Occupy Wall Street Almost Broke

It turns out Occupy Wall Street isn't great with money. The protest movement raised $700,000 last fall, but now all but $170,000 of that is gone, the Wall Street Journal reports. And now that protesters been evicted from Zuccotti Park and aren't garnering media coverage anymore, donations have slowed to a crawl. What was all that money spent on? Mostly necessary things, like renting a U-Haul to carry hundreds of pounds of dirty laundry, or food for occupiers, though some other expenses have raised eyebrows.

Some, for example, questioned the $1,101 spent on homeopathic medicines, or the couple hundred spent for tobacco and rolling paper. "You may not like it, but it was voted on by the General Assembly," says one member of Occupy's accounting group. Now, that assembly is debating whether it should try fundraising, something some protesters oppose. "There's a trap," one reasons, "that the mission becomes more about sustaining the organization than its message." (Click to read how the group was looking to hire an accountant.)