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Hundreds of thousands of people marched recently in the biggest climate-related demonstration ever. The slogan of the march: “To change everything, we need everyone.”

A day later hundreds of people were arrested in downtown Manhattan for blocking traffic as part of the Flood Wall Street demonstration. The protesters’ slogan: “Stop capitalism. End the climate crisis.”

The two events, within 24 hours of each other and just a few miles apart, juxtaposed what have been two factions in the larger climate movement. The climate march highlighted the big-tent approach to organizing. Groups with widely differing and often conflicting ideals came together to broadcast a message that climate change is important – which they accomplished – but offered few solutions.

On Wall Street, the protest was a tiny fraction of the march’s size and garnered much less attention, but the demands were much clearer: Hold the financial industry and the politicians who support it accountable for propping up the energy industry.

While the protests had different aims and supporters, organizers and participants from each event said they showed that the divide between them is narrowing. They say that as more and more people become aware of the severity of the climate crisis and as serious political action on climate issues stagnates, lines are blurring between reformists and radicals. Radicals are becoming aware that in order to have a big tent, not everyone has to agree on every issue, and reformists are becoming more open to using once-shunned tactics like nonviolent civil disobedience.

“The public is all over the place in its awareness of climate change, so the march was for those people,” said Sandra Steingraber, a professor at Ithaca College and an environmental activist.

“And then there are the people who have accepted climate change as a fact long ago and are really ready to carry a manifesto to those who are responsible and nail it to their doors,” she said, referring to the Wall Street protesters.

Social and political movements have almost always seen divisions between factions that are more militant, operating under the belief that the ends justifies the means, and those that believe in reforming existing practices as a solution.