On Thursday the “Occupy Wall Street” movement came to Washington DC, a city jaded by daily demonstrations. But Code Pink’s Gael Murphy, a veteran protester, thinks this one is different: “We march in the streets all the time, but today onlookers acknowledged us by clapping, cheering, and encouraging us.”

On Freedom Square, site of “Occupy DC,” close to a thousand gathered to make their voices heard. Banjo Youngblood sweated profusely as he sang the lyrics,”the revolution has just begun,” to an enthusiastic crowd.

Elsewhere, the mood was more solemn. Celeste Zappala and members of  “Military Families Speak Out” quietly sat on one side of the square. Her son, who was the first Pennsylvanian National Guardsman to be killed since World War II, died in 2004 as his unit searched for non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “We decided when we buried him that we would keep speaking out. That’s what I’m doing here.” On the other side of the square, recently laid-off construction foreman Sherman Taylor sat alone with a sign that said, “How About a Maximum Wage?”

Meanwhile Cameron Halket from Dallas sat in his lawn chair and prepared to stay all night: “I came here because my one-year-old granddaughter will have no future unless I do something.”