Yesterday, the day of the big Occupy protests in New York, I sat in a train most of the day, on the way to Washington D.C.

I’m here for the African Studies Association annual conference, but of course I’m going to head over to the National Mall too, and see what’s cooking with Occupy DC.

The dramatic and powerful protests in New York yesterday, captured magnificently in this NY Times slide show, can’t help but energize the movement around the country, and indeed the world.

I am struck again by how diverse this movement is–the people in these photos are old and young, of every ethnicity, most looking solidly middle-class.  There is really very little of the “anarchist hippie fringe” that Americans tend to associate with protests, at least since the 1960s.

It must be hard for the cops, who are so solidly middle-class themselves, to have to…