If not occupy wall street, then what?

Is Occupy Wall street a valuable use of our time/effort? I certainly hope so, because it's all we've got. The right to a protest is one of the only ways besides petition that we have to directly influence government when we are not going through the election cycle. If Washington chooses to ignore the protests, then we know that we are in a bad place here in America, because we will know then that we are helpless to the will of those in Washington.