Wall Street was an actual wall once. In the 1600s, Dutch occupiers needed to keep out the natives, pirates, and unwanted dregs. You learned the Dutch stole the island for $24, but they really paid 60 guilders, which is over $1,000 in today-money. Still a steal, for Manhattan. In 2011, the rent is too damn high...unless you're willing to sleep in the park.

I boarded a Greyhound in Buffalo on Friday night. Sleep didn't happen. (It's my theory that their seats are designed by cheap extraterrestrial laborers who have no knowledge of human anatomy.) Hopped the A train to Fulton St. and found my way, past the brightly lit WTC construction, to a rain-soaked Zuccotti Park by about 4 am.

Dubbed “Liberty Square,” the park is home to Occupy Wall Street. And it's not a park. It's got a few small trees and a couple flowerbeds, but not one soft blade of grass. The concrete was lined with roughly 150 mummified protesters, rolled up in tarps, ominously looking like a fresh crime scene. Cops in raincoats, walking the perimeter. The gatekeepers.

I don't want to say this, but my first impression – after rolling up in my own tarp and failing to sleep for a few hours – was that the place looked, and smelled, like the parking lot of a Phish concert. Patchouli does not a movement make. And as much as I want to say reports, like this much-derided New York Times piece, have cast an unfair light on these young occupiers, they're not entirely inaccurate.

My first contact was with a woman named Chris. “You want a vitamin? You want a chewable Airborne?” I took them, not having the heart to tell her that Airborne cold “remedy” does absolutely nothing. Was Airborne a perfect metaphor for #OccupyWallStreet? I cynically wondered.

Chris was a medic volunteer. The medic station is accompanied by the kitchen, the media area, the comfort area (dedicated to sleeping bags, socks, etc.), and the General Assembly. There are other volunteer duties, such as sanitation and security, which consist of walking around with a garbage bags and walkie-talkies, respectively.

You've no doubt heard about the General Assembly. It's how the protesters communicate, organize, and reach something resembling consensus. “Mic check!” someone will call. “Mic check!” the crowd responds. They communicate this way because the police cracked down on the use of sound amplifiers. It's an elegant, albeit annoying, solution.

The press has generally portrayed the protest as disorganized. Some protesters even expressed their frustration over the disorganization to me during the weekend. But without any sort of hierarchical structure, it's amazing and inspiring that anything gets done at all. People are being fed, clothed, sheltered (as much as the no tent law allows), live-streaming speeches and Tweeting the latest developments, and receiving medical attention if they need it. It's a real ground up grassroots thing, powered by personal responsibility to participate in the democratic process.

“The lack of focus is unfortunate,” a woman named Christine told me, “but I think if we stay here long enough, other groups will be pulled in.” That's essential, and it's happening as I type. Hippies thrive in protest environments, and they can even be useful in procuring humus, for instance, but the face of this movement can't be obscured with dreadlocks. It's what wonks call “bad optics.”

“It would appear to a lot of people that it's disorganized,” said Mark Jacobs, the head of a nonprofit from Santa Fe, “but it's not.”

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Michael Steele went on MSNBC this morning before the health-care summit and began attacking President Obama for a "dog and pony show" -- and claimed that the president should have held this summit a year ago, when things were just getting started.

The problem with this: Obama did. On March 5 of last year. Fully televised. All that.

Republicans were so busy back then concocting plans to scuttle ANY health-care reform, though, that it kinda slipped their minds.

Kudos to Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie for calling him out for it:

STEELE: This whole dog and pony show that we're about to witness today is something that should have taken place a year ago, when the administration first came in last February and laid out its agenda for health care. This is how you should have started it - bipartisan, public forum, CSPAN, your cameras rolling to capture this and to capture, most importantly, what the American people want. And right now, they want us to start over, and I think we should.

TODD: Chairman Steele, in fairness to them, I mean, it was a year ago that they actually had a summit.

GUTHRIE: On March 5th.

TODD: And it wasn't just the legislative leaders. They brought in folks from the industry as well. And that one was televised. So...does that one not count? I'm just curious.

STEELE: Well, apparently it didn't. Because we don't have health care.

You know, you really can't blame Republicans for wanting to fire Steele as the RNC chair, when the level of incompetence is this deep.

But we progressives hope he sticks around, just for the comic relief.

I have this idea. It's pretty simple and I think it will appeal to a lot of people.

Here it is.

I want every uninsured man and woman who comes down with swine flu to go sit in the waiting rooms of their elected representatives.

That's it. Just sit there - coughing. Throwing your used Kleenex in their trash receptacles. If they want us to suffer, they should have to look at at the logical consequences of their inaction. Tell them you're going to keep coming back until they manage to pass something that's actually going to help people instead of lining the pockets of the insurance companies.

If the weather gets cold, set up a tent in the parking lot, put a sign on it that says "Waiting Room: Waiting for Affordable Health Care." Set up your lawn chairs and invite everyone who passes to sit there with you. Be sure to call your local media.

With apologies to Arlo Guthrie:

if you're in a situation like that, there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the congressman's office wherever you are ,just walk in say "Congressman, we just want affordable health care". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's nuts and they won't pay attention. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're just odd and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in saying "We just want affordable health care" and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in, coughing their heads off and saying, "We just want affordable health care" and then walking out. And friends, they may think it's a movement.