"Mike check!" The crowd shouted back.
The shouting banter continued back and forth as the organizer shouted and the protesters repeated verbatim:
"Mike check!
"Mike check!"
"If you want. To go to the bridge. There is a group. Forming here. You will likely. Get arrested. We have legal. Representation. We will block. The groups of marchers. In the buses. Who have already. Been arrested. Be kind. And be careful."
I watched as a group of protesters formed a line on the other side of the control center and followed one of the organizers to march to the Brooklyn Bridge where the protesters were led out of the park to peacefully form a blockade to the buses full of the groups of protesters who had been arrested while walking peacefully over the bridge. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/02/us-wallstreet-protests-idUSTRE7900BL20111002. They shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and managed to keep it shut for hours and hours.
Turns out I arrived at the party a little late. And in fact, on the way to the protest, which is in a part of Manhattan I rarely visit, I got lost, of course, and wandered around in circles despite the fact that I set up the navigation app on my phone. After about 20 minutes of fruitless searching, I decided to ask a New York police officer if he could help me out.
Me: Excuse me, officer, could you please direct me to Zuccotti Park?
Officer Friendly: What do you wanna go there for?
Me: Um, to check things out.
Officer: There's nothing down there to see. They got some flowers in there.
Me: Nothing to check out? What do you mean?
Officer: They cleared out the park. Nobody's down there.
Me: What do you mean they cleared out the park?
Officer: They all got arrested.
Me: All of them?
Officer: You can go down there if you want, but I'm telling you, nothing's going on.
He did give me directions to the park, but they were wrong, and whether that was purposeful or not I will not spend too much time pondering. I finally found the park and was heartened to see a lot of people there. Young, old, babies, kids, handicapped, crazies, trannies, anarchists, hippies, and me.
"Mike check! NYPD. Received a donation. From JP Morgan. Of $4.6 million. Just today. To keep us. From protesting. And to arrest us. Jamie Dimon. Wrote the check. Call. The mayor's office."
Jamie Dimon. From Wikepedia: As JPMorgan Chase's Chairman, President & CEO, Dimon oversaw the transfer of $25 billion in bailout funds from the US Treasury Department to JPMorgan Chase on October 28, 2008 via the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).[16] This was the fifth largest amount transferred under Section A of TARP[17] to help troubled assets related to residential mortgages.
JPMorgan Chase advertised in February 2009 that they would be using their capital base monetary strength to acquire new businesses,[18] primarily due to the funds provided by TARP and in direct violation of TARP’s main intent; to help troubled assets related to residential mortgages and all obligations as spelled out in TARP.
Of the US's nine largest banks, JPMorgan Chase was arguably the second healthiest bank, and did not need to take TARP funds. In order to encourage smaller banks with troubled assets to accept this money, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson allegedly coerced the CEOs of the nine largest banks to accept TARP money under short notice.[20] JPMorgan Chase was also the first of the largest banks to repay the TARP money.
So apparently, Dimon has absolutely no trouble taking taxpayer money but does have trouble when people peacefully protest his and his colleagues' positively reprehensible behavior. See, capitalism and democracy are what made Dimon rich. They are what made the average Wall Street bankers salary of $88,000 a year possible. You know what bankers do? They go to lunches, sit around enormous conference tables and have lunches that cost over $600 for sandwiches and fruit plates. They talk to each other. They ruminate about poetry and talk about Willy Loman and China and speculate about gold and ETFs. But they don't actually DO anything. They complain loudly and openly about how they can't get anyone to come up and do some painting because those cursed union rules won't allow a worker who is not a painter to paint. They bemoan that their gilded offices aren't clean enough. They carp about regulation. They read charts. They steal ideas from each other.
The ground was littered with signs all in the midst of creation, some saying "report your boss to the IRS", "Wall Street is oozing corruption," "How about a student loan bailout," and a poster with the hourly salaries of the Bank of America CEO ($970) and the CEO of AT&T ($13,670) among others. This is called Occupy Wall Street and it is called that for a reason. It is like a Hooverville (appropriate, in my estimation); people are living there. Their belongings were covered with clear plastic or tarps, and you could see sleeping bags, food, pillows, blankets, chairs, books. And it had all the markings of not only a peaceful protest but also a Grateful Dead show, minus the VW vans and people selling dancing bears.
There was joy there! So much joy! Edward Abbey, the great curmudgeon and defender of the American west and who, in my opinion, has only had his opinions proven posthumously, said this in his work of beauty, Desert Solitaire: "Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless."
Wall Street, you lack courage. Show me a joyful banker.
As I was taking the train home, I was reading from Desert Solitaire (1968) and found these words also fitting:
"Suppose you were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people - the following preparations would be essential:
1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance.
2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen, and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment.
3. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals (The Repubs trying to close down Planned Parenthoods and end abortions. Sound familiar?).
4. Divert attention from deep conflicts within the society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test of loyalty.
5. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns.
6. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts, and improve the national parks into national parking lots.
Abbey goes on to say that it feels like a feeble and helpless protest. But I disagree. It's not. And if you say you can't change anything you're just lazy. And a pussy. There are things we can do EVERY DAY to make this world a better place. I have a long list of things that I try to do every day that I won't bore you with and some days I am definitely better than others, but I TRY. That's the point. I try. And today I took my butt down to Liberty and Broad to Zuccotti Park where I stood with other people who are also TRYING to do something about this crazy, contracting earth. We listened to drum circles and when they sky opened up and dropped thick, heavy rain, we danced. The drummers continued their rhythmic, almost primal pounding and I danced until I was soaked and then I danced more.
It's my first amendment right, see, to dance in a park to a drum circle. And it's also my first amendment right, Officer Friendly, to peaceably assemble with fellow citizens. And I'll go back to that park and hopefully dance some more.
So don't give up on anything, whether this is your kind of battle or not. Fight for what you believe in and never think for one moment that nothing changes. Because it does. Constantly.
1 comment:
Bravo.
Post a Comment