Some claim that Occupy Wall Street has been thus far a senseless spectacle of the jobless who break windows, push old ladies and leave cities in “shambles.” These stereotyped perceptions of Occupy Wall Street breed ignorance and sensationalism. It is equivalent to calling every Muslim a terrorist or every German a Nazi. It is easy to regurgitate the drama while sidelining the silent activists.

Perhaps it has been forgotten that Wall Street institutions created this economic situation in the first place. Of course, this will be argued, but the facts lie simply before us. To blame Washington for an economic crisis is like blaming the cop for not putting out the fire. At the heart of the economy lies the flow of money; to examine where the money resides is only natural.

Banks lending money without having it (in pursuit of more money, of course) sounds a little off to me. Just a little. I find it troublesome to have at the core of this nation a system where wealth is pooled into the hands of a few who can dictate the economy of all. Wealth I have no problem with. When the greed behind it affects others, I do. Clearly, the unemployed should not be victimized.

We then arrive at the iconic statistic: the top one percent of income earners provide 36.73 percent of federal tax revenues. To suggest they already pay enough is unfortunate, because if anything, this should highlight how stratified wealth distribution is in this nation. Regardless, because Occupy Wall Street does not aim to penalize merely the rich, as the statistic implies, this is once again irrelevant.

Occupy Wall Street has been under attack as “anarchist” and “irrational.” I think it is worth pointing out the same was said about the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Rights Movement.

Do we believe we represent 99 percent of Americans? Yes, we believe that 99 percent of Americans hold strong in the belief that people should fix what they break.

Tarif Haque is a freshman majoring in computer science and biology.