Across the country, Americans are rallying to express their growing frustration with their political leaders. Thanks to social media, they have gathered to protest in several major cities, most recently Boston. Young people in particular have made up the bulk of these protests, for obvious reasons.

The stunted state of the economy has hit college-aged Americans hard, even if most of us do not hold full-time jobs or pay taxes. Middle-class family incomes are dwindling as layoffs spread and the basic cost of living in the U.S. is skyrocketing, making it even harder for most parents to pay for college. Over 20 percent of Americans live in poverty while colleges and universities continue to raise tuition—Brandeis included.

Going to graduate school has become a "safe" option for those who can afford it—a place to wait it out until we think we can find work. Others give up career dreams and are forced to choose more secure options. We hear that law school has become obsolete, that decent law jobs barely exist anymore if you don't have good connections.

Professional work is increasingly outsourced to India and China, and the new federal healthcare plan may make the medical profession less enticing. As a result, young people feel angry and frustrated, and we may be more deserving of these feelings than our parents are because the burden of fixing these problems lies on us. Judging from recent media, it seems like these angry young people are channeling their frustration into constructive protests. Thousands of liberal Americans in their 20s have joined with older progressive generations to counter the kind of sweeping populist anger we have seen in the growth of the Tea Party.

Former aide to President Barack Obama Van Jones made headlines last week when he spoke on MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and said that "October is going to be the turning point when it comes to the progressive fight back. You can see it coming."

In an article in the Sept. 30 issue of The Huffington Post, Jones praised the wave of protests that have spread in the past few weeks, beginning with Occupy Wall Street in New York. He wrote that "the hundreds of young people," the "majority of whom are under 25 and have never before engaged in activism, … contain the spark to grow into a movement that can be transformative. They are the first, small step in the creation of a movement that can restore American Democracy, and renew the American Dream."

Jones' description of this progressive youth movement for change certainly seems to fit what I saw at Occupy Wall Street when I went to Zuccotti Park last weekend, where the protest has centered. In only a few weeks, Occupy Wall Street has already won a reputation as a mishmash of characters and causes. There certainly was something for everyone there—at least, every progressive liberal.

While the rally began to promote transparency in the finance industry and protest corruption and the enormous wealth gap between rich and poor Americans that the greed of the Wall Street hegemony has come to symbolize, its meaning has diversified over the past few weeks.

The protest as a whole was pretty overwhelming, but it was definitely cool to see this amount of diversity of opinion in one place. There is no one agenda or definitive goal, but that's the way the protesters want it.

They have been incorrectly criticized for their lack of organization, with some saying that this hurts their cause. But these critics are wrong. Even though the protests may have started to denounce corruption and the outrageous bonuses on Wall Street, this has ceased to be the main point. The spirit of the protest is now its mission. It lives for the sake of attracting more people and new causes. It has become a place where you can bring your pet project—environmental, political or conspiratorial—and ride on the energy of other young, angry people.

Moreover, this kind of organization seems to fit the feelings of young Americans today. Our anger stems from many causes and is targeted at different sources, and this lack of a central figure to blame is the source of our frustration.

We're not foolish enough to simply blame the Tea Party, the Obama administration or Wall Street alone. These protests lay a large share of blame that is somehow more constructive than if it had been targeted at a few specific culprits, and because of this, they are starting to get the national attention these protesters want and deserve.

We are sick of having limited options, watching federal education funding decline and stewing in a stalled economy while our leaders seem to care more about party politics and partisanship. Time will reveal how effective these protests will prove to be in bringing about tangible change through new legislation and change in government leadership, but in the mean time, grabbing a picket and sign and screaming about something—maybe anything is, I think, the kind of catharsis we need.