I bought another ticket, this time on the Peter Pan Bus. At 30 dollars, the cost of a roundtrip bus trip from Baltimore to New York is amazingly inexpensive for this day and age. A fact that was not lost on others as I was watching REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHR, and a Democratic politician from Florida, Alan Grayson, had made the point that the reason why the Occupy Wall Street movement was growing was because it was the one of the last things that people could still do. With the economy in the tank and the voice of the individual drowned out more and more by the sound of the corporate pigs gorging themselves at the money-trough, the one thing that people could still do, financially and physically, was to get on a damn bus and just be fucking present. I agreed with his point and served as a living example.
I had been out late the night before and had to be up by 5:45 a.m. that morning to pack, shower and make the bus. I was really dragging my ass when I climbed up the bus steps and plopped my butt in the cushy seat. There were barely any other passengers around me this time. I tried to get some sleep but kept getting hot and waking up. Too late I realized that I was sitting on the side of the bus where the sun was shining through. I thought of shifting everything to an empty seat on the other side but it would've been too much a bother to gather all my things around me and from the overhead bin. Plus, I had a speech to write. And if I'm honest, my nervousness about giving said speech right in the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City, smack dab amongst the human plurality was what was really keeping me awake.
On my way up, I started reading the latest news on the Occupy movement from the web. I had mixed feelings about what I read. First of all I found out that this leftist movement had been given $350,000 in donations from people off of the web and such. This concerned me because when you take a grassroots, equality-over-all, movement full of disenfranchised poor people and you suddenly infuse it with six figures in cash (it's now at a half of a million dollars at the time of this writing) well, let's just say that could prove disastrous.
The second thing I read about proved my point and was even more disturbing. Apparently the Occupiers have been having daily general assemblies which are run like a pure Democracy in that everyone gets a vote and everyone's vote is equal. This is great in concept but there's a saying that goes "paralysis through analysis," meaning you can discuss things ad nauseum to the point where nothing ever gets done which it seemed was happening. Also, apparently someone in the drum circle had a $5000 hand-made drum stolen (who brings something like that to a demonstration anyway?) and for that and other replacement percussion instruments, they wanted $8000 from the new fund. The drummers further asserted that since they had been giving half of their tips (they were getting tips?) they were receiving from passersby to the Occupy fund, they felt like they were owed. Apparently the general assembly disagreed, rightfully so, thinking the $8000 was too much and as a result there had been a near violent confrontation between the leaders of the drum circle and those opposing the pay out. Apparently the drummers were now making income from the demonstration. Now how much money this actually turns out to be is probably a pittance but it is the idea that this is not a for profit endeavor. As a result of this monetary rejection, the drummers had meted out there own version of financial justice by now taking ALL of their tip money instead of sharing with the Occupy cause even though without the demonstration they wouldn't be making a dime. Still, even with the stipend to the percussionists resolved, what WAS going to happen with all that loot? Who decided who got to do what with it ultimately? It reminded me of George Orwell's Animal Farm, where after the animals overthrow the abusive farmer, they make a rule that says, "All animals are equal." When the evil pigs take over the farm, they make an amendment to that rule that says, "All animals are equal (but some animals are more equal than others.)
Like Cyndi Lauper once sang, “Money changes everything.”
This was unsettling news. Of course the conservatives leaving comments were having a field day with these new wrinkles, drawing Lord of the Flies parallels and doomsday prophecies for the movement and everything else. Well, I would see for myself, soon enough, I thought. I still had a speech to write.
I flipped through my notes, things I'd culled from articles, websites, comments and anywhere else I could get information that spoke to me. It was interesting how the parts that I wanted to use, the things I would want to say just jumped right out at me, like gold nuggets shining among lumps of coal. I scribbled furiously in my notepad on the three plus hour ride to NYC (and scribbling was exactly what it looked like given that I was hand-writing on a speeding, constantly shaking bus).
As I was collating all the pertinent pieces I realized there was no way in hell I was going to be able to have this memorized by that day. On the flip side of that, I also knew that I didn't want to read it from my book or anything as an alternative. I thought that would just suck all the power out of the delivery. A person standing there with a sign speaking words that are coming out of their head and their heart is much more effective than standing there and reading from a piece of paper. If you are constantly sending your focus to the piece of paper it costs you in your connection to your live audience. And in a demonstration atmosphere, any slip of concentration and you lost the fickle attentions of your potential listeners. No, I definitely wanted to have it memorized. I was a little disappointed but the speechifying would just have to wait til the next day. I wasn't even going to have a sign this first day back. I made up my mind that I was just going to use this day to participate by attendance and just observe and finish my text.
The people mover pulled into the Port Authority Bus Terminal in the middle of Times Square and I surprised myself by eschewing the expensive cab ride this time and heading instead to the crowded, filthy tunnels of the subway. (Did you hear my slight agoraphobia just kick in there?) I wandered around cluelessly for awhile inside the underground maze like a lost child in a mall looking for their Mommy. I was still a little tired and kinda out of it and I had all these political ideas running through my head and not really paying attention to what I should've been like stairwell labels and maps and shit. I came across a very skinny, black, female cop who I guess had the subway as her "beat" and I hesitated asking her where the information booth was because I had a little "Sour Diesel" vegetation deeply tucked and wrapped in my bag. Plus, not a week earlier, Princeton Professor Cornell West had been arrested for demonstrating against the policy that police had a right to search any protester without any probable cause. This could well happen to me and I could go straight to jail for possession. Or at the very least maybe this police officer would give me crappy directions on purpose. I bit the bullet and asked her.
"Where do you wanna go?" She asked me back. Damn. She was cutting out the middle man. I had only asked her where the information or ticket booth was but she knew the system well enough to give me an answer herself. This would've been great but the last thing I wanted to reveal to a police officer, just as soon as I got off the three hour bus, was, "Hey, Cops! I'm an Occupy Wall Street protester! I've come to raise a fuss in your city!"
"The World Trade Center," I said. I knew from my last trip that Zuccotti Park, where the Occupy Wall Street movement, was based is just a few blocks away from Ground Zero. I was all happy with myself that I'd circumvented revealing to her that I had any association with the movement (not that I was ashamed, I was just trying to get where I wanted to go without any hassle from "the fuzz." But she kicked me right in the proverbial balls with her next question:
"You goin' to the protest?"
Damn, she was good. Was it that obvious? Why couldn't I have just been a tourist wanting to see Ground Zero? I froze. I couldn't think fast enough on my feet to weigh whether or not I wanted to admit this to her and merely blurted out meekly,
"Uhh, yeah." There it was, out of the bag. She knew what I was (an anti-establishment protestor) and why I was there (to go practice civil disobedience) and I was sure that I was going to be spread eagle against the wall right away. There was a lifetime that I lived in the fraction of the second between my last response and from when she began to speak again. I was convinced a full cavity search was imminent.
"You need to go over there first and get your ticket. Then you can go downstairs and take the train on the left and it will take you downtown." Wow. Sometimes my neurosis really is just all in my head.
Thank God for GPS technology because I unknowingly got off the subway a stop or two before I should have and had to walk for a bit. It's funny how similar it looks when you hold your smartphone in front of you to find your way on the GPS application to what it looks like when we envision some storybook explorer pushing on through a hostile environment with an old compass.
When I finally made it to the park I almost didn't recognize it. So much had changed in the week or two since I had been here last that it didn't match what I remembered in my mind's eye. Gone was the complete perimeter of cheap food trucks that had once surrounded the park. They were still there, just not in the so-many-they-are-packed-together-too-close-to-even-slip-a-credit-card-through siege engines type way. Gone too, was any open space within the park itself which was now more akin to a human antfarm. Even the area where I had stood during my interview/debate with Victoria Jackson was now completely inaccessible because large, plastic, storage bins were now stacked there. There were now only neatly carved walkways that took you, like little streets, through the multi-colored, tarp city. The amount of people who were actually living here now had easily quadrupled since my last participation. There were a lot more tables with information pamphlets from everything to anti-corporations to "meat is murder". As I passed one of the tables, I noticed a young, skinny, short-haired, blond, white guy sitting there with a small box which he had written on it in magic marker, "Beer Donation Fund." It had a couple of coins in it.
This was distressing. It was bad enough that there were so many issues being pushed here that it really did convolute the central message of getting corporate money out of politics and gave the naysayers ammunition in their argument that the protesters "didn't have a message." Just the opposite, there were too many messages. I don't know if that's good or not. There were a lot of issues that people are legitimately pissed off about. But does it dilute the focus? And I wanted to stick that "Beer Donation Fund" box right up that idiot's ass. Wouldn't Fox News just love to get a shot of that. People just thinking they are being cute, just thinking about themselves and not thinking that they are undercutting the entire intellectual argument because they want free money to get loaded. I wanted to tell this guy, "When people see this, they may chuckle, but they aren't laughing with you, they are laughing at you." I turned a corner and what I saw next infuriated me further. There were two older, large, black women who were selling hand-made "I am the 99%" buttons for two dollars apiece and as I walked by I heard one of them laugh and actually say something about how "capitalism had been good to them." The movement now had merchandise. Good grief.
I had barely been there an hour and already I wanted to start flipping shit over like Jesus with the money-changers in the Temple in Jerusalem.
As I walked by other tables, I noticed that there was now also a kitchen area, a library, a first aid tent, and there were several pockets or cliques of what I only assumed were the Occupiers who actually lived here every night. For the most part, they were in their twenties or early thirties, wore lots of layers and basically looked like what you'd see at a large summer music festival. There was one guy who looked a bit older, he had a shaved head, grizzled visage, and had a short, stocky, fireplug physique. He was in the center of the city block sized park and the reason I noticed him was because every once in awhile he let out a very long, very load groan. Why was he doing this? I had no idea. It seemed like something to get attention to me.
I made my way through the park and noticed something else that was really different from the last time I was there. The police presence had been cut down to about an eighth of what I had seen before when the movement was just beginning. The cops who were there were mainly standing around together looking extremely bored. I guess the two weeks that had passed had proven that this protest was what it always had said that it was, non-violent and that cops just weren't necessary. This was in such a stark contrast to what I had previously experienced here police-wise, when it seemed like every cop in the NYPD was there standing shoulder to shoulder, a giant, steel-blue ribbon that encircled the entire block like a Christmas present (a ribbon that was ready to tighten at any instant). Maybe all that overtime money for the police hours got too expensive for the city to pay or maybe Mayor Bloomberg had warned them to back off in light of the police brutality examples that had occurred here and at other Occupy chapters across the country, but for whatever reason, it was a startling difference. In fact the only thing extra I saw in the way of law enforcement that day was that the large, red modern art sculpture near the Broadway end of the park was completely fenced in because one of the protesters had climbed it.
I explored the park until I ended up at the opposite end, near Liberty Street. There was a small, circle of benches where I found a place to sit. This area had been turned into a multi-religious "altar" of sorts, or at least that's how it was labeled. Someone was burning incense here and there were lots of tchotchkes of various peacenik nature like a photo of John Lennon, little blocks that spelled out "PEACE," different baubles and signs set about. It kind of reminded me of that scene in Pink Floyd's THE WALL where the central character, who has lost his mind, has destroyed his hotel room and taken all of the broken pieces and constructed a model airport with cigarettes and bottles set to look like airplanes and whatnot. It had that kind of a feel, meticulously put together out of shiny junk that would otherwise have been thrown away. I gave them an "A" for effort. The thought behind it was nice. Artistically, however, it was decidedly pedestrian.
Tons and tons of looky-loos and passersby ambled past like people at a zoo gawking at and photographing all the weird, exotic protest beasts from the safety of their side of the police barricades. As soon as I sat down it seemed, I heard a long, loud groan from behind me and to the left at the top of the steps. Fuck, it was that short, grizzled, fireplug guy again, the one from the center of the park. I got a better look at him and his worn out appearance told me that he was definitely somebody who was camping here nightly. When he had moaned this last time, me, those sitting around me and those in the crowd of passersby in front of us, all turned to see what that God awful noise was that sounded like a dying moose.
"Behollllld!!" He then bellowed (to no one in particular but loud enough for all to hear) as he made a grand sweeping gesture with his hands as if to say to the staring crowd, "Look at this whole park!" To which then, everyone pretty much just turned back around and got back to whatever the hell it was they were doing before he had gracelessly commandeered our attention. He didn't like not having that attention anymore. And as we all kind of ignored him, he got angry.
"You think you know me! You think you know what I'm about! You don't even know yourselves!" he shouted in a voice dripping with contempt, again, not to anyone in particular. Someone in the passerby crowd said something that I couldn't really hear and that (thankfully) caught his attention and he confrontationally marched up to that particular person and they began going at it. Over what, I had no idea and again, was thankful for my ignorance. His dust up wasn't going to help sway undecideds who may have come to see what was going on. For them, what was the difference between this experience and just getting into it with a crazy, homeless person? In the past couple of days, I have read where the Occupy Wall Street volunteers who were working in the kitchen were complaining because they had to work 12 hour days just to keep up with the influx of homeless people and ex-cons who were crashing the demonstration. I wonder now if this little, fireplug asshole was one of those guys referenced by the kitchen staff.
Suddenly, next to me on the steps, the drum circle began clanging away in cacophony of dissonance. There was no beat, no groove. There was just spectacle. And it was surprising how much people were paying attention to this display. The drum circle members looked like the guys who do that sort of thing everywhere from Phish concerts to Venice Beach, California, more dreads, beards, only to be broken up by the occasional oddity like the very large white guy I saw pounding away while sporting a Guy Fawkes mask. I didn't mind that they were drumming, I minded that they sucked. There wasn't even unity here in sound! It was just a bunch of people thumping away individually and brought together only because it was in collective numbers that they garnered the audience necessary to serve their own needs. I wondered if this wasn't a microcosm of the whole damn thing. I tried to tune them out as I pulled out my notes and thought I'd finish putting together my speech.
It was the lunch hour and as I was writing, I noticed that I was sitting next to a large, black man who was dressed in the fluorescent orange and tan uniform of someone who was a city employee. He had a white construction hat on and he'd wrapped a cloth around his head underneath so it kinda hung out the back and covered his neck. He also wore black wraparound sunglasses and a full beard and mustache. He saw me writing.
"Are you putting truth to paper, brother?" He asked me. Now, I didn't mind this interruption, interaction with like-minded folks and the exchange of ideas was the more enjoyable aspect of this whole experience my last time here.
"Yeah, I'm working on something about all this." I replied. "I'm Steve, man, what's your name?" I reached out my hand to shake his and he just looked at it for a second like he was debating whether or not he wanted to commit to actually shaking it.
"I'm Lord Ultron," he said and gave me a quick shake with his hand. He hadn't been debating whether or not to shake my hand at all, I was convinced he was just trying to think of what name he wanted to give me.
Uhhh, what?
"'Lord Ultron?'", I asked.
"Yeah," he said, nodding his head. Whatever. I can understand not wanting to give out too much information about yourself at this kind of event. I mean, for all he knew I could've been the undercover FBI and maybe he didn't want to lose his city job or whatever but just say that then. Or just call yourself "John" or something if you don't want to give your real name. But how I could take him seriously and have anything kind of intellectual conversation with him if right off the bat he was going to create this character/mask that I was going to have to address him as rather than finding any kind of real, common ground. We started to speak a bit but I realized quickly that this was going nowhere fast because all of a sudden he started rapping. It would have been one thing if he was free-styling about the demonstration, I could've gotten into that. But he told me his rap was from a ten year old Mos Def record. Now, I have nothing against Mos Def and truth be told some of the things I heard in this rap I liked. But this wasn't a conversation, this was one sided, this was a performance and I had suddenly become an unwilling, captive audience. I tried to politely to end the conversation or at least get back to what I was working on, but then, even though I was no longer talking to him or engaging with him, he was still rapping at me. He'd pause for a bit and then start rapping again. I gave him bemused nods, trying to be nice, but I really wanted him to take the hint that filibustering me, even in rap form, is rude after awhile and not really something I was interested in continuing. He eventually got the message and as the drum circle intensity increased and he finished his submarine sandwich, "Lord Ultron" stood up and moved nearer to the drums and started to bop his head up and down, to what beat, I have no idea, because there really wasn't any one discernable. This left a spot on the bench next to me.
I continued arranging my speech notes in the order I wanted to have them in while quietly observing the goings-ons around me. There was the young couple of an unwashed girl (presumably one of the actual Zuccotti Park campers) with long, brunette hair and a young, clean cut guy in a wayfarer sunglasses who had the most bizarre conversation about how he refused to debate anyone who didn't agree with him that he "just walked away." I thought that was an impolite tactic at best and a cowardly one at worst. They ended up leaving to get a cup of coffee. There was the woman in between the bench circle who was trying to sleep with a sleeping bag over her head. Many pictures were taken of her by people walking by.
Then, as I was finishing arranging my text, I was suddenly surrounded by about three kids in their twenties who looked like they had just stepped out of the Spin Doctors or some other kind of hippy, guitar band. These guys were suddenly kinda crowding around. It was obvious that they wanted the bench that I was sitting on and were trying to make me uncomfortable to the point of leaving. Of course, you know me, Dear Reader, that wasn't about to happen. Oh, sure, I'll scoot over and make room but share and share alike, right? Besides, I was here first. I had no choice but to overhear their conversation and it turned out that they were indeed a band and that they had come to play here at the demonstration but had not anticipated the very loud drum circle that would make it impossible to be heard. Somebody asked them if they had written any songs about the protest and they said that they hadn't. Great, here was another group of people that had nothing to do with the politics of what was going on here, they were just using the demonstration for their own gains. They decided that they were going to wait out the drum circle but actually ended up splitting after only a few minutes. I guess if it wasn't about them they weren't interested. Hmm, a definite theme was beginning to form here.
I stayed for a little while longer. I walked around the entire perimeter of the block twice just to take it all in and read all the signs. I even broke down and bought myself a gyro from one of the trucks (I couldn't bring myself to eat the food set out by Occupy Wall Street for we protesters because I felt like if I could afford my own lunch, I should do that and let somebody who can't have the free stuff). By the way, something else I learned in this trip in New York: there is no safe place to stand. There are so many people walking every which way in New York City that no matter how much out of the way you think you are standing, eventually, someone will see you and want to occupy the space you where you are standing. For example, when I got my gyro, I was nearly standing behind the food truck and between a police barricade where I didn't see a soul and thought I could eat in semi-peace, but damn, wouldn't you know it that it seemed like where before, there had been literally no one around, people seemed to see where I was and the little cubbyhole I'd discovered and were now making a direct bee-line towards me. Is it any reason I am such a confirmed misanthrope?
Anyway, that was enough for me for Day One of my return. I had finished writing my speech, I was happy with it and I had participated there that day by showing up. The next day I decided I would return in full force AND with a brand new sign!
I had a moment of terror as I left the park as I thought I had lost my wallet. That distinct terror that screams through every pore in your body when you suddenly realize that all of your identifications, money, cards, etc. were now gone, poured over me like sizzling, acid butter that sent my OCD in severe overdrive. I remembered the rumors that I'd heard about pickpockets targeting the protest and wondered if I'd been victimized. I wondered if I had dropped it when paying for my gyro that was now burning in my nauseous stomach. I rifled through all of my pockets. I was really beating myself up for having put myself in this position in the first place to have lost such a thing. What was I doing here? I'm forty-one. All this shit is for the younger generation, right? When suddenly I found my wallet in the very last pocket I had left to check.
WHEW!
I wasn't as big of an asshole as I thought. The thing about something like this is after you get through it and all is well that ends well, the rest of your day is fucking gravy after that. No matter what happens, it's okay because hey, at least I didn't lose my fucking wallet. Nothing can bother you after that, well, almost nothing.
As I was leaving the park, I found myself back up by Broadway. There was a little wall that protesters were standing on. I look up at one guy and I recognized him immediately from a comic bit that they had done on The Daily Show. This particular white guy who was probably in his late 50's had his face completely tattooed like one of those native people of New Zealand. On his head he wore some kind of flag headband and every single piece of clothing he wore seemed like it was chosen for its garishness to get attention. He was holding a sign which I won't say here what it said because I'm not trying to promote the guy but suffice it to say his entire sign was his name and vague reasons why he was such a bad ass. I'll give you an example; one of his reasons on his sign was that he personal did not recognize borders. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. It seemed like this guy had staked out the best spot in the park as far as visibility to the public went and like so many others I saw that day, he was here participating not because of any cause other than selfish, self promotion. As I saw people taking his picture my blood began to boil. I had just had enough of this crass self fellatio. I walked up to him and said loud enough for all around us to hear...
"Hey, man, why don't you put something that has to do with the cause on your sign. You're just promoting yourself!" The guy looked surprised.
"I like promoting myself. It's my favorite topic," he snarked. No shit, asshole. This really set me off.
"You undermine the entire cause with this bullshit," I snapped. A small crowd had started to gather to see what all the fuss was about, including the police, who were very intently observing but not interfering.
"Read the sign!" The guy snapped back.
"I did read it. You're just talking about yourself. This isn't about YOU! It's about the message of the movement!" I yelled back and he just looked forward stymied.
"You're exactly right. I completely agree with you," said an older, well-dressed man of color probably in his early 60's. "People see him and they take pictures and they think he represents this." This new guy was exactly right. Like I said, I had recognized the guy myself from The Daily Show. He was here for personal attention and his plan was working perfectly. A few Asian people came up to see what was going on and then aimed their cameras at Tattoo Face and I said to them, "Don't take his picture. That's what he wants. He doesn't haven anything to do with this." They just kind of looked at me. I walked away in disgust never really knowing if they had finished taking his picture or not. They probably did. I stood on the park's corner on Broadway with the police still watching me intently. I gathered my things and looked back. Tattoo Face was gone. I don't know if I had gotten through to him or the added police presence bothered him or whatever, I was just glad that I called him on his bullshit and maybe did my part to "clean up the trash" here a bit at Zuccotti Park. Now, I don't begrudge this guy his free speech, I wasn't saying he couldn't say it, but I have free speech, too. And I used my right to tell him what a jerk I thought he was for co-opting the cause for himself. He wasn't, by far, the first person I saw doing the same thing that day, and little did I know, he was also going to be far from the last as I would unfortunately encounter this trip.
I made my way out of the park clutching the final draft of my speech, determined to return the next day and bring some REAL politically-focused activism back to this circus armed only with the truth, with this, my speech:
Our democracy has been corporate raided by the super rich. They are walking away with fortunes, record profits but are they re-investing in America with these profits? No! Instead they're taking these trillions of dollars and investing in manufacturing in foreign countries. There's your so-called "job creators" right there. The only jobs they are creating are for children in sweatshops in China. Why aren't we questioning THEIR patriotism?
We are losing everything and they get bail outs? They get tax breaks? Whoever said that the 1% got to be a protected class? We paid for the bail outs. We paid for the wars and still they cut our wages, they steal our pensions and they break our unions. Now they want to take our social security. Now they want to take our Medicare. Now they want to take our Medicaid. They even want to take away benefits for our veterans. They want to repeal financial regulations that were put into place to protect us. They want to repeal environmental regulations so they can maximize profits while polluting the air that we breathe and poisoning the water that we drink.
We are sick and tired of being servants for the one percent!
We must end outsourcing our military to fight in wars that enrich the war profiteers who sleep in multi-million dollar mansions while our soldiers die.
We must end so called "dark markets" and derivatives.
We need to make transparent the actions of the Fed.
We need to make transparent banks and their holdings and lending.
We need to make transparent SuperPacs and 527 groups.
We need to make transparent lobbyists and their meeting with our political leaders.
We need to make student loans dischargeable if you have to declare bankruptcy.
Bank of America just moved 53 trillion dollars in derivatives from its holding company to its subsidiary. Its subsidiary has one trillion dollars in customer deposits that are guaranteed by the FDIC, that's you and me. That means if anyone of those new derivatives go up, we're all on the hook for another fucking trillion dollars!
Are you going to support another bail out?
They want to complain about the cost of cleaning Zuccotti Park but the cost of cleaning this park is next to nothing when compared to how much it will cost to finally clean up Wall St.
We must get corporate money out of our politics. We must break the chokehold multinationals have over our sovereign government.
We are not anarchists. We just want a government that serves we the people not we the corporations.
We just want a government that does not see the world as a power playground. We're not getting any of that right now and we're never going to get it as long as the one percent are in charge.
They have created global, economic de-stabilization for one goal: so the richest men control the world.
These are evil men!
And if you think that living as a servant to the one percent is preferable to dying for the America our Founding Fathers envisioned then you are the worst kind of traitor: complacent and apathetic.
This is our time. This is our fight. And it is a fight to the death because the alternative is unacceptable!
Fuck the super rich. Power, power, to the 99 percent! Rise up!
No comments:
Post a Comment