Scenes from an Occupation

***** latest from OccupyWallStreet at OccupyWallSt.org: A little after 9:00pm tonight, police moved in and used billy clubs and pepper spray on protestors.  Several members of the media team were arrested.  Go to OccupyWallSt.org and their LiveStream for videos of the incident as well as the aftermath in the paddy wagon.  I was in the park until about 7:45 pm tonight.  Throughout the day and into the evening, the interactions I witnessed between the protestors and police were overwhelmingly positive.  Each side treated the other with mutual respect and protestors exercised control over the rowdier and angrier protestors, keeping everyone cool, calm and collected.  OTOH, it must have been a long day for the NYPD.  The march went on for hours into the evening and by the time we got back to Zuccotti Park, it was pretty clear that a lot of protestors had no intention of melting into the night and going home.  They’re here to stay.  If you drive them away, they’ll just come back.  It’s hard to tell from the OccupyWallSt videos what exactly sparked the crackdown.  But I doubt that the media team had done anything to provoke the kind of action they were subject to.  None of the organizers or media team members looked like loaded springs looking for trouble.  My best guess is that the NYPD was given the go ahead to clear the park tonight and getting the media team out of the way was the first step.  Turns out that some protestors were trying to cross the barrier that kept them out of Wall Street, which makes you wonder why the police are trying to keep the protestors off of Wall Street.  Are they also barricading the bankers out of the rest of Manhattan?  I mean, if we’re trying to keep dangerous people from getting out of control, we should build a cage around Wall Street and knock *their* bandwidth back to dial up speed.  See how they like it.  Anyway, the crackdown didn’t help at all.  There are plenty of people with cell phones who will race to the nearest Starbucks to upload to youtube.

Keep an eye on this.

Onto some of my pics. Will load as I import them.  I won’t write a whole bunch because I’m flagged but here’s the good stuff:

This is pre-march footage from Zuccotti Park.  The park was packed.  It’s not a big park.  It’s about a block wide and half a block long (if that makes sense).  I was standing under the big orange tripod and got a good shot of the crowd.  As you will note, everyone there is young but some of them were on the older end of the young spectrum.

The crowd at Foley Square

Laura Flanders and her killer boots

Public Brooms

The spread. Smelled deiicious. Looked too healthy

My favorite sign

OccupyWallStreet: Live Blog

I’m in zuccotti park. I have my lab coat AND goggles on. There is a guy with a neon orange sign sitting behind me. I hate to break it to him that I used to work for one of those corporations he despises. That’s one of the problems with a movement like this. People are so angry they tend to lash out indiscriminately and offend the people who should be their allies.
Oh well, the weather is nice. I’m sitting next to a bunch of chrysanthemums. The park is surprisingly clean when you consider how many people have been living here. It smells better than the subway.
Will try to get a pic of me in my attire for dandy tiger.

This occupation has been somewhat mischaracterized as being composed of “young people”. Well, some of us never grew up but I see a mix of ages here. It is not all students.

Still fiddling with sending myself photos. Stand by…

Ok, clearly, there is going to be a problem sending photos to myself to post up here. Maybe the info desk knows what the deal is with bandwidth.

Lunch break.

OMG, something smells delicious. I’m stuffed from the lunch I brought but I definitely have to check out that smell.

1:55 pm
The good news: I am able to up lead pics to my twitter account. Check that out if you want to see what’s going on.
The bad news: I charged this iPad to 100% before I left home but inexplicably, I have only 47% battery left. Too weird. I didn’t use it in the car, whAt with me driving and all, and I wasnt playing angry birds on the train so this is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Direct action training in 30 seconds…

2:15 pm
I wish people would stop crowding the bandwidth 😦
So, there’s some kind of conversation circle in front of me. the participants appear to be cleansing the circle with burning sage. Yep, it’s sage. The first time it formed, there were 15 participants, only 3 female. It reminded me of that scene from life of Brian where the Judean people’s front met at the colliseum to talk and there was only Judith from the XX contingent. And Loretta.

This place is crawling with photographers and cameras but it’s hard to tell if any of them are MSM or if it is a bit like YearlyKos meetings where the participants video each other blogging each other.

There is a woman handing out little signs that say “I owe SallieMae (fill in the blank)”.
The seniors are behind me singing “All we are saying is, give peace a chance”.

Ah, the conversation circle has turned into the “meditation for peace group” consisting mostly of younger people, although with all of the ruckus from the seniors demanding that we give peace a chance, it’s hard to see how they can concentrate on anything. What are the chances that there will be a confrontation between the two groups? I want to see guitars and incense pots flying.

Whooping and high fiving from the seniors. Meditators are keeping their composure. Um, does this meditation for peace thing actually work?

New chorus of “Take a load off, Annie”. Jeez, that even predates my generation.

OccupyWallStreet: RD goes to a protest march

Today’s the big one.  Check out the details of the march from Foley Square to the Financial district here:

OccupyWallSt.org

I’m going as a passive pedestrian, you know, just checkin’ things out, minding my own business, in my labcoat and goggles.  I mean, I don’t speak for the hundreds of thousands of R&D professionals who have been affected by the crazy machinations of the bonus class or anything.  That’s really the job of our professional organizations.  Oh, wait!  We don’t really have any, or, should I say, we don’t have any who are willing to actually stick up for us.

{{sigh}}

Anyways, I’m taking the iPad, which means I will be able to post live on 3G.  But don’t count on perfectly edited posts because the keyboard and WordPress app don’t really lend themselves to that kind of thing.  I’ll try to take pics and upload them too.

Ok, gotta go catch a train.  Talk to you from Gotham…