How to tell an occupier from a tea partier: two grassroots political movements are giving voice to anger and anxiety about the state of the nation. What effect will they have on the 2012 election?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: NATIONAL

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When Spirit Fox, an 18-year-old New Yorker, looks at the world, she sees a lot of injustice, and it makes her mad. So mad that Fox spent several weeks this fall at the Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan.

"I think what we're all trying to do is restore America back to its full potential," she says of the protests that have spread across the country.

Lyda Loudon, a 16-year-old from Birmingham, Alabama, also considers herself an activist. Two years ago, she started Tea Party Youth, a national group for students. When she talks about why she got involved in the Tea Party, she sounds a lot like Spirit Fox.

"I need to personally step up to protect my future and be an active citizen," Loudon says.

Many commentators have likened the Occupy forces that encamped in New York and other U.S. cities to the Tea Party. Both movements seemed to emerge out of nowhere and spread quickly across the country. Both are driven largely by anxiety and anger over the bad economy and the nation's overall direction, and both insist they are leaderless, grassroots groups.

But they differ on where they place the blame for America's ills: Occupy forces find fault in the banks, big corporations, and the super-rich, while Tea Party members rail against what they see as a bloated, debt-ridden federal government.

"They share some emotions, and they share a generalized dismay," says Todd Gitlin, a sociologist and journalism professor at Columbia University. "But they're very different in organization, in spirit, and in demographics."

The Tea Party--which is actually a conservative movement and not a political party--began in 2009, with rallies against President Obama's health-care law and against government bailouts of banks and the auto industry. The group calls for reduced taxes and government spending and a push to lower the $15 trillion national debt.

According to some members, Tea stands for "taxed enough already," but the name is also a reference to the 1773 Boston Tea Party. (Some Tea Partiers have attended rallies in Revolutionary War-era outfits and tricornered hats.) The Tea Party proved to be a potent political force in the 2010 midterm elections, helping Republicans gain a majority in the House of Representatives.

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