Joining the 99 per cent: On the trail of the Zuccotti people

Up from the subway in Greenwich Village, I found Washington Square ablaze with flags and banners and placards and a 1,000-strong milling mob who had shifted miles uptown from Zuccotti Park on this crisp sunny Saturday morning, the 30th day of street demos.

In the shade of the triumphal arch, they were gathered around the circular fountain – the scene of weekend hootenannies back in the 1960s. These kids were different from us, though. They were clean-shaven and short-haired and sober. Many were students from the surrounding New York University campus. Generously sprinkled among the young white faces were Chinese and Indians who ardently espoused leftist bromides among themselves and for the benefit of TV cameras. A contingent of young Filipinas in red headbands and sashes stirred up a merry ruckus.

Signs read: “Money is an Illusion”; “Bankers are Sharks”; “Occupy Wall Street, Not Afghanistan”; “Wall Street = War Street”; “Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Blood”; “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea”; “You Have the Right to be Happy”.

In one corner was a familiar sight: a row of leaders facing a crowd of followers. But the scene was eerily silent. There were no microphones. Speeches were in the form of call and response. A leader made a statement: “We are occupying cities and states and countries around the globe!” And the front ranks of the crowd repeated the sentence, then the middle and the rear ranks. “Because we are united together, now is the time to occupy everywhere!”

No clapping. People showed approval by holding up their hands and wiggling their fingers. It was like a demonstration of the deaf and dumb. Behind the leaders, three American flags snapped in the wind, together with three blue banners reading, “Generation of Revolution: Debt is Slavery”.

Speakers were called up from the crowd. One Hispanic kid said: “I’m disgusted to see these American flags flying. They are symbols of American imperialistic oppression.”

A middle-aged white guy said, “It’s our flag. We’re not going to give it up. We should be proud of it.”

A black guy said, “This flag is why I’m out here. It’s been dirtied by people who should be put in jail. But we can rinse that flag clean!”

A girl asked for volunteers to form up to the left of the arch to march on Times Square. Others were directed to the local Citibank. Raiding parties were returning to the park, banging drums and chanting slogans: “All day, all night, occupy Wall Street!” “We are the ninety-nine per cent!” 

A papier mache Stature of Liberty and a Spiderman balloon bobbed above the crowd. Handing out free copies of the Occupied Wall Street Journal was a kid in a dashiki, Ho Chi Minh sandals and an unwashed hairdo in clumps of matted cigars. 

Finally, a hippie!

I strolled a couple of miles down Broadway to Zuccotti Park. In the tree-shaded city block, a skeleton crew guarded tarps and green plastic boxes stuffed with sleeping bags and blankets. Crowds of tourists from the nearby Ground Zero site ambled amid the aisles taking in the banks of peace flags, guitar strummers and Hari Krishna drummers. A long table offered free cookies, popcorn, nuts and apples. There were free massages and a medical tent.

A camp sanitation department displayed mops and buckets and detergent bottles. The night before, the city had threatened to clear the park for “power cleansing” but the private park owners had backed down and the protesters had done their own clean-up. Parked to one side were vans selling coffee, hot dogs and halal food. The camp had everything but a Porta Potty. Why not?

I took the D train up to Times Square. In the fading light of day, both sides of Seventh Avenue were packed by a roaring, heaving, placard-waving mob.

“All day, all night, occupy Wall Street!”

They spilled another 20 feet out into the roadway, hemmed in by police manning metal railings that squeezed the avenue down to two lanes of traffic. The air throbbed with mad drums and hoarse chanting. I pushed my way through smiling faces from 43rd Street to 44th, 45th, 46 th…. The crowd had grown to 10,000. Ordinary bystanders had joined in happily, holding up impromptu pizza box placards.

The police had driven a wedge between Broadway and 47th Street, where kids on the traffic island had clambered atop the stature of George M Cohan.

“Show me what democracy looks like!” one side of protesters shouted.

“This is what democracy looks like!” shouted the other side.

Down the narrow aisle of Seventh Avenue, policemen marched a fat kid arrested for trying to push through the barriers, and then a bearded old guy, while the crowd screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Everyone hoisted aloft their camera-phones.

“Show me what a police state looks like!”

“This is what a police state looks like!”

A flying squad of a hundred cops marched down the avenue to reinforce the barrier line. From their belts dangled white plastic handcuffs. Now was the time for violence as the war drums and chanting reached a fever pitch, but nothing happened. 

On their way back downtown, 70 protesters were arrested but no one was injured. Just another day in New York. And Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Denver, Seattle … and Rome, London, Berlin, Sydney, Tokyo. 

This is what democracy looks like.

 

James Eckardt is a freelance journalist and author and a former Nation staffer.