Earlier this month, Leesburg resident Terry Kelly found himself within a short drive of New York City. The self-employed salesman had been seeing TV news reports about “Occupy Wall Street” for weeks, and decided he could better pass judgment after seeing the affair for himself.

“I was coming back from Maine and I had been keeping up with the whole movement,” Kelly told The Post last week. “I was pretty amazed that these people went in there and made a stand to try and effect change.”

A website for the movement (www.occupywallst.org) describes the gathering of disgruntled Americans as being from all walks of life. Their common thread is that they are “the 99 percent.”

The website says the movement “began on Sept. 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan's Financial District and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally.”

The site continues: “Occupy Wall Street is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”

Kelly said he couldn't agree more with the motivation behind the movement.
“I'm part of the 99 percent, too, so feel their pain, because big business, big corporations, credit card companies – all these companies that got bailed out by us – kept all that money,” Kelly said. “They paid their CEOs millions and cut everybody's credit.”

Kelly said millions of people, himself included, got notices from credit card companies saying that they have no more credit and their bills are due.

“It happened to me, after 20 years of never having missed a payment,” Kelly said. “So I was driving down the road and I just had to go over there and see for myself what these people were doing.”

Kelly said his curiosity led him to New Jersey, where he caught a subway ride into the teeming mass of eight million that is New York City.

“It was nine dollars to park, and the subway ride was two dollars each way,” he said. “I took the subway from Penn Station in Newark and came out right at the 9/11 memorial.”

Kelly said he rounded a corner near Wall Street and found himself face-to-face with a city block full of protesters.

“Some are unemployed because of the financial crisis – they've lost their jobs and their homes. They've lost hope and they felt like this was a place they could make a stand.”

Kelly said he spent several hours in the park with his camera, talking to people from all over the country.

“The people I talked to were from Washington state, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, all over,” he said. “These people want big business to stop running the government.”

Kelly said the many pictures he took tell the story of the atmosphere in the park.

“All races, all ages, and a lot of people were holding up signs,” Kelly said. “I would wander around and if there was a sign, I'd snag it and stand there and hold it for 10 minutes, then move on. I just wanted to be part of it.”

Kelly said the movement is a lot more organized that it sometimes appears as a TV reporter talks with a mass of protesters in the background.

“Everybody is on the same page as far as what they view as big business corruption, and big business running this country instead of the people,” Kelly said. “I'd say there are 1,000 to 1,500 people in that park with no plans to leave. They've got food, they've got supplies.”

Kelly said there is a lot more going on than random acts of civil disobedience, too. He said the people in Zucotti Park – and at other protests around the country – and forming connections and building bridges of support for the future.

“There were people in the park set up with laptops collecting all kinds of data, and there was an information booth,” he said. “CNBC had a podium where you could walk up and record a video message, just to show your support.”

After seeing the Occupy Wall Street movement with his own eyes, Kelly headed for home. He said the visit did nothing to weaken his enthusiasm for the people he met.

“I didn't get to stay long, a few hours,” he said. “But I donated a few dollars to the effort, and told them I was behind them all the way.”