Time Magazine has chosen “The Protester” for its vaunted annual “2011 Person of the Year.” Time Magazine editor Jim Frederick said the choice reflected the growth of people’s movements from Tunisia to Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street.

Jim Frederick: “Time chose the protester, the global protester, as Time’s '2011 Person of the Year,' because for the past 20, 25 years, almost a full generation, protest had stopped being a really viable way to change the political order, and then suddenly, almost out of nowhere, all across the globe, you have global, mass market protests that—you know, we’re two regimes down and counting. Whether it’s in Russia and London, Wall Street and all across the Middle East, suddenly the protest has become one of the ways that people are actually taking back political power.”