One Year Anniversary For Occupy Philadelphia

By Cherri Gregg

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - One year ago Saturday the first occupiers moved onto Dilworth Plaza outside of City Hall. Although Occupy Philadelphia is not as visible as it was last year, some say the impact of the movement will live for some time.

They slept, they ate and even got married on Dilworth Plaza and for nearly two months they were a constant fixture at the center of Philadelphia, protesting causes as diverse as the crowd.

"I'm here because we're tired of these corporate gangsters on Wall Street [who] continue to keep getting rich, while the poor keep getting poorer," says one protestor.

"We're threatening our seniors with losing their Social Security and with Medicare cuts. Our priorities are backwards," says another protestor.

Ralph Young is the author of Dissent in America: Voices that Shaped a Nation says even though much of the occupy movement has gone online and underground, it has influenced some of the conversation for this year's election.

"Before the Occupy movement began, everybody was only talking about the deficit, and now people are talking about economic inequality and the 99 percent has entered out political discourse," Young says.

He says what likely drove the movement underground was its lack of organization and failure to find a charismatic leader. But he says the movement is not dead and it could come back.

"The sentiment is still there," says Young.