During my fall break, I traveled to New York to see what “Occupy Wall Street” was about. I stayed there from Wednesday to Monday, sleeping in a park and working at the ” OWS in Spanish” table. While volunteering there, I witnessed a very different system of organization from anything I have seen before. Basically, as people saw things needing to be done, they set out recruiting the people needed to do the tasks, without someone telling them to do it.

The people themselves motivate each other to take the initiative and get things done. The park has slowly become a small village and some of the people working there refer to themselves as “occupiers.” As ongoing concerns have been identified, working groups have come together to address them. In this way, they have managed to solve the problems of media, comfort, kitchens, security, facilitation and even a library.

For example, a nearby McDonald’s allowed us to use their bathroom. So I suggested to the outreach committee that we should make a thank-you sign for them. We went to the art committee to get an awesome design, and then walked around and had people sign it. We then took the sign and some bathroom supplies over to McDonald’s.  All it took was four people working together, who’d never met before.

This method of organization allows the movement to include new members and have their voices heard just as easily as older members. Not having a single leader means we might take longer to act and make decisions, but we are able to take the time to achieve our goals. We are all dedicated to continue for as long as we need to get the job done.

An occupier I spoke to gave me a great analogy for how this is unfolding. This is like a person who has an addiction. First, he or she has to admit to a problem and then has to identify it. Only then can that person figure out how to fix it. As a nation, we have to admit we have a problem. Then we can work on identifying it, and then start fixing it. I don’t imagine there are many people in America right now who would disagree that there’s a problem. What we need to work on now is identifying it. It’s no use for 50 percent of the country to say, “‘Here’s how we’ll fix this problem,” when the other 50 percent is saying, “You’re looking at the wrong problem.” We want everyone to give their input, so we can become aware of what we should ultimately focus on.

One of the goals of these occupations is to create a place locally where people from different backgrounds can come together and discuss their issues. Right now, politics is not polite conversation, so we only get to hear the opinions of the people on TV instead of those of our friends and family. At an occupation, we can meet other people who we may or may not agree with and share our concerns. A lot of times, it turns out we have a lot more in common than we originally thought.

I met a guy on Saturday who was a part of the early tea parties, when they had more libertarian views. We agreed on the need to get excessive amounts of money out of politics, but disagreed on how to do it. These are problems that have been building for a long time, so it will take more than one afternoon to solve them. At least we both know we can go to the occupation and talk about them.

So do individual occupiers know what they want? Absolutely. Does the movement as a whole know exactly what it wants? Not yet. But this is slowly and thoughtfully being worked out, as people talk to one another and share information, viewpoints and opinions. Because of demographics and the way social connections work, the movement has been depicted as a more liberal movement. However, the idea is to include as many different political opinions as possible. By bringing many different ideas to the table, we are more likely to find effective ones with widespread support.

So if you haven’t been to Occupy Raleigh and you feel the call, come by. There is always at least one N.C . State student there. We have general assemblies at noon and 6:30 pm every day in front of the capitol. We have a Facebook group called Occupy NCSU to reach out to students here in the university. On November 3, we are planning for students of N.C . State and other schools around the area to participate in a general assembly, and meet some of the people at Occupy Raleigh. We can all agree we have a problem. Now we need to come together to identify it and to fix it.