not centrally organized, and wants a laundry list of changes. That would be correct. But rather than look at those descriptions as negatives, I suggest to you that they are attributes.

What is happening now is that hundreds and, on some days, thousands of people are coming out into the streets in New York and across the country. In New York they have created a community near Wall Street in a privately owned park thanks to the good will of its owner. They have areas for food, medical, necessities for everyone's comfort, media, a library, and rotating spaces for discussion groups and working task forces.

When I was there, people from all over brought food - sandwich fixings, fruit, huge vats of hot prepared foods.

Everything was orderly. It was quite a caring community. People were incredibly considerate of me, a bit of an elder now. They reached out to me when my footing was unstable, made sure that my needs were cared for, and thanked me for my participation.

So, what is all the ruckus about? It's about how this economy is not working for most of us. Those who have seen their communities destroyed by housing foreclosures want the foreclosures to stop. The predatory banks that helped spark this international economic downward spiral. We want them to make things right.

Some want to end the wars that are eating up a grotesque amount of our tax dollars, stripping us of our civil liberties while providing us with little safety, resulting in thousands of dead and mangled soldiers, unimaginable numbers of enemies, and further destabilizing our world.

Some are students protesting the high cost of education, and the student loans which are crippling their future.

Union workers are in the streets objecting to the attack on collective bargaining that we are seeing in our country. Others are rebelling against our lack of real health care. All in this uprising can agree on one thing: Corporations are not people, despite what the Supreme Court says. We agree that big banks, financial institutions, and corporations have no right to destroy our economy, or the world economy.

What will come of these demonstrations? Already the Democrats in the budget committee have put the idea of taxing the very rich at a higher rate back on the table. President Obama has just announced that the last U.S. military troops will leave Iraq by the end of this year. The President and Congress know we are fed up and that they have to do something about it. If they get that message and we keep the pressure on them, we could begin to see the change we were promised in 2008.

The "Occupy" uprisings have come to Raleigh, Durham, and the Chapel Hill/Carrboro communities.

If you want change, I encourage you to join them for a few hours or a few days. Send them food, tarps for rain, and whatever they need. The Chapel Hill/Carrboro occupation is at the Peace and Justice Plaza in front of the Franklin Street Post Office 24 hours a day. See you there.