Occupy My iPhone N17

This is what N17 looked like from my iPhone’s POV.  She can’t shoot straight and she’s blurry but I think she captured the spirit.

Some notes on the subject matter:

First, my pictures show people.  Those people could be your neighbors.  If some of them are dressed kind of funny, that’s not because they’re hippies.  That’s just New York City.  Dressing funny is the default.  Perhaps this is a source of confusion to those of you who don’t live in the NYC metropolitan area but there you go.  In the City, you either wear black or you make a statement.

Secondly, not everyone who marched from Union Square to Foley Square was a student.  About half of the crowd was over thirty, some of them were older than me.  And what I didn’t have time or battery life to capture were all of the retail workers and manicurists and waiters who stood outside on the sidewalk and cheered us on.  Nor did I get a shot of all of the cars and taxis and buses we had gridlocked for the length of the march who were beeping and honking.  The taxis had a good take that evening.  Nor can you hear the shouting and chanting from the apartments above us.  Some of them had signs in their windows.  The voices of all those marchers and apartment dwellers and onlookers echoed and thundered all the way down the street.

Thirdly, not everyone in Foley Square was a union member.  The union members were carrying signs.  But there were families with kids in strollers there too.  Given how the day started with so much violence, they were very committed to be out there in that cold for hours with their kids.  I saw one man giving his toddler his little battery operated candle to hold during the march.  It was really sweet.

Finally, once the projection went up on the Verizon building and drivers could see it from the Brooklyn Bridge, the whole city was occupied.

Don’t let anyone tell you it was only 32,000 people.  It was millions.  And Wall Street knows it.