THE OCCUPY WALL ST. MOVEMENT "The Aftermath"

    
     Well, since my last journal entry, a lot has happened with both the Occupy Wall Street movement and myself.
      The Occupy movement has not only gone national but global in over 2000 cities around the world.  Every major metropolis now has it's own Occupy chapter in some local park or another where human numbers can run from under a hundred in some locales to counting heads in the thousands in others. 
     The path is set. There are only three possible outcomes now: reform, revolution, or massacre.  Or to put it in historical precedents, this will either eventually be a reform victory like the civil rights movement, a second American Revolution, or (and most harrowing) our American version of Tiananmen Square.
      There is no fourth option of just going away because the motivating factors that served as catalyst, the poverty, unemployment and the overwhelming frustration with the ineffectiveness of our political leaders hasn't gone away.  In fact, it's only gotten worse and inspiring still other citizens to surge the movement daily.   Many of the planet-wide demonstrations on behalf of the poor and middle class have become violent or rather it is the jack-booted thugs called police who have become violent against us.  These aren't protesters rioting these are reactionary cops that are causing the trouble.
      Just two nights ago in Oakland, California, the cops tried to evacuate with force the park where the local Oakland Occupy chapter had been camped.  When the demonstrators refused to clear the area, the cops, wearing full riot gear, opened fire with less than lethal force of bean bag guns and tear gas.  One of the cops fired a teargas canister into the crowd which slammed into the forehead of a protester leaving him bleeding profusely and lying unconscious in the street.
       As 10 or 15 of the fallen man's fellow demonstrators rushed to him to encircle him to lend assistance, another loose cannon cop flung a flash bomb into the concerned throng which not only did the job of explosively dispersing the good Samaritans who were trying to help but the grenade detonated right next to the poor, unconscious man still lying on the ground. Bastard cops.  Footage of this outrageous incident was captured on cellphone and posted on the internet for all the world to see where it was picked up by all the major television news networks.  It turns out that the injured man (who ended up being rushed to the hospital in serious condition) turned out to be Sean Olsen, a soldier and veteran of two tours in Iraq. Whoopsy-daisy!  Even to the right wingers who consider it all well and good to push around the kids with the dreads and the noserings and the spacers in their earlobes are aghast at this action.  Even for them, when the cops put a peacefully protesting veteran in the hospital, a line has been crossed.
     Should Sean Olsen die, he will be the first unfortunate to do so in the entire Occupy Wall Street movement.  He will effectively become its first martyr.  It will be like the scene in FIGHT CLUB where Meatloaf's character, a member of a revolutionary group, is killed by police and in doing so he comes to represent the entire revolutionary army to his fellow soldiers.  They unite in his memory chanting, "His name was Robert Paulson."
     Hi name was Sean Olsen.
     I am further reminded of a quote from Alan Moore's prescient, revolutionary, graphic novel, V FOR VENDETTA.  When, in response to demonstrations versus police brutality, a character says, "I can guess [what happens now].  With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid.  And when they do, things will turn nasty.  And then [the authorities] will be forced to do the only thing they know how to do.  And then what happens when people without guns stand up to people WITH guns?"
     Apparently those without guns get their craniums cracked by a tear-gas-canister-projectile-fire from some psycho with a badge.
     Sympathy for Sean Olsen has already re-galvanized the movement.  Across the country there have been intensified marches held in solidarity with Oakland.  Even more have been arrested as a result as people react angrily to the draconian measures of the police over reaction.  The cops (who are paid by our taxpayer dollars) are wielding their power irresponsibly and criminally against the peaceful protest of American citizens exercising their first amendment rights.
      As for how things have changed for me since my last journal entry.  My stated goals then of my participation in the NYC protest were modest.  I only hoped that me and my little sign would attract the eyes of a few fence-sitters who would then maybe in turn join and keep the whole thing growing organically. 
      I'd say that happened.
      First, the very next morning after I returned to Baltimore from NYC, a friend of mine from my college days who lives in the New York area e-mailed me a link to an online New York magazine which had posted pics from the protest the day before.  In one of the photos me and my sign's call to "Join Us Save Our Republic" were clearly seen visible front and center in a crowd shot.  I admit, this alone had me over the moon.  Surely a good number of people would see that.  As Sting once sang, I had been "sendin' out an S.O.S." (or was it an S.O.U.S.A.?) and it had been picked up and carried further.  Folks had taken pictures of me and everybody else there about a gazillion times that day so I knew it would appear somewhere, or at least I'd hoped.  Well, here was irrefutable evidence of goal achieved. 
     I was even happier when I caught an image of myself on the "Ed Show" on MSNBC marching by in the procession.  Not only that but MSNBC had the footage on loop which meant that my message was seen over and over again on national cable television.  This was great.  Again, I had no chyron, no digital ticker tape crawl speeding by on the bottom of the screen to identify me.  I needed none.  I was happy to just to be one of the 99%.
     But the coup de grace, the completely insane, surreal brass ring of it all was that interview/debate I did at Zuccotti Park with Saturday-Night-Live-alum-cum-conservative-commentator Victoria Jackson.  I hadn't given Victoria any identifying information regarding myself either (again just wanting to be one of the vox populii) so I had no idea where or when this debate would be seen if at all.   A few days after I had returned, just on a lark out of curiosity, I googled, "Victoria Jackson" and "Occupy Wall Street" and was taken completely by surprised to see pages and pages of result links pop up.
     WTF?
      Apparently, Victoria Jackson had posted our debate on a conservative website.  It had been then subsequently picked up by nearly every single major (and minor) news, commentary and even celebrity gossip website.  I mean it was EVERYWHERE, Washington Post, CNN, Huffingtonpost, Perez Hilton and even on ultra right wing conservative pundit alarmist Glenn Beck's website (this was the only one that kinda worried me because that's the website where the irrational, fringe radicals converge to make their tin foil hats together, a site usually reserved for only the truly dedicated anti-occupy movement conspiracy theorists, the "wingnuts").
      I clicked on the YouTube link and I was amazed to find out that the video had truly gone viral (did this mean that I need a shot?) having already been viewed over 150,000 times in just a few days.
     Holy shite!
     Now, I've had my brushes with being (in)famous from my previous career, but to appear in a viral video, a political one at that was quite the mindfuck.  I clicked "play" on the video not really knowing what to expect.  I mean, we all remember just the jist of the interactions we have in our day to day lives.  Memory is not one hundred percent total in recall whereas recorded video shows it all as it actually happened.  Every conversational stumble I had was visually written in verbal ink forever and ever or at least as long as such things still exist.
      As I watched the video, I was surprised by the little discrepancies from my memory versus what was actually recorded.  For example, there was a point where the debate between myself and Victoria was (rudely) interrupted and hijacked by another OWS protestor who went on a rant of how he believed Obama to be a Republican which I'm sure made no headway with Victoria and her conservative viewership.  Now I would've bet my life that what I heard the guy say at the time was "Obama is a FUCKING Republican!" but upon review of the footage I found no actual profanity in the opening statement of his monologue.  Hmm.  Odd, that.  Not that that really changes the content of what he was saying but it is interesting how the TiVo/DVR in our mind's eye recalls the data of our senses imperfectly.
     When I had finished watching the interview I was mainly relieved that I hadn't made a complete ass out of myself.  And honestly, if it had been any other topic.  If they had asked me to ride a skateboard for example, I would've looked like some palsied village idiot, but as I said in my last blog entry, I wasn't there because I was "uninformed" (as Victoria referred to me in her YouTube description).  Au contraire. I was there because I knew too much NOT to be there.  So yeah, just about every other topic I probably would've sucked.  But politics?  I'm your fucking huckleberry.  And also, like I've said, I may not know politics on the level of a Bill Clinton or Ed Schultz or Paul Begalla or some other career policy wonk, but for your average citizen I do know enough to give logical, rational explanations that point the pathway I took to my beliefs.
      I started to sift through the thousands and thousands of comments left not only on the YouTube post but on nearly every single other website where it had been posted.  I was so glad to see that it was stimulating a national conversation.  Perfect.  A tear came to my eye because this was beyond my wildest, wildest aspirations for what I'd hoped to accomplish those two days I had spent there.  Imagine, dear reader, if for ten or so minutes you to got to present your political argument to an audience the size of which is tantamount to two fully packed  football stadiums of people (who are actually spread out over not just the continental U.S. but the entire world!).  How would that make YOU feel?  Talk about daunting!  You better have your shit thought out because video allows viewers to scrutinize and over analyze every syllable you utter, every movement, every visual and audio minute detail down to the nth degree, which it was.
      Some of the comments I read evidenced this in a puzzling fashion.  For example, there was a comment Victoria Jackson had asked me about a communist activist named Van Jones.  Now, hitherto that interview I wouldn't have been able to identify Van Jones if he was peeing on my foot and I told Victoria as much.  However, one of the comments left on one of the conservative websites referenced this moment and not only doubted the veracity of my Van Jones ignorance and this particular critic insisted that if you looked closely at my eyes when she asked the Van Jones question, that if you looked "behind [my] glasses" that you could see a suspicious (to him) shift in my eyes which proved that I was lying to dodge the question because I didn't want to concede to her the argument about Van Jones.  Wrong.  I really just didn't know who Van Jones was (but I do now as a result of this interview). 
       As I skimmed all the multitudes of additional comments, I saw that about half of the comments were filled with virulence and ad hominem attacks against Victoria Jackson which were really as cruel as the anonymity of the internet allows those types to be.  They attacked her for everything from her weight to her voice and I don't agree with that tactic at all.  You can debate logically and present substantiated arguments all you like but mean-spirited name-calling gets nobody nowhere.
     Another 25 percent of the comments across the web asserted that because Victoria Jackson speaks with a slow, high-pitched voice like a little girl and because she asked questions in a manner that could be construed in a less than erudite fashion, and because she posted this video for all the world to see even though it seemed by the general consensus that she had lost the debate, then she surely must, in fact, be doing "comic bit," something like the late Andy Kaufmann used to do where you pretend to be a character in order to lambaste yourself for meta, self-aware humor.  To wit: this one quarter of the comments left on the video all over the net was the question:  Is she putting us on? Are we being "punk'd"?
      The final 25 percent of the comments were largely directed at me with a smattering of a few talking about the other guys Victoria had also interviewed.  I was very touched by the bulk of what was written.  Most of them were of the opinion that I had "owned," "schooled," or otherwise "put the smack down" on Victoria in the debate.  Many pointed out how "polite" they said I had been with her which was surprising to me.  How else was I supposed to have acted?  When she asked me if I thought our President of the United States (whom I had voted for) was trying to start a "racial war," THAT was probably the most blood boiling question she had asked me and in responseI had called her question "inane."  If I would've been rude I guess that would've been the time.  But how else would anyone else have acted?  Curse words? Aggressive finger pointing?  Overt mocking?  I just see all that as counter-productive.  I don't have to do these things because I'm confident my side is right and as I said, I CAN tell you why AND without resorting to base maneuvers.
      A few other comments having to do with me remarked something along the lines of I had done my parents, my college, and Christians proud with my responses in the video.  That gave me a little glow I admit.  If I could have a lasting statement for the ages wherein I gave my position on the social issues of the day (that have faced society since society began) to be seen by the masses, one self-testament as to the type of person I like to think that I am inside AND to have this be available to be seen forever like it is on YouTube, then I'm glad that it is this one.
       On the flip side, it was amazing to me how the conservative types really took issue with my claiming Jesus for the left.  I'm sorry but I maintain that Jesus' central focus was about helping the poor and the sick.  That's general welfare and healthcare.  That sounds pretty lefty to me.  Both sides on the Jesus issue present passages from the Bible to back their claims on Christ but it seemed that all the right could really offer was "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s" which is pretty general in my opinion especially when you compare it to the quote after quote attributed to Jesus where again and again he raises up the poor ("Blessed are the poor") and denigrates the rich ("It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.")   That sounds pretty definitive to me as to which side Christ would be on.  What do you think?
     And finally, what was really amusing were the calls for me to lead the revolution, to run for President, and I even got three marriage proposals!  I ended up responding to some of my critics and compliment givers on both YouTube and Huffingtonpost and as a result I was friended by some new E-Friends who are really cool, like-minded folks.  Some of these I began corresponding with online were fellow protesters who were a little deeper involved in the Occupy movement than myself.
      As the number of views increased on the video by a thousand a day, I started wishing I had said a couple of things differently during the debate, hindsight, of course, being 20/20.  I had started off the video giving a fact that corporations and banks were sitting on two trillion dollars that they weren't re-investing in America.  I was wrong. It's not two trillion dollars that they aren't investing, it's THREE trillion dollars.  I had also forgotten the precise percentage of wealth of our country that is controlled by the top 400 billionaires.  According to Michael Moore, it’s FIFTY percent of our country's wealth that is controlled by only these 400 people.   At the time of this writing, the video has been viewed nearly 169,000 times with nearly a 1000 more hits a day and that's great but there is still so much more to do. 
      After a few days, some of the people leaving comments on the various websites had posted that they recognized me from my past career.  Understandable. That was bound to happen eventually.  That was fine but I just didn’t want it to distract from what I was saying.  Again, it’s not ME that matters, it’s the message.  I even got word that Stephen Colbert’s publicist had forwarded the video on to him for possible use on his show.  Since the Colbert Report is one of my favorite TV shows, I was a little jazzed by that.
      Some of the people who were more involved in the Occupy movement with whom I'd started corresponding were asking me when I was coming back up to NYC.  One comedienne who had found some success on the web herself by producing a parody of the Victoria Jackson video and posting it online had told me that when she filmed the comic piece that she had looked for me at Zuccotti Park.  One guy told me that he had spoke at the demonstration and that I should, too.  Now, don't get me wrong, ANYONE can speak there. I don't want to give the wrong impression like I'd just been especially invited to orate like at a commencement ceremony or something.  But to me, an admitted, slight agoraphobe, to stand on a proverbial (and perhaps literal) soapbox amongst thousands of my fellow OWS'ers going in all directions and then scream my truth at them and the general populace of undecided passersby like some modern day Robespierre or Che Guevara trying to motivate the unconverted to rise up, well, that was something I'd have to really think about.  Because if I was going to do something like that, I knew that I had better do it in a manner that was earnest and knowledgeable because otherwise you could end up looking like somewhat of a nut. To me, this would be an important speech, maybe even the most important speech of my life.
      As I considered this I poked around the other Occupy videos on the web.  One of them was a Ron Paul supporter who was ranting about returning our currency to the gold standard (which I don’t agree with as it allows wealth to be taken out of our country) but he was passionate and he you could tell he definitely believed what he said which I found compelling. Now I'm not a Ron Paul guy at all. Ron Paul is Pro Life, he wants to withdraw from the United Nations, he wants to abolish the federal minimum wage, wants to do away with OSHA and student loans.  But even though I disagreed with nearly everything this Ron Paul supporter said, I couldn't deny the effectiveness of his delivery, to just stand there holding a sign emblazoned with your central message right in the middle of the masses and speak.  It was so simple yet honestly, during my time at OWS I actually hadn't seen anything like that.
     So I figured that style was more immediate, more guerrilla, more effective than just speaking in front of the general assembly of OWS, which to me would be the moral equivalent of preaching to the choir. OK, I knew HOW I wanted to say it.  Now the question was what do I want to say?  What NEEDED to be said so badly that the words would just trumpet out of my mouth?
      As I had been perusing the web, reading, listening, and learning from different viewpoints and well-worded arguments, I started to jot down and cherry pick what I agreed with fundamentally.  Then it hit me.  As I looked back through my notes and research at all the salient, logical points and irrefutable facts I’d gathered, I realized that with a little arranging here and there flow-wise, this was my speech.
      I booked my ticket to return to New York City.

NEXT BLOG ENTRY:  I go back to speechify in NYC OWS and my reaction to how much that particular branch has changed in the two or so weeks since I'd been there last.

OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTEST IN NYC OCT 4,5 2011

OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTEST IN NYC, OCTOBER 4,5, 2011

By: SFitzgerald

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of a private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That in it’s essence, is fascism - government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power. “

- F.D. Roosevelt

　



October 4, 2011, Tuesday, 7:53 a.m.



Well, I got on the Greyhound bus to NYC to attend the occupywallst.org protest there. I decided to keep this little journal/blog/whatever to jot down my thoughts. I have to say that in this digital age I was feeling very antiquated with my pen and pad in hand but since there was a chance I might be staying outside all night, I didn’t want to have to worry about lugging around a fragile laptop. And let’s face it, typing a long document on the Iphone is no Iphun. Plus, there was also the matter of keeping those electric beauties charged and given I had no idea of the available access to the necessary juice up there, good ol’ pen and paper was just going to have to suffice. But it did leave me feeling like quite the luddite.

Other than having had to get up at the ungodly hour of 5:45 a.m. which had been a bit of a bear, the trip hadn’t started off too badly. This Greyhound was the Express to New York and it was largely empty except for, wouldn’t ya just know it… Ta Da! A crying baby! Yay! (Good grief.)

Now thankfully, these Greyhounds had come a long way, with electric outlets for each plush, reclining seat, wi-fi, foot rests and a mostly-clean bathroom. And for a mere $14 one way, this had to be one of the best deals in town. I felt like I was on a little adventure. One fraught with a bit of danger actually, as just a few days before, New York City cop assholes used a cheap trick to entrap 700 protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge and arrested every single one of them. Oh well, I was still going. It’s good to push ourselves in life, to step out of our comfort zones.

I had packed my protest survival backpack the night before and filled it with all the necessities I had figured I would need: water, food (beef jerky, protein bars, pretzels and vitamins), camera, Ipod, chargers, sanitizing lotion, wet wipes, tissues, Band Aids, chapstick, breath spray and of course, my trusty little, glass, weed pipe and a couple of nice sized nugs of potent “Blueberry Diesel” (which was why I needed the breath spray). Hopefully, I had thought of everything. I had been a Boy Scout as a kid and our motto was: Be Prepared!

As for clothing, I had to go with more form over fashion because, like I said, I didn’t know if I was going to end up camping out at the park all night or not. I had a hotel room booked for this first night of my trip (because it was supposed to rain) but I figured I would play it by ear for the next night after that and so on. I hadn’t even bought my return bus ticket yet. So I didn’t want to wear anything nice if there was the possibility that I was gonna be sitting around on the ground and stuff for any appreciable amount of time. What does one wear to the revolution? I opted for my black Vans sneakers (my most old, beat up, comfiest pair with the after-market inserts to comfort my high arches on those long demonstration walks), black cargo pants because the extra pockets would come in handy, my black Ramones t-shirt, a black hoodie, black wraparound Ray Bans, and a black and white trucker hat. Ever the dandy. Seriously, I think I was trying to go for that anarchist look that the violent protestors sported during the G-20 summit not so long ago. And though I have no intention of smashing up Starbucks windows like they did, I know that this look and color suggest “danger” to the cops. Good. There should be an element of that to this protest. Some bite. Thomas Jefferson once famously said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

That’s how I felt this morning, like a patriot. As I saw it, the United States was losing it’s democracy for the people which was being replaced by a plutocracy for the super-rich. And historically, be it Rome, France, Russia, on even in the colonial era U.S., every time there had been this kind of disparity between the obscenely wealthy and the have-nots, it had, time and time again, resulted in revolution and an end to that nation’s superiority of their world in their time. My attendance and participation at this upcoming protest was me doing my part to say, “Hey, I’d like to not see that happen here at home. Enough is enough.” And like the old Arcadia song went, “The hungry make their stand when they’ll stand for no more.”

Overgrown Boy Scout.

Guilty as charged. Because in ways, it was still that same Boy Scout spirit of doing my civic duty, instilled in me as a youth, that was compelling me to fight today for the ideas of freedom, equality for all and everything good that the U.S. represent as the greatest civilization the world has ever known. Because we could lose it. We could have it slipped right out from under our noses while we were all too busy watching Nancy Grace fart on fucking Dancing With the Stars. After this trip, I knew I would be able to say that at least I did something. At least, I tried. Not just for us but for a better world for our kids.

I’d been listening to the old Microchip League (MCL) song “New York New York” on repeat while writing this journal entry. I switched over to some Enya, yes, Enya, and let her angelic voice sing me to sleep on this four hour ride. Wish you were here…

“If every man says all he can, if every man is true, would I believe the sky above is Caribbean blue?

-Enya



October 4, 2011, Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.

I awoke as my bus was pulling into Penn Station in Yew York. After gathering my backpack and all my wits, I headed upstairs from the subterranean gate whereupon I ran smack dab into the hustle and bustle of Times Square. Well, hello, Big Apple!

“Come and meet, those dancing feet, on the avenue I’m taking you to, 42nd St.!”

Even mid-day, I was assaulted by the mass of humanity, every color and shape was going hither and yon, to and fro. Gotta get a move on, I thought. I’ve done this whole Times Square thing a few times before in the past. It wasn’t the experience I was looking for this trip.

I checked my GPS app on my phone and found that I was still about three miles from Zuccotti park which was located on, the appropriately named, Liberty Street. That was where the protest was centered and that was where I needed to be. It was kinda humid and muggy out, uncomfortably so, and my backpack was heavy, so I opted for a cab rather than fighting the subway peeps. Wrong move. My cab fare ended up costing me as much as my entire bus ticket to and from Baltimore. Round trip! The cabbie dropped me off and pointed to the park but he didn’t really need to, as here was yet another giant mass of New York humanity, but one very much in contrast to the glossy, frenzied tourists of Times Square. These multitudes of protestors were more like what John Steinbeck had once referred to as “the great unwashed” in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath. This comparison, although admittedly pejorative sounding, wasn’t actually too far off from the truth. Likening these folks here to those dust-bowl denizens of the Great Depression was probably a somewhat accurate parallel.

Zuccotti Park looked like a cross between a refugee camp and the Coachella alternative music festival. There were lots of dreads (on black and white folk alike), lots of alternative types, old hippies, young hippies but then in contrast, there were also lots of more mainstream looking folks here as well-like nurses, teachers, white collar guys. Here’s was not the wealthiest one percent, but representatives of the other 99 percent. And that’s what these protestors called themselves, the 99 percent. Buzzing all around them, were people with cameras of both video and still variety, filming everywhere, every sign, and everything. I maneuvered my way thru the park and there seemed to be an endless array of sleeping bags, make-shift tents, abandoned air mattresses, and tarps (which were covering some still-sleeping occupants). The streets immediately surrounding the park were all filled with various food vendors who could see there was a quick buck to be made. After all, even revolutionaries gotta eat! It should be noted, however, that there wasn’t a single noticeable port-a-john nary as far as thee I could see. The city had decided to not spend money on a humanitarian and sanitary Port-o-Potty. Nope, instead, New York City Mayor Bloomberg had decided to spend taxpayer dollars (the same taxpayer money that many who were occupying had paid for themselves through sales tax and such) on cops. Lots and lots and lots of cops. Cops that were facing the park and just standing at the ready, seemingly like they just wanted something to happen.

The mood of the camp was docile but there was an underlying, simmering energy that you could tell made the police very, very uncomfortable. Even though they had the pepper spray, the guns, the tear gas, etc., there’s just too many protestors here. If all the people here suddenly rose up en masse and charged the cops, it’d be a bloodbath for sure, but it would end very quickly in favor of the overwhelming number of protestors. There was just that many people there. And you could tell this fact was never very far from these cops’ minds. The underlying threat breathed with the possibility that this could all get really ugly and turn on a dime and become something like what happened at Kent State at the very least if not at best, Tahrir Square, where the Egyptian people had risen up earlier this year and achieved democratic reform through the exact type of protest happening here in New York. The same had happened in Egypt’s neighboring countries soon after like in Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Syria. This sweeping reform in the Middle East came to be known as the Arab Spring.

I continued to make my way through the park, reading the signs, listening to the debates people were having and adding points of my own here and there. This movement cut across the board of demographics. That’s what made it such a populist uprising. I noticed there was a couple of center-like focus points in the park where it seemed that the group had found electricity as there were about 20 or 30 people at each center furiously pecking away at their laptops.

Apparently, the revolution will be uploaded.

It’s good in this day of social media that we can get our own reports out to the masses, that we don’t need to depend on conventional, traditional outlets to forward our messages locally and globally. Because the media, after ignoring this protest for the first two weeks of it’s existence, recently took notice suddenly and become very flippant, dismissive, and even hostile towards the movement. This has brought to mind Gandhi’s quote, “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win.” By the looks of things, occupywallst.org.org had achieved Level Two: mockery.

In fact, just before I came up here, I saw a CNN reporter, rather condescendingly question a middle-aged, female, hippy-ish protestor as to why this protestor was working on an Apple laptop? How could she be anti-corporate and yet work on a computer made by this giant corporation? To me it makes perfect sense because #1 what else are we supposed to do? Use carrier pigeon? Telegraph? #2 We have to live in this world, too. Besides, I kind of like the subversive irony of using the machine against it’s very masters. The protestor looked a bit flummoxed when asked the ‘gotcha” question but I thought she handled herself fairly when she replied that owning this computer was only one facet of her life. In other word’s it’s simply not possible to live in this modern age without getting some of the corporate schmutz on you.

As I continued through the crowd, it occurred to me, that for all of the diversity of reasons which had brought thousands of individuals here from all walks of life, each with their own unique voice, that essentially the underlying motivation, the common denominator here was to rally against the same thing: systemic corruption in government fueled by corporate greed. I found myself feeling very proud to be amongst like-minded people. People who had seen the mess of corruption our financial and political institutions have become, the culpability of those responsible, and the slow, ineffectiveness of our political leaders’ policy response and were doing something about it.

I was surprised when about four or five times, random, business-dressed, middle-aged white guys- usually in pairs- would walk by and yell something unintelligible in their best (or worst) heckling-like manner to absolutely no one in particular, just throwing their garble and derision at the general direction of the huddled masses. Then these guys would stride away, snickering to themselves in hollow victory though clearly not possessing enough testicular fortitude to actually try to stay and debate or share any kind of genuine exchange of ideas. Cowards. Their kind of douchebaggery cockiness on their part is what led to this whole financial mess to begin with.

Suddenly I heard the deep thump of a bass drum being played somewhere in the park along with rhythmic accompaniment of a couple of snares, a shaker, and some police whistles. Apparently, this signified that the day’s march was beginning. This was why I was here.

I hurried over to the wild rumpus and a young, white college-y looking guy stood up on a bench yelled, “Mic check!” To which the surrounding crowd yelled back, “Mic Check!” Everything the young guy said, the crown repeated. This was how things were done here and how people were heard because there is a law against megaphones or any kind of electronic amplification so listeners have to repeat everything so everybody can hear. No megaphones allowed? I thought it was 2010 not George Orwell’s 1984. You could tell that what the young college-y guy said next was in response to the aforementioned 700 arrests made close by here a few days before. The marching rules were as follows:

#1. Stay together, close the gaps.

#2. Don’t antagonize the cops or people watching.

#3. Adhere to the laws (Stay out of the street. That’s the misdemeanor cops the had used against the 700.)

If I’m honest, I wish there was a more militant wing of this movement, not one that endangers any people in any way, but something like out of the movie Fight Club? A leftie group of human monkey wrenches disrupting the GOP war machine? Were things are bit more dire would I be tempted to join? Well, let’s just say that I think that the risks for our country’s future are really that grim as to not take anything off the table. But there will be a time later for that, should it ever go that far, which I sincerely hope it does not. After all, Gandhi brought the entire British empire to it’s knees without ever firing a single shot, or swinging a single fist, just like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did for civil rights as well. I do respect the idea of civil disobedience, of peaceful protest and I am willing to play nice. But if the cops keep pepper-spraying young, peaceful, female protestors in the eyes like they did, or set anymore deliberate, mass-arrest dirty tricks like they pulled on the Brooklyn Bridge, or continue ramming and threatening the demonstrators with their motorcycles like they‘ve been caught on video doing also… Well, let’s just say, “they started it.”

So there we were, marching together. First we passed Ground Zero, the rebuilding sight of the ten-year-ago-terrorist-attack. This was my first time back to the area since they began work on the replacement towers. I can tell you this, I’ve been critical about how long it’s taken the powers that be to restore this hallowed ground (ten plus years!) but I have to say that Freedom Tower or the new World Trade Center One is really coming along now and turning out to be quite beautiful. It’s futuristic, gleaming, reflective structure is a perfect replacement for something as iconic as the lost Twin Towers and possessing just enough oeuvre to easily carry the New York skyline further ahead into the 21^st century and beyond.

As we strode along peacefully, another garrison of cops completely surrounded us, in front, to the sides, and presumably behind us as well, though I couldn’t see that far back. I saw that ahead of us there were some cops with video cameras trying really hard to take pictures of as many protestor faces as possible. I put on my black wraparound sunglasses, pulled my hat brim low and put up my hoodie. I know that with facial recognition tech being what it is today, this tactic probably wouldn’t help much to hide anyone’s identity, but it was my natural instinct. Once I did this, I noticed the cops were actually taking even more of an interest me. I’m sure the violent G-20 Anarchists that I now looked like flashed through their minds. I’m sure that this was the look they were told to watch out for.

Undeterred by the Blue Meanies, we continued on, chanting slogans as we went our way, our version of those military boot camp scenes from so many war movies. “All day! All Week! Occupy Wall Street!,” “ What are we fighting? Corporate Greed!,” “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!,” and “What’s disgusting? Union Busting!” I swear there were a few times when the jokester in me felt the urge to yell, “I say, “Lakers!” you say, “Go!” “Lakers!” “Go!” “Lakers!” “Go!” But then better judgment thankfully restrained me.

As we made our way past Wall Street, we passed business suit types, Ground Zero construction workers who were eating their lunches and a lot of just normal people that could be from any town and I was taken by the amount of cheers of support we received from across the board. These accurate, random samples of America‘s working class (again with the notable exception being the occasional Wall Street dickhead hecklar) let us know that they were behind us.

I was glad I was there, glad to have made this trip to participate. This was more than just sitting at home bitching, hell, to me, this felt as equally important as voting. It was actually doing it. It was actually taking part in a real movement that could actually lead to great change. This is what it must’ve felt like to be in the beginning stages of the aforementioned French, Russian, and even American revolutions. This was real.

A few things about my fellow demonstrators, however, kinda stuck in my craw a bit. For example, I know that drums have been used historically in protests, particularly anytime there have been masses marching, but I doubt if in the past there were such funky, phat beats like the ones that our drummers were jamming. Now, I didn’t really see this as a happy protest per se and the dance beats were causing many among here, those all jazzed on nervous excitement, to start busting out little, groovy dances and that, to me, seemed a little out of place. Were the beats and the dancing lightening the mood too much? Undermining the seriousness of the message? I agree with John Lydon who once sang, “Anger is an energy,“ an energy that could be particularly useful, especially in a situation like this.

But I go back and forth on the issue. Conversely, Antonin Artaud once said that, “ We have the right to say what has been said and even what has not been said in a way that belongs to us, a way that is immediate and direct, corresponding to present modes of feeling, and understandable to everyone.” This could be seen carried further to the drums as well. Yes, we have the right to use what has come before (drums) but we have the right to make them use of them of our own, of our own time, of our own voice. And that translates today in that our burgeoning revolutionary, drums fall into the category of “it’s gotta great beat and you can dance to it.” Welcome to the new American Bandstand. Dance, ye brethren, dance.

But I wasn’t going to because to me this was more serious than that. Yes, it was a joy to be with fellow, like-minded people, and perhaps that is, in and of itself, reason enough to dance, to say, “Hey, wow, look how many of us there really are.” But to me, why give the right wing any ammunition? The economic/political situation is fucked up beyond all recognitions and unless you are nihilist, some Nero fiddling while Rome burns, or dancing while our democracy dies, I don’t really see this as cabbage patch dance moment.

Along those same lines, there was this one girl who was about 22 years old who was hippied out to the max, complete with a flower wreath on her head, a beatific smile frozen on her face (tripping?), a flowy, dressey-thing and wearing no shoes! NO SHOES! This poor, well-intentioned girl was walking through the filthy, disgustingly dirty city streets of Manhattan sans Birkenstocks and her feet were just black as tar. Ugh! Anyway, God bless her, she was doing this Sufi dancing sort of thing while beating on a tambourine like she was at Woodstock in the 1960’s. Why was she really here? Did this girl know any specifics? Did she know about AIG still owing the taxpayers 60 billion dollars? Or was she just some crunchy, granola chick who was just thrilled that she was actually getting to live out her fantasy to be that hippy girl cliché in a real life, honest to goodness anti-government policy rally? Y’know, just like her idols from the 60’s? In the end, I figured it doesn’t really matter. She may not know the particulars, and the media are loving exploiting these political newbs but it’s enough that she was showing her support, and more importantly, she was HERE. And that counts more than people who know every fact and are doing nothing. And I respected her for that. And, hey, who knows? I could’ve been unfairly judging a book by it’s cover. For all I, or anyone else knew, she could have a PhD in Political Science. Sufi on, sister, Sufi on…

We finally reached our destination for the day (I read on the website that it was different nearly every day). Today’s stop was the Verizon building where their workers were striking because Verizon was busting their union. We marched in a large, oblong circle with the signs and chants of our group of about 500 demonstrators. There must’ve easily been another thousand protestors who had stayed behind to hold down the fort at Zuccotti Park. By my count, we were now accompanied by about 50-60 cops just waiting for the slightest infraction to bust us on something. Fluttering all about them, were about 50 more people from the press. It was quite the circus of activity.

One of the slogans we chanted here in support of the workers was, “The best jobs? Union jobs!” I wondered what the cops thought when they heard that because, y’know, they all have union jobs themselves. How could they begrudge anyone else the same opportunity they enjoyed? How could they not relate? I could tell some of the cops were deliberately trying to avoid reading any sign or or trying their best to not be connected to the protest at all, to not see us as fellow humans with issues they should consider themselves but instead they saw as a thing, or adversaries. They were doing their best to be authoritative automatons. I wondered why. Didn’t they have to live in this world, too? Weren’t they just as upset as citizens themselves? Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his NOT understanding it.” Too true.

Eventually the procession left the Verizon building where the striking workers formed a line like baseball players do after a game to shake the hand of every occupywallstreet.org protestor who had just joined in their strike. When one of them shook my hand “goodbye” he told me his intention to return the support by being at our “Big March tomorrow.” What “Big March tomorrow?” This was the first I was hearing about it.

I didn’t get a chance to clarify as soon our parade of discontent ambled (and yes, danced to funky beats) back to Zuccotti Park downtown. Once there, I noticed a small crowd had gathered around a particular middle-aged white guy in a business suit who looked like he dyed his hair with auburn “Just for Men” hair dye. As I neared, I could overhear the conversation. Turned out that the conservatively dressed white guy was a Tea Party member, a Tea Bagger, and he was in a heated debate with an African American rasta dude who was wearing a long, purple, one-piece, robe-shirt kinda thing and who unfortunately, wasn’t really holding his own in his debate against the Glenn Beck-esque accusations of the Tea Bagger loudmouth. To every specific point the Tea Bagger made, the Rasta retorted with a general “Power to the people!” or some other sanguine bromide. The Tea Bagger, feeling victorious, turned to we the crowd and challenged us all with, “What do you want from corporate America? You don’t even know!”

No one said anything.

After a few uncomfortable seconds, which were so big you could drive a truck through, I wondered if we were choking. Did we not know? Was he right? No, he wasn’t. I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer and I yelled,

“Re-investment and jobs instead of million dollar bonuses and corporate jets!” A cheer of agreement rose up from the crowd. The Tea Bagger threw up his hands and walked away and I got a round of “attaboys” from my fellow 99 percenters. Nice feeling, this. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, there was a camera crew from MSNBC in my face who apparently had just filmed the exchange between myself and the Tea Bagger. They asked me for my info, name and occupation. I said I just wanted to be known as “one of the 99 percent.”

An older guy came up to me and handed me a flier for the next day’s occupation schedule. It read “Solidarity March Wednesday with Community, Students and Labor Unions. 3pm Liberty Plaza, 4:30 to City Hall.” Eureka! This, I realized, was what the Verizon Union worker meant earlier about tomorrow’s “Big March.”

“We need you there, man.” The flier guy said.

“Oh, I’ll be there.” I smiled back.

As the day ended and I walked out of the park, I spied with my little eye, another crowd gathering. Only this time it wasn’t for a debate or a march. Nope, the occupywallst.org organizers had turned the donations they’d received into food for everyone. They were serving a free, healthy, hot meal to anybody who was hungry. Anybody. This was just people helping people selflessly. That concept is usually completely foreign in this neck of the woods called Wall St., where Mammon, the god of greed, has long reigned supreme. But seeing this simple act of feeding each other, humans supporting each other through the cause, made me feel good about my fellow man and for this confirmed misanthrope, that was quite a statement. I really looked forward to getting back here tomorrow and doing it all over again only bigger!

I found my hotel in SoHo as a soft rain began to intermittently sprinkle here and there (which made me glad that I had made gotten a hotel room). I decided that I probably would actually go home after tomorrow and used my phone to buy a return bus ticket. Hotels are expensive, and at 41, I’m either too old or I just don’t feel like sleeping in the drizzling rain outside all night. Plus, I hadn’t really even seen any empty spaces at the park where I could crash even if I had wanted. I know that kind of discredits any fantasy I may have ever harbored about becoming a proletariat hero like a Cesar Chavez or Che Guevara type but the revolution is just going to have to continue with me having access to hot shower and a toilet. Sorry. I’ll do what I can. That’s all I can do.

I ended up grabbing some Chinese out and ducked into a store or two, got me a little New York City night air. When I finally headed back to my room, I tried to find anything about the day’s events on the television but the only news channel the hotel got was Fox and that particular channel had no sound. Thank God, for small mercies, thought I.

From my hotel window, I smoked a relaxing nighty-night bowl before hitting the sack in my overpriced but modernly-cozy-shoebox-of-a-New-York-City-hotel-room. I had to be careful not to leave any ashen evidence in my non-smoking room and risk the $200 surcharge. I looked out about upon the city. Dusk was falling and it was that magic time of day when it’s still technically daytime but the car lights and street lights have come on and everything seems to have a soft glow. I seemed to be breathing in sync with the city, we were feeding off each other like some form of symbiotic transfer, radiating together through a complete, circular, energy conduit. Maybe I was just a little high…







　

October 5, 2011, Wednesday

I woke up in the city that never sleeps ready to rejoin the rebel alliance.

Actually…

I slept in. I didn’t end up rolling out of bed until about 10:30 a.m., then the first thing I did was called the front desk and asked for a late checkout which they gave me, one o‘clock. Good. I hadn‘t exactly slumbered the night before. It’s true what they say. This city doesn‘t sleep. And it‘s taxis always beep. All night long.

Beep! Beep! Beeeeeeep!

Unfortunately, I found that even my hotel’s sound resistant, double paned windows didn’t really do much but slightly dampen the incessant horns, constant whizzing of cars, and intermittent earthquake of larger vehicles that rumbled by outside my window deep into the wee hours of the morn. Finally, it was only by cranking the climate control in the room and turning on the bathroom fan that I was able to generate enough white noise to finally drift off around 5:00 a.m. Of course I’d be lying if I said my insomnia wasn’t also because I was just a tad nervous/excited about the next day’s upcoming events.

I picked up the flier I had been handed the previous day. Today’s Big March was also to include students, who were engaging in a national walk out, and workers unions everywhere who were joining as well. Since I wasn’t needed at the march until 3:00 p.m., I figured I’d use those couple of free hours I had beforehand to go to the actual 9/11 Memorial that I’d only marched by yesterday..

Before I left I engaged in a little “wake and bake,” a last little toke to put my head right before going out into the day. By the way, I’d like to thank the ______ Hotel in Soho for installing a convenient, hand-sized, square opening in their window screens which are just large enough to reach through and open the actual window just a bit, just enough to blow away conspicuous, pungent, sweet leaf smoke. Mucho gracias par fumar! By the time I’d had this, my morning “coffee,” taken my shower and re-packed all of my protests survival goodies in my backpack, it was time to hit the road.

I had picked up a new shirt at one of the New York stores I had checked out the day before. I liked my new plain, black, button down collar shirt better because it was thinner and more suited to the muggy weather. And unlike my heavy cotton Ramones shirt I wore yesterday, this new one had no writing on it which I preferred because, though I love the Ramones, I wasn’t there to promote a band. I was there to promote a cause and I didn’t want it to distract. Further, I made the conscious decision to ditch the G-20 Summit anarchist hoodie look today and went more identity revealing which meant no hoodie, no hat, and no sunglasses. Nope, all that gear was tucked in my backpack today. Now, for someone like me who is a bit of an admitted agoraphobe and one who possesses a healthy paranoia of authorities, this “coming out” was quite a leap on my part. But I had come to the conclusion the day before that it behooved your cause more to let people see your eyes, to see you as an individual not all covered up, but to really see each other and to support your fellow man who were also giving a shit. Your message then carries more weight, because not only are you clearly identifying yourself to each other but you are also believing so much about what you are doing that you are willing to really put yourself out there to those nice police officers with their trusty video handicams, too. Amazing how much thought can go in to these things. As I said, ever the dandy…

I slung my backpack across my shoulders, signed my receipt at the desk, then stepped out once more into the Big Apple ready to take another huge, delicious bite! The perfect Fall weather of a chilly breeze and a slightly warmish sun had me floating down the peopled streets with a lightness to my step and a song in my heart. Make that three songs. “New York! New Yorrrrk! It’s a helluva towwwn!” “IIIIIII love New Yorrrrrrrkkk!” and, of course, “it’s up to you, New York, Newwww Yoorrrrkkkkkk!”

Whenever I’m back in Gotham I can’t help but feel the kinetic, electric, urban buzz inherent to this city. You can almost feel the velocity here. This is a good thing because it is actually a bit of a bitch to get around and if there wasn’t that buzz to surf, just getting from point A to point B could really burn you out. There’s so many construction sight detours, non-stop taxis, zig zagging roads and pedestrians who completely ignore the walk/don’t walk streetlights (and each other as much as they can) that makes it quite the test. There’s only one rule here that goes for pedestrians AND cars: if there’s a gap, you rush it. There’s also the issue of being constantly distracted by some of the most beautiful and fashionable people you have ever laid eyes as they are just passing by you (Manhattan of course being one of the modeling/fashion capitals of the world). Finally add all that together and times it by the fact that I don’t have the foggiest clue where the fuck I am nor where the fuck I am going and that if it weren’t for my Smartphone GPS telling me where to walk like a 21^st century super compass, I’d be fucked.

Eventually I was just able to spot the new, half-finished, World Trade Center skyscrapers in the distance and used them as my guide. That’s the great thing about skyscrapers… they’re tall! I walked nearly the entire perimeter of the Ground Zero, which is quite large, but I still hadn’t found the entrance to the memorial. I asked a very nice, African American female cop where I could find the entrance to the site. She pointed to about a half of a block away. I was close. But then she informed me that I had to go somewhere else to get a pass first.

What? A pass? Whoever heard of having to get a pass to go to a memorial? It’s not like it’s a small area. I’ve seen it on television. It’s really big, surely big enough to accommodate a steady stream of people filtering through. I started up the street to the ticket office where I found a large, fat line of tourists that stretched for about twenty yards and was three people thick.

Well, this sucks.

I looked up behind me and I saw again the beautiful Freedom Tower. I asked a stranger to take a photo of me with it in the background. That’ll be a neat picture, akin to a photo in front of a similarly incomplete Empire State Building from years ago.

After I got my picture, I went and took a place at the back of the line. It seemed to be moving pretty good so I was glad that it still looked like I could fit this in before the demonstration later in the afternoon. But wouldn’t ya know it? I got to almost the front of the line with maybe ten people left in front of me when some guy comes out and says,

“Sorry, folks, we’ve got no more passes for today.”

Everybody just looked at him stunned. It wasn’t even yet one thirty. How could they be out of passes? WTF? So not only did you need a pass but there was also the possibility that they could run out of them by mid-day? That sucks. In my view, this 9/11 Memorial should be like John Lennon’s Memorial, Strawberry Fields in Central Park, meaning it’s open from dawn til dusk (just like the rest of the park) and during that time, you are free to peruse at your leisure. And I don’t know how much time they think we all need to walk around. Unless people are sitting in Shiva at the Memorial- and I just didn’t really see the numbers around me in the ticket line to justify such a clampdown. It’s ridiculous and it left me frustrated that I wasn’t going to get to experience it this trip after I thought how nicely everything I thought everything was fitting into place schedule-wise. Maybe if I hadn’t stopped to get that photo taken with the Freedom Tower… Oh, well, I the photo was worth it and this’ll just give me something to look forward to doing the next time I was here.

I fed my new desired location, Zuccotti Park in my GPS app and soon I was trudging Northwards. As I neared the park I was thinking that I would really like to make a sign for today, to have my own statement to literally stand behind. I didn’t come all this way just to be another body in the mix. I had a voice and I, too, wanted to be heard just like everyone else. The day before, I’d been perfectly content to just blend among the rank and file, but today I felt differently. This was a chance to really communicate to my fellow citizenry en masse. I didn’t want to miss it.

But then, what does want to say? Here’s your blank sign and pen. What do you want to say to the world and how do you want to say it? That’s a lot of pressure. I came to realize that for such a thing to be successful, there would be certain guidelines that worked better than others. It had to be honest, short and to the point. It had to be challenging. Should you try find wit? You had to walk a very tight rope because if you went in any direction too far and your sign would fail and be a big waste.

I knew for sure I wanted it to have something to do with encouraging other like minded, fed up citizens to join us. My first idea was “Be Here Now” which I cribbed from the title of an album from a British band named Oasis. Ultimately, I decided against that because it was trying to be too clever. I thought of someone saying, “Be Here Now? What’s he protesting? That it’s not the 1990’s anymore?” There’s that tightrope I talking about. Go to far in any direction and it’s crap. Then the idea came to me of putting on it the “tree of liberty being fed by the blood of patriots and tyrants” quote by Thomas Jefferson. I like the quote’s power in that it is somewhat of a veiled warning. It’s kinda like in the movie Pulp Fiction, Samuel Jackson’s character has a famous “great vengeance and furious anger” Bible passage speech which he says before he shoots someone. The two quotes are similar in that it if you heard it, “it meant your ass.” However, I vetoed that sign idea because I figured it was too high brow and wordy. People only take about a half second tops to read signs, particularly when there are so many of them. No one would ever read this entire quote . Plus, was this really what I wanted to say? Encourage the spillage of the blood of patriots and tyrants? No…not yet.

Finally I opted to just speak simply from the heart a plain message: “JOIN US SAVE OUR REPUBLIC.” A bit broad, a bit heavy, I know, but I meant every word sincerely. No sooner had I settled on that when I passed an art supply store. Soon I was walking out with a large, plastic bag filled with a really nice sized piece of semi-thick, white, oak tag board and three markers, black , red, and blue. As I crossed the street to a bench in a small wooded crossway between blocks, swathed in all black clothing and cradling my armload of art supplies, I felt like a New Yorker, an ersatz one, yes, but whatever, I’ll take it. I sat down on the bench, placed my oak tag signboard next to me and started writing. Didn’t take long before passersby were craning there necks to see what it read. I wrote “JOIN US” is large black, block letters and in red wrote, “SAVE OUR” then against the white backdrop of the oak tag board competed the colors of the stars and stripes palette by writing “REPUBLIC” in blue underneath.

Ok, all done.

“Hey are you going to the protest?’ I looked up and there was a thin, business, dressed white dude, looking down at me reading my sign. Here we go, I thought. Was this gonna be another one of those asshole Wall Street hecklers? I just knew this guy was gonna say something snarky and we were gonna get into it. I didn’t get a chance to answer.

“Yeah, I’m gonna head on over there myself later on, ” he said. Whoa. That was a shock! It was nice to see that the movement had the support of some of the suits, too.

“Right on. I’ll see you there,” I smiled and off he went. I put my sign back into the bag so that I wouldn’t get the wet ink all over me, then I walked the rest of the way to the demonstration, my pulse rate seemed to be increasing with every step.

As I neared the park I realized something was different. Yesterday, the numbers here had been impressive but today… Holy shit! Today, the crowd had multiplied twenty fold! The masses of protestors were bursting to capacity in the park. Wall to wall people. The energy in the air was truly palpable. And if I thought there had been a lot of cops the day before, today I would have described them as literally omnipresent. They were floating around everywhere like someone had pulled the release on a gigantic net of bloated, blue balloons which were now spilling everywhere by the thousands, yes, thousands. There were new barricades, gawkers, press, drums in the distance, drums nearby, slogans being yelled at top voice, everyone jostling for position just to try to tiptoe their way through the seated and reclined hoi polloi like some delicate, bizarre game of human hopscotch. Normally, I really hate being in large crowds like this, I, mean REALLY hate it. But this was different. Necessity and concern for my country trumped my slight agoraphobia and there I was, my second day as an activist protestor of the occupywallst.org movement.

This was Disneyland for the Left. Liberal heaven. I thought of the folks who first had this occupywallst.org. idea and started camping here and how they must be really proud that to see what their efforts had grown to. By the end of the day, I would find out that the total numbers of these people participating on this day was somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand. Ten to fifteen thousand concerned, involved citizens, was a completely respectable number for a very young movement without billionaires underwriting it like the Tea Party has with the staunchly conservative Koch brothers.

I unsheathed my sign and looked for a place to join in. There was pandemonium going on inside the park but I’d already been through there yesterday. Carrying my sign around those parts would not be the best use of my time and effort. After all, those in the park had, for the most part, already joined us, so my message was moot to them. I’d be preaching to the choir, so to speak. No, I wanted to reach those sitting on the fence, the lookey-loos, and yes, even the cops. I wanted my sign’s call to action to be photographed and disseminated as far and as wide to an audience as it could reach, to light the beacons. JOIN US. To me, reading these words forced everyone who read it to, in that split second, to ask themselves the question: should I?” It made them consider, it made them weigh whether or not to be a part of what was going on. You! Yes, you! We need YOU!

And since I knew I wasn’t going to stay for another day, I was hoping maybe if I was lucky I could inspire my replacement or replacements somewhere out there, kinda like passing the baton to each other. I did what I could, when I could, now it’s your turn. Go. Do your part. Godspeed.

I found a clear spot along the perimeter street up on a couple of steps and turned to face outward from the park so that I was purposefully facing the cops and all the non-converts. I put my headphones on to listen to a little music as I held my sign. What better soundtrack for the revolution could there be except for the rock group Rage Against the Machine? Within seconds, I was bobbing my head to their song called, “Bombtrack.” The aggressive music really helped to calm whatever leftover agoraphobic anxiety I may have been feeling. It’s not so much that I am uncomfortable outside. I love being out and about and having adventures, my agoraphobia and general avoidance to being involved in any suffocatingly large gatherings of humans is more a side effect of my being somewhat of a confirmed misanthrope. But I didn’t dislike these people. These were the good ones. So most of my outdoors unease was gone, though not all. The music helps. It removes you from the social situation and makes you think of something else. There used to be a recording artist, the late Wesley Willis, who was a former homeless person who heard voices and so he wore a Discman literally around his neck (these were the days before Ipods, kiddies) and he kept it there constantly because he said that music, “made the demon voices in his head go away.” On some level, I could pick up what he was putting down. I agreed.

Soon, just as I had predicted, my sign was being photographed, videoed, people were pausing in their gaits to take the half second to read and process it. I remember thinking, “Fuck clicking on online petitions. This was the real shit.” And the real capper for me? The real capper for me was every time that I saw a new cop walk by and I caught them reading my sign’s message.

Bingo!

I had read a story the day before which said that about over 100 New York Police Officers had sided with the protestors and had refused to work the demonstration in solidarity with the occupywallst.org movement. We had 100 police officers now we needed 100 percent. Why do I keep harping on the cops? Because historically, it takes the authorities, the law enforcers (and it’s military as we saw in Egypt Revolution for the Arab Spring) switching over to really complete and make for a successful revolution. In Ancient Rome when the citizenry had to overthrow a tyrannical despot of a Caesar, like, say, Caligula (though there were others), it was Caligula’s own Praetorian Guard, his equivalent of today’s Secret Service, his personal bodyguards, who eventually had enough, switched alliance to the beleaguered masses, the rebellion, and it was they who assassinated Caligula themselves! Now I’m NOT suggesting that outcome in any shape or form, nor anything like “Reign of Terror” which followed the French Revolution and saw the super rich decapitated at Madame Guillotine. I just want to see the metaphorical version of that. In short, for any successful revolution to occur, eventually the authorities, the police, the military, etc., must come over to the side of the rebellion, of the people. That’s why it’s important to get to these cops on our side and it can all start with a message on a sign.

There was another piece of solidarity news floating around that New York City bus unions, the Ralph Kramdens, of the world, had also sided with the movement. Three days before, the police had commandeered the city busses and impressed the drivers into service to turn their busses into instant paddy wagons to take the more than 700 entrapped demonstrators from the Brooklyn Bridge to incarceration last weekend. No more. The drivers had told the city of New York that they were on the side of the protestors and would no longer agree to be pressed into service by law enforcement against us.

Things were happening.

So there I was holding my sign, rocking out quietly to myself, totally getting off on the controlled chaos swirling around me, when I noticed an odd thing. As I looked about, I noticed that the majority of protestors here in New York today seemed to be mostly white. I’m not saying the other races weren’t represented because they were, but it was nothing close to the numbers you’ve seen in the old footage of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. I found this strange because I saw this as a class struggle and since people of all races are represented at poverty level, why then this racial disparity here? I’m sure a whole PhD dissertation could be written by a sociology doctoral candidate on this subject matter so I will leave out any blind guesses from my part as to why and just leave it at that. I observed it, and it stuck with me.

Even stranger was that of the few minorities that I did see there, there was one group of about eight African American women who were standing in front of a sign which read: PRO LIFE. Are you serious? I was a little upset by this. I mean, yes, they have the right to speak their mind in any public forum they choose just like every other citizen, but this protest wasn’t about that issue, for or against. But “Pro Life”? Here? Why convolute things? Especially when you consider that one of the media’s central criticisms about this movement is it’s lack of a cohesive message. I saw that a lot of people were coming up and challenging these “Pro Life” women (particularly a lot of women challengers, actually) and when they did, all of the “Pro Life” women would engage the lone challenger at the exact same time, overwhelming the challenger with too many voices to retort, and shouting down said challenger. Not cool. These women were trying to hijack this event and being bullies to boot. I didn’t like it. But hey, that’s the price I pay for living in a free society. When it comes particularly to free speech we have to defend the worst to the protect the best. As soon as you start telling people they can’t say something, it’s not going to be too long before someone else comes along and tries to tell you the same thing. In short, I didn’t begrudge these women their American right to express their Pro Life statement or to do it here, I just found their message and their mode in particularly bad form.

The second song in my Ipod play list called “Sleep Now in the Fire,” was just starting to rock when who should walk up to me but none other than Victoria Jackson, a minor celebrity from the 1980’s who was a comic actress on the TV show, “Saturday Night Live.” She came up to me with a handheld video camera with a bright light attached which was suddenly shining right in my eyes. All of these lights and fuss, of course, drew a small audience to us. She wanted to interview me? I was nervous as shit hoping I wouldn’t say something stupid or freeze up and have it all caught forever on camera.

She said, in a loud voice, in reference to my sign, “I want to save our republic, too. But what are you here for?” Or something like that, but I couldn’t really tell as I was still listening to my music when she first came up to me and so I could only kinda read her lips and piece together what she said as I pulled out my earbuds. I smiled at her, recognizing her from her nasal, high voice and still pretty face.. I’ve been a Saturday Night Live fan my whole life and I knew from my occasional watching of Fox News (self-torture at it’s best) that she had since become a conservative commentator on the various programs on that right wing television channel.

“Hello, Victoria,” I said, holding out my hand.

“Hi, I’m Victoria Jackson,” she said shaking my hand, lowering her camera.

“I know who you are. I loved you on SNL.” She returned my smile, happy to be recognized.

“Do you mind if I ask you some questions?” She asked, as the crowd grew even more around us. Here we go, thought I.

“Sure,” I replied, “Shoot!” She pushed her camera close to my face and started rolling. Over the next several minutes she questioned me in a rapid fire style designed to try to get me to trip over my own words or to speak without carefully choosing what I wanted to say. Anything to catch me on something. As I gave solid answers to each of her questions, she’d drop it quickly and move on to the next one, then the next one, probing me for weaknesses like a fucking velociraptor testing the electrical fences in the movie Jurassic Park. But I didn’t just come to this place, this protest, to be spending my own time, energy and money to come to New York, to demonstrate and to risk possibly getting arrested because I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. It’s just the opposite. Because I have read so much and learned in depth about the problems we face, it has made me acutely aware of just how dire the democracy vs. plutocracy situation really is and that has compelled me to be here now. I might not know everything (and I’ve been happy to be so surprised by some of the people who I heard speak here and their new perspectives, information and inspirational quotes, who were obviously far more knowledgeable than myself) but I did know enough to explain, in a rational, logical, way, backed up by facts, not only how I came to these beliefs myself but also why I felt so strongly that I just had to join the protest myself. So, I was ready for her.

Her questioning was so fast and furious that I don’t really remember every point and transition. I do remember telling her the analogy for capitalism that I’d heard on Real Time with Bill Mahr in that: Capitalism is like a poker game and the goal is to win all of the chips. But what happens when you lose your chips? You then have to borrow against the house just to stay in the game. That’s why millions of Americans are now up to their eyes in debt. They’ve had to borrow against the house just to stay in the game. And finally, what happens when one player wins all the chips and no one can borrow anymore money? The game is over. And that’s the point. I believe you can be dirty, filthy, stinking rich, but you can’t be so obscenely rich that you break the game for everybody else. After I said that, one of the guys standing around listening to us turned to his friend and said, “That’s a great analogy!” I felt emboldened. See this is what a gathering like this was about - sharing information, solid arguments based in fact, talking points. Win the debate because we were right and remember that passion is no good without persuasion.

I told her that it was reported in the Wall Street Journal, a conservative newspaper, that right now businesses are sitting on a bout two trillion dollars that they aren’t innovating with and they aren’t creating jobs with. That right now the banks are also sitting on about a trillion dollars themselves that they aren’t lending to anybody because nobody in the government made that part of the TARP deal. That right now the top 400 INDIVIDUALS, the billionaires, have more money themselves than the entire bottom 50 PERCENT of the rest of us. And what happens when someone wins all the chips? The game is over, broken to the sum of 23 million people jobless and 49 million children have no health care. How much do they need to win? How much are we going to allow them to win?

At one point Victoria asked what religion I was and I told her I identify myself as a Christian but one who believes in the actual teachings of Christ.

“Which means what?” She asked, baiting me, trying to give me enough rope to hang myself.

“Like helping the poor, caring for the sick and needy. We can’t ignore the people who have fallen through the cracks of our society.”

She replied, “Yeah, but Jesus didn’t say make the government do it, he did it himself!”

I smiled, “Yeah, well, I don’t have the power to divide the loaves or heal the sick like he did. So until I get those miracle powers maybe we can look to the government for help? What would Jesus do?” To that answer the crowd around us bust out laughing. Of course this only sent her off the edge with her next question.

“Well, what about Jeremiah Wright and the race and class war that Obama is trying to start?” She asked.

“He disavowed Wright!” I replied. “Race war? That’s the most inane question that you’ve asked me. Didn’t you hear what Obama said recently to the black congressional caucus? He told them that that they needed to “take off their bedroom slippers,” and to “stop complaining.” Does that sound like someone who is trying to start a race war? And as for a class war, I’d say the super-rich have been waging class warfare against the rest of us for a long time. I think it’s time it went the other way.” That line got a big clap from the spectators. This was my Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, haha.

Then Victoria had a meltdown and really took the express train to crazy with her next question.

“Well, okay. So how do we make sure everyone gets to be good looking and rich?” She said in a very mocking tone.

Um, what?

“What are you talking about?” I laughed. Okay, I’ll play along. “ How do we make sure everyone is “good looking”? Um, genetic engineering? And I never said I believed everyone should get to be rich. I just said no one gets to be so rich they ruin it for everybody else.” As I repeated this last line she rolled her eyes and nodded her head dismissively as if to say, “Yeah, yeah…”

Suddenly this weird guy came out of nowhere and shouted at Victoria, “Barack Obama is a fucking Republican!”

Geez…

I didn’t mind the interruption, especially in this rowdy, anything goes atmosphere, but his point could have been a bit more erudite. As I said before, if there’s been one area I wish my fellow protestors would improve is their arguments. I totally understand and unite with them over the frustration and the foreboding sense of doom we are all feeling about our country’s crumbling democracy but when they just shout out something like that, even though it may have a twinge of an argument behind it, it’s just soooo broad, that well, let’s just say that it’s probably the least strong statement that you can make. It’s more akin to kids calling each other “doo doo head” in the schoolyard, than any kind of real, substantive, political exchange of ideas. The weird guy’s “Obama is a Republican!” rant went on for about 20 seconds as he threw in bits about Nixon and Barry Goldwater before Victoria swung her camera back over to me.

“So what do you think of Van Jones being a Marxist?” She asked. She finally got me.

“I don’t know who that is, so I can’t comment on it.” I replied. Hey, at least I was honest. She looked at me like triumphantly like inside she was gloating over her pyrrhic victory of “ha ha I know something you don’t know.”

“You don’t know who Van Jones is??” She asked again with a severely patronizing, victorious tone to her voice. I just gave a little smile and shook my head “no.”

Satisfied, she put her camera down and smiled, “You spoke really well,” she offered, “a lot better than that other guy” she said and made and indicating motion with her head towards the “Obama is a Republican” Guy. “I didn’t really expect to find anyone down here who knew what they were talking about.”

“Thank you,” I said, thinking that would be the end of it and she would walk away. But she just stood there as we shared an uncomfortable pause. It was almost like she was waiting for me to say something further to her. To tell you the truth, it almost felt like she was waiting around to see if I would ask her for her number or something like that. Holy shit! Was Victoria Jackson flirting with me?

“Umm, can I get a picture?” I asked, breaking the tension.

“Sure!” she replied. I handed my phone to a perfect stranger who snapped a picture of she and I together. I didn’t get to see what was going to happen next for this encounter between Victoria and I, as off in the not too far distance I heard the chest-booming THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! of bass drums being played in unison, accompanied by what sounded like an entire Latin percussion section (phunky beats), followed by what sounded like an entire marching band. A huge ROAR arose from the crowd. The protest march of occupywallst.org to New York City Hall was beginning!

I quietly slipped behind Victoria with my sign in tow towards the moving masses. “Be careful!” I heard her call after me but I was already leaving her behind as a quick as a flash, a filed away memory that was already in the past and I before I knew it, I was in the procession, right in the thick of it.

How do I describe the feeling of once again walking elbow to elbow with my fellow, like-minded, committed protestors as we chanted slogans once again as one determined voice

“All day! All week! Occupy Wall Street!”, “Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!”, “Who’s street? Our street!”, “We! Are! The ninety-nine percent! (And so are you!)” were our chants. And when any of those New York City double decker tourist busses came around, the ones with no roofs, our new shouted anthem became: “Off of the bus! Into the streets! Off of the bus! Into the streets!”

This was different than the day before, this was way more intense. It also felt better today to not be wearing the hat pulled low, the sunglasses, the whole incognito bit. We were here in full force. The level of energy was so high because everybody did their part to never let the fire or the decibel level ebb. There were occasions when even I was taking up the impetus to initiate the call and response chants. I shot some quick footage of myself leading the crowd with, “Show me what democracy looks like!” And many responded, “THIS is what democracy looks like!” There was unity here, in the truest sense of the word. The thousands and upon thousands of us marching together emboldened our resolve to be finally heard. Yes, this was indeed what democracy looked like.

There was one funny thing about this march, however, that made me feel like I was having a Larry David/Jerry Seinfeld comic moment. In the midst of marching and chanting, some guy started walking in pace with me while simultaneously blowing ear piercing toots and tweets on his police whistle. I’m sure he wasn’t purposefully blowing this in my ear, I just happened to be the unfortunate who drew the unlucky pole position. Now full confession, one of the supplies I had packed was a police whistle of my own. But I had heard someone blowing away the day before and found it so obnoxious in sound that I decided it was more annoying than effective and I opted not to use it. But here he was, toot-toot-tweeting right into my hammer, anvil and stirrup. It was time to get out of this spot, I thought, and I nudged my way across the procession to the opposite side of the moving phalanx just to get out of the whistle guys’ range. Ahhh… much better.

I hugged the sides presenting my message to all I passed:

“Join Us Save Our Republic.”

At one point I had to duck into a local business to use the restroom. They made me buy something. I didn’t mind. I bought a sugar-free red bull which was definitely over-priced (even by Manhattan standards). This high cost was designed, I suppose, to either price gouge or to send a message that they didn’t want the business of the protestors. It ended up being an expensive drink and an expensive whiz. Whatever.

I rejoined the procession and was holding my sign high and chanting at the top of my voice along with my peers and often times we found ourselves shouting directly into ever present hordes of cops who always seemed to be trying to fence us in with an ever-tightening line of blue bodies and barricades. What was funny was that a lot of these cops were actually really small. Some because they were women, and some because they were just really short males. One thing was for sure, it occurred to me that if shit ever really got ugly between the sea of protestors and this lot, other than lethal force, these mini-cops weren’t going to be very much help against violent masses. I listened as a new chant began and just as I was about to join along, when out of the blue, my ears felt a familiar pain as I heard…

TOOT-TOOT-TWEET!!

Son of a bitch! It was that same, goddamn whistle blower from earlier right in my fucking face. Again! This was too funny. I thought of Larry David/Jerry Seinfeld as I really wanted to turn to him and say, “Dude! I really appreciate your sentiment and all but I swear to God if you blow that fucking whistle in my ear again, I’m gonna stick it up your ass so you can fart “Dixie.” I said none of this, of course, and smiled at the absurdity of the scenario playing out in my head and knowing that only I would get into a fight at a lefty demonstration not with a Wall Street guy, or a cop, nope…another lefty demonstrator. Wow. Anyway, I bit my tongue, quickened my pace and soon the guy and his obnoxious instrument were comfortably out of my ear zone again.

After about an hour an half into the March my voice was getting noticeably hoarse. But we had finally reached our primary destination of the day: New York City Hall. As much as I hate to repeat myself, I cannot go on further without expressing my surprise at the crazy amounts of even MORE cops that were waiting for us once we got to City Hall. Where were they all coming from? It was as if you had whacked the hive and the multitudes of worker drones were highly agitated and on the loose. If there were ten to fifteen thousand protestors as were later reported, I can assure you that by the time we were at the square, there were about three to five thousand cops everywhere. That’s not an underestimation either. It was just ridiculous. This was a peaceful protest. This had been nothing but a peaceful protest. What were they so afraid of? Deal with us as who we are not as what you want to project onto us.

The rightwing has been quick to call our grassroots protest everything from “ragtag” to a mob” to “anarchists.” Those terms sound a lot to me like what King George III must’ve called the citizens who began the American Revolution. Weren’t the participants in the actual Boston Tea Party a bunch of “ragtag anarchists?” Hell, was I an “anarchist” and I didn’t even know it? I looked it up. Dictionary.com defines anarchy as : a state of society without government or law. To me, that sounds more like the GOP agenda they are always espousing doesn’t it? Aren’t the ones on the right always the one who are trying get rid of all these regulations and laws? That sounds an awful more like that definition of anarchy to me. And to try to imagine actual anarchy in our country, a society with no law, what that would be like, is just awful. It would be domestic Armies constantly battling each other for rule, robbers and killers everywhere, might makes right, freedoms would be disappearing, our children would go uneducated, prisons wouldn’t exist at all because hey, anarchists believe in no laws so that means that there are no laws to be broken.. It would be total insanity and not somewhere I’d like to live or try to raise a child in. We would be in total chaos without a shared, enforced, agreement of rule and law that is a society. I am marching here but I am no anarchist, sir.

And a “mob”? No one is this leftie demonstration was carrying any guns. There was no threat at anytime. The same cannot be said of the gun loving right wing tea party, some of whom actually brought their weapons to their rallies. Anarchy? What do they think those armed tea party protestors were advocating?

To add insult to injury, GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain even has gone as far as to label our movement as “anti-American.” So if you’re anti capitalism you are now Anti-American? Capitalism is at it’s essence an attack on democracy. They are in opposition. Capitalism gives power to individuals or small groups (think of the power structure of nearly every corporation, CEO‘s, Board Of Directors) but the workers have no say, and in a democracy everyone shares power and a series of checks and balances keep any one part from becoming too powerful. Democracy is more important than capitalism. Capitalism is just the economic system we have chosen under a democracy to use for our financial system. Therefore in keeping with our democratic values, capitalism must be constrained through checks and balances, or regulations, just like everything else. For our democracy to survive this coup d’etat from unfettered capitalism, we must have a solution that includes these enforced, vigilant regulations, taxing the rich, and limiting the power of money in politics. Capitalism can be a very beneficial system but right now it’s nihilistic attributes (win at all cost) have trumped the essence of our democratic values because greed and bottomline profits are the goals of corporations, not the “general welfare” of the people.

“Anti-American?” Just because we demonstrate does not mean we dislike America. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of the people to the freedom of speech, the freedom of peaceable assembly and the right to petition the government. What is more American than citizens banding together to protest injustice? There is nothing more basically American than exercising one’s 1^st Amendment rights, it is the very definition of American tradition. Would Cain have called the demonstrators from the Civil Rights Movement “anti-American” as well?

We are just trying to point out something that is unfair. We want accountability from the banks that caused this financial disaster, accountability from the GOP for marching us into unfunded wars that cost us immeasurably in blood and treasure and was based on lies, accountability from the Democrats for being culpable by not doing their regulation oversight jobs (and for unfulfilled promises), accountability from big businesses who make record profits, keep getting tax breaks (General Electric paid no taxes last year) and yet still they create no jobs.

The Republicans who have been saying recently that they will not allow the protest to help shape policy have forgotten who they are supposed to be listening to…the people! But they are revealing that the desire of the people isn’t what matters to them, it’s the desire of the WEALTHY people who help them get elected- that’s the only thing that matters to them. What they are afraid of is that indeed these masses can (and will) shape U.S. policy. The large protests from the left in the 1960’s are what ended the Vietnam War. There are successful precedents to this model of protest participation.

Besides, isn’t it incredible that all these right wingers who are all for democratic uprisings in other countries like Iraq and Afghanistan get so against it when one starts happening at home? So let them call us whatever they like. No amount of scorn, mislabeling, or mocking will work.

As I walked with my fellow protestors, I realized that THIS was the America that I love. My kinda people, taking to the streets because we have had enough. They have taken our jobs. They have taken our food from our mouths. They have taken our healthcare. They have stolen the roofs over our heads and pocketed the profits, talked the government into bailing them out because they were “too big to fail” then when we did they pocketed more money - hundreds of millions of dollars- and gave us the finger. Now they want to take our Medicare and our Social Security. Most of all we are protesting the government being run like a government oligarchy, a plutocracy for the rich. So, tell me again, who exactly is “anti-American” here?

Over a million people are already participating across the country in the spreading occupywallst.org movement and it is growing every day exponentially, in 832 cities so far. The problem that the politicians and the media are having with this movement is that there is no leader. We don’t need one. Everyone knows in their guts whey we are here. Something is wrong. Critically wrong. THAT’S the cause. We don’t need a leader because we all already know what to do and what needs to be done. The silent majority has finally found their voice and we will not stop. We will be heard and we will take our government back

I was glad to be in this crowded square with my fellow patriots. You could feel the joy of the dissent. You could feel the bond brought on by a common goal. You could feel the antagonism towards the cops.

The cops were being dicks. The end of the march caught had up to the beginning and the 10-15 thousand strong swelled beyond capacity inside the penned off area and elderly people, college coeds, even children were being squished and pressed to the point where they were stumbling into the metal, interlinking temporary buttresses and knocking them over. Whenever this happened, a rush of cops would come to the section like coagulants to a fresh wound and scream at whomever they felt had been responsible for the fallen barricade. They were keeping us so tight that it was becoming dangerous. These barricades weren’t for our safety. They were to remind us who was boss. They weren’t letting traffic drive through there anyway so these cop walls obviously had nothing to do with keeping people safe, they were just another form of crowd control.

I had once again taken up position on the outskirts, I wanted to face City Hall itself and the thousands who had now gathered on it’s steps to take in the entire spectacle for a better vantage point. By the way, as I side note, the day after this protest I received evidence that my little positioning strategy had paid off as I was sent a link to a photo of the demonstration that appeared in a local New York Newspaper and there I was with my sign front and center. Success. My message in a bottle had gotten out. Hopefully it did some good. If I could just do my part to keep the snowball rolling, just like the Arab Spring, this could be our American Autumn.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my anti-crowd agoraphobia was beginning to kick in again. I actually only felt comfortable in this overly-cramped space on the outskirts where I knew I could hop right over this railing and be free of the masses at any moment. The compactness of the space became so ridiculous that at one point the crowd began turning on the cops and their overwrought, draconian measures.

This is how it starts, I thought. When you see the elderly and you see children being hard pressed against barriers and then yelled at by cops who are drunk on their own power. The urge swells within you to fight back. People started yelling at the cops, “Let us in our streets!” “Open this up!” “Tear down this wall!” and “Who’s street? OUR street!” Eventually the sentiment grew to the point where people at different gate joints were taking apart the fence themselves and letting people out just to relieve the pressure. The cops were scrambling everywhere to patch the steady leaking flow of humanity. There were too many usurpers for the cops to stop, like so many ladders of an attacking force climbing a castle wall. And again, this is how it begins. What was that Gandhi quote again, “Then they fight you, then you win.”

We stayed in this place for over an hour. There were times that some things were chanted around me that I didn’t agree with. At one point , a group of students began saying in unison, “Shut down the government! Shut down the government!” Here they are, I thought. The anarchists. I just couldn’t back them up and join in their chant at all. “Shut down the government“? Nah. How about “Fix the government!” or “Reform the government!“ Absolutely. But “shut it down“?? Who would make sure our drinking water was safe? How about the food we eat? Who’s gonna make sure new drugs aren’t dangerous and do what they claim? And what about a million other good, absolute necessities that our government takes care of every minute of every single day? We would be lost without these services and as I explained before. I am no anarchist. Of course, I couldn’t really debate with them in this environment but I just wanted to say, “Think, kids, think!” But there they were chanting away, “Shut down the government! Shut down the government!” And wouldn’t you know it? As if the content of what they were chanting wasn’t offending my ears enough. Who you do you think had somehow caught up to me again and was now (right in unison with he anarchist students) going:

TOOT! TOOT! TWEET!!!

TOOT! TOOT! TWEET!!

NOOOO!! It was the FUCKING WHISTLE GUY….AGAIN!! This time, smashed right up against me and closer than ever. He was directly against my ear all shrill and painful. If this had indeed been an comedy episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, this would’ve been the part where I end up punching out the whistle guy, the crowd would then against me, and instead of railing against corporate greed and government collaboration they all start chanting against ME! Haha.

I took a deep breath and put my sign between his whistle and my face. Obvious and rude, yes, but then so was he. I think he got my hint pretty quick because soon I heard no more whistle and when I finally lowered my sign again, he was completely gone and I never saw, or better yet, heard from him again. So what’s the lesson learned? Hey, kids, unless you are going to be at Carnival in Brazil, or in a Led Zep cover band playing the Latin music break in “Dy’er Maker,” hell, or even unless you are actually in fear of being raped, please leave the fucking police whistle at home. The people around you will thank you. Particularly in this circumstance, your voice added to the chanted slogans that everyone is already chanting is so much more powerful, and is such a better use of your breath. Or at the very, VERY least, as the rock group, The Police, once sang, “Don’t stand…. Don’t stand…. Don’t stand so close to me!”

It was around this time that I started to feel hungry. No problem. This Boy Scout came prepared! I pulled out of my knapsack my chocolate brownie protein bar and a water and just went to town. Perfect pick me up! I was glad I had taken the time to bring some grub and equally glad that I had actually used the stuff so I didn’t ended up carrying it all around for two days for nothing.

After about another hour of just admiring and taking part in the mass of flesh that was singing, chanting and dancing to the drums in unity with our cause. The central mass began to form and move again. The word was spread that we were going to march to Wall Street from here. I don’t think that this was part of the permit of the protest because the cops reacted like this was completely unexpected. They not only surrounded the freedom train of folks again but this time, they were so thick that they were literally standing shoulder to shoulder creating a solid, blue corridor for us to be herded through. The cops were also making it a lot harder to continue because they didn’t want the march to go any farther. They started erecting temporary barriers with these orange, rubber, mesh barricades that they could instantly roll out and stand behind. With these new temporary, handheld barricades, they began bottlenecking the procession at the street corner turn to the point where the march came to pretty much a dead stop. This was on purpose, a calculated, crowd-control maneuver on their part and it totally worked. Bastards.

After about an hour of this pathetically slow drip of a walk whereupon I think we traversed a grand total of maybe three or four blocks rather than the miles I had walked to City Hall from Zuccotti Park in the same amount of time earlier. I looked down at my phone and realized I only had a little over an hour to get to my bus (wherever the hell that was). I hadn’t really checked the details thinking I could just read it later, grab another expensive cab and be on my way.

Boy, was I wrong.

The next time there was a break in the barricades, I decided that unless I left then, I really wasn’t going to be giving myself enough time to make my bus home and since, obviously, no revolt was going to be happening, I decided I wasn’t going to be corralled like this by the cops any longer. Besides, I had stayed as long as I could. I had already prolonged my exit longer than I should have but I was just so caught up in it all. It was difficult for me to leave. There was a very large part of me that wanted very much to stay, to camp out, even to stick with it until some real change came out of it, like in Tahrir Square. If it could happen there, it could happen here. Why not?

But I felt like, for the two days I had been here, I had done what I could do. For now. If everyone who felt similarly , would come and give two days of their time each, it really could be a marvelous revolution.

But, alas, life’s other responsibilities beckoned me home. I looked on my GPS the address of where I had to pick up the bus. It was the Port Authority Bus Terminal wayyyy uptown from where I was, it was back up near Times Square. Pretty much where the bus had dropped me off. Duh. The only problem was: I was still wayyy downtown. Too far to walk in time.

Well, I guess I’ll just have to pay the expensive cab fare. Only one, tiny problem with that, too: no matter where I looked I could NOT for the life of me, find a cab. I had underestimated the interruption the protest would make on the city’s grid. This wasn’t good.

Uh oh.

Was I gonna miss my fucking bus? It was the last bus of the night. If I missed this one, I’d either have to get another expensive hotel or maybe actually have to camp outside with the other protestors tonight. That wouldn’t be completely disagreeable, I thought. I turned a corner, thinking I had walked far enough way from the crowd that I could be on a street where I might find a taxi and BAM! I realized that I had walked right back into the still-stalled protest parade. In my confusion, I had just walked in a complete circle around the city block and I wasn’t even stoned. (Sometimes, I’m not the sharpest pencil in the box.) The sad thing was that even though I had left my spot in line like fifteen minutes ago, here they were again, right in front of me in nearly the exact place on the block where I had left them.

I asked an elderly man how I could get to Port Authority and he told me (in a very old school New Yawk accent where no word could be uttered without a slight coating of annoyance) that I needed to take the “A” train and pick it up at Church St. I didn’t know what the hell that meant or where it was. I thanked him the way we do when we ask for direction then leave without understanding a single thing the Good Samaritan has just said. I just headed in the new direction he had motioned towards with his hands. This had been more time off my clock. Damn.

The sun was going down and the breeze was picking up into a steady wind whipping through the skyscrapers. My big sign was becoming my big pain in the ass. The wind kept picking it up and was blowing me this way and that like some urban sail. Besides, after having held the damn thing for over four hours now, I was ready to let it go. It had been a good soldier. It deserved a burial at sea. It deserved “Taps” to be played as it was given a twenty-one gun salute. But it was too big to pack in my sack, too big to roll up, too big to fail, so what to do? I just couldn’t bring myself to trash it. The worst thing I could think of was if I put it in the trash and somebody took a picture of it and the message THAT would create. As it happened, I found a very strange, wooden, box built against the staircase of a brownstone that seemed like a perfect cubbyhole for it. So in it went. Mission accomplished. I walked away glad to know it wasn’t in the garbage and that in the box it would be protected from the elements and would be a nice surprise invitation for someone to find. Maybe it would give the finder a good story to tell, spreading the word further.

Soon after, I don’t know how I did it but I blindly stumbled across the Church St. subway entrance and down I went. After a few questions here and there, I found my way to the A-Train. As I stood on the platform, I noticed the infamous “electrified third rail.” How crazy that imminent death by electrocution is a mere three or four feet below you, quite an easy trip, or jump. I hopped on the train and a very large, drunk European who hadn’t held on to any handles, fell backwards into me when the cars lurched forward. I held my ground but he stepped hard on my foot. Sigh…

“Sorry! Sorry,” he turned to me and laughed as he was drunkenly helped to his feet by his friends. Don’t hit him. Don’t hit him. Don’t hit him, ran through my head in perfect syncopation with my throbbing, aching foot. Thanks, Euro-dick.

Walk it off.

I just shook my head and leaned him back up off me. Jeez, can anything else happen?

I finally made it to 42^nd St. where I was happy to find that the 42^nd St stop is actually the Port Authority Bus Station itself. I arrived at the stop at 7:00 p.m. I still had fifteen minutes to print out my ticket from the kiosk and get to my gate whereupon I found out that because of the day’s protest, the busses were running fifteen minutes late and mine wouldn’t be arriving until 7:30 now. Oh yeah? I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I realized what I could do with this extra bit of time. I remembered that I still had a bowl’s worth of good green chronic loaded and ready to go in my bag.

I stepped into the bathroom and in the stall I got everything out and ready to go, now to just go find a little nook and have a quick toke that would put me just right for the three plus hour ride home. As I exited the bathroom, I heard:

“BOW WOW WOW!”

I looked up and saw two cops and with a K-9 unit, a bomb/and or drug sniffing German Shepherd and here I was standing with a loaded bowl filled with an illegal substance which I had in my pocket as they were coming down the escalator towards me. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!

I did a completely suspicious one hundred and eighty degree turn and ducked right back into the same bathroom from which I had just emerged . I took my loaded pipe and slipped it in an airtight ziplock baggie I had brought, wrapped that bag in another bag and jammed the whole thing as deep into my backpack as it would go.

When I came back out of the bathroom, the boys in blue and their puppy dog, too, were on our lower level and were searching some guy’s bag. I used this opportunity to slip behind where they were and up the stairs away as quickly as I could.

All that was left to do now was to step outside and find some discreet place where I could take a “Quick Draw McGrawl.” Once I found a little place, it’d only take me ten seconds tops to do the deed, then I could head back downstairs to the gate in plenty of time for my bus and feelin’ groovy and relaxed in contrast to the full volume amplitude of the day’s proceedings.

Well, as soon as I stepped outside to look for my “discreet spot” when boom! I realize that I had forgotten that I was in fucking Times Square! There is no fucking “discreet spot” in Times Square. In fact, in all the world, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a less discreet spot in the private sector.

Anyway, I walked half a city block around one side of the bus terminal, which I found out is quite large. Finally after walking what seemed like a quarter of a mile away, I felt like I was far enough way from pedestrians and traffic that I just turned towards the wall, not discreet at all, and took the hardest, longest inhale I could fill my lungs with because I knew I wasn’t going to get a second puff.

Ahhhh….. Success. Relief. Nerves calmed.

Bullshit.

Now I was freaked out that I smelled like weed and the damn dog downstairs was still gonna get me. Stoner paranoia in full effect. I decided that I had to ditch the pipe. I really liked that pipe but better to not have it on me. It’s one thing to be searched because the dog smelled pot on me, it’s quite another to be arrested for possession of paraphernalia. Besides it was just a ten dollar glass pipe, totally not worth the risk. So into the nearest trash can it went. I’m sure that wasn’t the first time this sort of thing was ditched in a New York City street trashcan, haha.

I saw a side door to the building and thought it would be a shortcut. Wrong. It was so big inside that I couldn’t find my way around. I was actually lost inside the building. This was turning into a Comedy of Errors. And I still had a bus to catch. I was really sweating it. Fuck, I came all this way and now I was gonna miss my bus because I’m rudderless in the mall-size Port Authority Bus Station. And… I’m high as fuck.

I found a large directory map but it was so convoluted and complex, more like a giant technical drawing, that I think I stood in front of it looking for a “You Are Here” icon forever until OCD panic kicked in and beckoned me to get a move on!

Luckily, I found an Information Desk but it only had one lady working there and the lone customer in front me seemed to want to play Twenty Questions with her as my time ticked away with every extra question he was asking her.

I was dying!

Finally I got to the desk and she was able to point me in the right direction and I ended up making it with a whopping ten minutes to spare. Thankfully, the cops and the drug sniffing dog were gone. My pipe! Oh, well. Better safe than sorry. I don’t know how I did it, but an hour and twenty minutes after I had left the protest parade I was finally on my ride home.

Whew.

I found a seat, plugged in to charge, put some ambient music on an stared out the rolling Greyhound’s cold, glass window at the utter loveliness of the thousand points of light that made up the New York City skyline at night, so pretty. It’s Christmas-like glow juxtaposed against a futuristic Metropolis, the city on the edge of the world. I was high as a kite and totally relaxed, the ambient music, the gorgeous, evening vista all were combining to make for a very cinematic moment, almost slo-mo. Underneath all of this was the warm fuzzy feeling of contentment born from participating in civic duty. I knew I would remember this trip for the rest of my life as one of my most favorite, treasured memories.

As I checked the news of the day searching for any coverage on the day’s events, I learned that Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple had died. Now I used Apple products my whole trip. I recognize that Steve Jobs was a self-made billionaire and an innovator. But I also recognize that despite being the most successful, richest company in all of the U.S. he didn’t manufacture most of his products here. If any company could’ve afforded to pay American workers a middle class wage and benefits, surely it would be the most successful one like Apple so then why didn’t Steve Jobs create manufacturing jobs here instead of having them made by children in Chinese sweatshops so that he could make more money? It all ties together because the problem is systemic.

As for any final thoughts… I don’t know. I really hope the movement doesn’t peter out. I don’t know if I’ll get to make it up there again though I’d really like to and it may be necessary. But as I rode home to Baltimore through the New York night, I was all aglow hoping that I’d somehow helped out by trying to encourage my fellow frustrated citizenry to stand up against corporate greed and government collaboration that is stealing our democracy and replacing it with a plutocracy, a country by the corporations for the corporations instead of “For the People” and “By the People.” I hope I helped encourage people to “Join Us Save Our Republic.”



“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

- Ronald Reagan