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.

Thank you Occupy Wall Street

Thank you for celebrating your birthday in such a breathtaking and classy way.  It was also fiendishly clever, considering how many Verizon workers were marching with us.

The most amazing thing about walking about a quarter way over the Brooklyn Bridge and then looking back was not that we made that bat signal happen.  It was that we were extending the occupation to everyone in the city and everyone who was coming into the city from Brooklyn.  And they took up the invitation with gusto, cheering and honking from their cars.  Not at *us* but for themselves.  They got to be part of a most wonderful day.  I will never forget it.

The occupiers of Zuccotti Park are very brave people.  I suspect that they knew that they needed to sacrifice themselves.  And in that sacrifice, they brought everyone together.  We all grew up thinking that we “could say whatever we want” because “it’s a free country”.  Admit it, you used to say that in the playground to your friends turned suddenly enemies (but you made up over a shared popsicle).  But saying anything you want, whereever you want, has dire consequences these days.  It can also bring out the courage of your friends.  I sprinted from Union Square to Foley Square with thousands and thousands of students who were surrounded by police but managed to occupy the streets anyway.  Then I stood for hours with the most cheerful bunch of musicians, local 802.  It was a pleasure to spend the evening with Aurora and her friends.

But the “bat signal” will be hard to top.  Projecting the aspirations of humanity on a symbol of corporate overreach was a stroke of genius.  And there I was, on the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time in my life, cheering along with the cars down below who were amazed and delighted to be a part of it all.

This is not the beginning of the end.  This is the beginning of the beginning.  The occupation of Zuccotti Park was a transient event.  The occupation of our hearts will live as long as we do.

Subvert the dominant paradigm.

Happy Birthday to all of us occupiers no matter where we are.

By the time we got to Wall Street, we were half a million strong…

More like 1500 as of today but OccupyWallStreet has the potential to be a juggernaut.  Let’s put it this way, there are 8,175,133 people in New York City and not all of them work in the finance industry.  In fact, the vast majority of them don’t.  Most New Yorkers are cab drivers and food service workers and administrative assistants and teachers and transit workers and cops.  The whole country may not be watching yet, much less the whole world, but you can be sure that the citizens of New York City are starting to pay attention.

Today, there was a march across the Brooklyn Bridge that resulted in the corraling and arrest of about 500 700 people, including Natalie Lennard, a free lance stringer for the New York Times.  See the front page of the NYTimes for details or better yet, head on over to Correntewire and read MsExPat’s post on the march, since she was there.  She also has some amazing photos of the events on the bridge, including this one of marchers either trying to escape the nets or get a better view of what was going on (I hope she and Lambert don’t mind if I crosspost this pic.  It’s one of those photos you never forget)

Avoiding arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge, OccupyWallStreet, Oct 1, 2011 (MsExPat)

Kids, don’t try this at home.

MsExPat’s post is tantalizing.  She says there’s something going on at Zucotti Park that gives her concern but she hasn’t said what yet.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the Obama Fan Base MoveOn and the SEIU spoiling the party that DCBlogger was reporting at Corrente.   In the meantime, she met a cop after the march and had this exchange:

But as I was leaving the park in Brooklyn, an extraordinary thing happened. A policeman called to me. “How’s it going?” he asked. Nonplussed I said, well, okay, thanks. Then I asked him if the police were going to surround the park and arrest us all (this is what we had heard the “white shirts” saying on their radios). He said, “No Way! They won’t arrest you for sure.” [#33]

I asked him if he was Community Affairs, and he said that he was a Lieutenant (a white shirt officer), but had been pressed into service as a CA cop for the day. Then he let loose and let it all come out. He sympathised with the marchers. He had kids, he was worried about their education. About genetically modified food. About the way America was going.

I listened to him, half incredulous, half thrilled. Almost as thrilled as I was, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, hearing the car horns and the cheers of passing motorists–all of them African American. Some hung out of the window, raised fists, cheered.

OccupyWallStreet may not know what the heck it is doing (or does it?) but I think New York City’s police force better tread very carefully here.  It wouldn’t take much provocation to get millions into the street.  After all, they didn’t have to walk anywhere.  They’re already there and they are watching.  And it’s going to be bloody hard to arrest and detain 8 million people on Riker’s Island.

Kudos to Corrente for covering OccupyWallStreet.  Outstanding job, guys.

Update: The Guardian is covering the protest on its frontpage tonight.  So is Al Jazeera.  So, that makes if official.  OccupyWallStreet is part of the Arab Spring.  😉