There's something happening here: A day at Occupy Wall Street
There's something happening here: A day at Occupy Wall Street
Tomorrow's news today: My Daily News report from Occupy Wall Street:
NEW YORK -- It was barely more than two years ago that a boyfriend told Joanne Stocker of Exton there was more to learn about on Twitter than what the baseball beat writers were saying about her beloved Phillies.
Now 24, Stocker started following the thwarted uprising in Iran through social media and became an activist for women’s rights there – the start of an odyssey in activism that has landed here, in the hard-steel shadows of Wall Street.
Pale and drained with the flu after a couple of nights in a rain-soaked sleeping bag under the stars and the skyscrapers framing Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, the Chester County native – on Twitter as @SabzBrach – has become a leading Internet voice of the Occupy Wall Street protest. The festive camp-out against corporate greed and corruption that started almost furtively through the Web some 17 days ago has slowly caught the attention of the nation’s media and re-energized liberals angered by the Tea Party but disappointed in President Obama.
“I’m so proud of my generation,” said Stocker, who plans to depart later this week to help launch a Washington, D.C., offshoot called Occupy K Street, targeting the influence of big-money lobbyists. Until now, she added later, “we’ve just been sitting around and watching ‘American Idol.”
There’s something happening here, in a tree-lined swatch of concrete that lies exactly at the short midway point between the two disaster zones that have defined America’s deeply troubled 21st Century, the Ground Zero site of the 2001 terror attacks and the New York Stock Exchange that crashed and burned under attack from bankster shenanigans seven years later.
What it is, to continue the Buffalo Springfield paraphrase, ain’t exactly clear. The ebbing and flowing tide of protestors who occupy the privately owned ground – they call it Liberty Park – by night and who march through Manhattan by day, have come here without specific demands, just a sense of outrage and their belief that too much power is concentrated among millionaires and billionaires who bought off both political parties with unlimited campaign cash.
Here are the “facts” about Occupy Wall Street: 1) It started this summer with a vague suggestion in a Canadian left-wing magazine called AdBusters, was endorsed by the shadowy band of hackers named Anonymous and gained steam on Twitter and Facebook, despite a lack of leadership 2) it consists of a couple hundred permanent occupants, swelled by day trippers to as many as 2,000 or more on weekends, and 3) attention and support has soared because of heavy-handed tactics by the New York Police Department, including the videotaped pepper-spraying of women already in custody and 700 arrests Saturday on the Brooklyn Bridge.
But “facts” can’t begin to explain what is, for all intents and purposes, the greatest American “be-in” since the last notes of Jefferson Airplane’s “morning maniac music” echoed across Max Yasgur’s farm outside Woodstock. In Zuccotti Park, grey-bearded Jerry Garcia look-alikes flash acoustic guitars just like switchblades, serenading 20-something with punk crimson hair while the rhythms of a non-stop drumline wash over a large yoga circle in the corner of the park. The political demands come later, and slowly, from the “general assemblies” held later at night.
The occupation itself is the message for now, a riff on Obama’s famous 2008 pronouncement that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” They are a mosh pit of college students facing a jobless job market and a mountain of debt, disgruntled Iraq war vets, one-time single-issue advocates for gay rights or legalizing pot now looking at the bigger picture, and retirees who protested Vietnam in 1968 and can’t fathom why we’re still in Afghanistan in 2011.
“I’m here for as long as it takes for this revolution to take off,” declared 47-year-old Lizzi Dierken, one of the occupiers. One month ago, she was 3,000 miles away in San Francisco, driving a taxi, selling specialty baked goods and advocating for gay rights, when she read about the protests on Facebook – and something clicked. Ten days ago, she was arrested by the NYPD, and yesterday, she helped lead a “zombie march” over to Wall Street – attired in an oversized grey pinstriped suit, her face painted ghostly white and splattered in mock blood. Getting arrested, she said, “only solidified our commitment to fight injustice.”
Why is this happening now, and why does it feel different than the sporadic and small left-wing outbursts against global trade or the Iraq War? The Tea Party, while potent, was largely fueled by anger that Obama won in 2008. The movement spawned by Occupy Wall Street, with more than 100 offshoots in Philadelphia and other cities, is instead fueled by Americans who largely had hope in an Obama presidency, only to see Wall Street more powerful than ever and the gulf between the rich and poor grow wider since January 2009.
They’ve given up on both parties and taken to the streets, just like the young protestors they watched triumph in Tahrir Square at the height of the Arab Spring. And increasingly the established voices on the left – union leaders, bloggers, and some politicians like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders – who initially scoffed at the young and unfocused protestors are now signing on. Many liberals now think Occupy Wall Street is the only game on town.
Yesterday afternoon, a passerby in an exquisitely tailored blue pinstriped suit turned to his well-attired acquaintance and muttered something about the protest winding down “in the winter when it starts getting cold.” But the rest of his words were drowned out by the pounding beat of Zuccotti Park, a political drum solo with no end in sight for now.
We dont need a Jerry Garcia wannabe.
Ooo, freedom
Ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home
To find my own way home
I'm gonna find my own way home
http://www.youtube.com/user/hatfieldpanic— tr88- At least Woodstock had some decent music. Maybe these occupation parties could be sponsored by Sears Craftsman brand...where else can one see so many tools in one spot?— jimmymack
- Fascinating....47 comments since last night? Looks like the wankers were waiting all day for your report, lol. Imagine the stench in their basements. Big weekend coming up, and I plan to be in DC with the kids. I'll report on Tuesday, Will.— montani semper liberi
- I would avoid the sandwiches. — tr88
- "Hopefully Joanne Stocker gets pneumonia next." . . . . . Envy hurts, don't it?— montani semper liberi
- This is what fills the vacuum when there are no wars for the left to protest.— tr88
- "But “facts” can’t begin to explain what is, for all intents and purposes, the greatest American “be-in” since the last notes of Jefferson Airplane’s “morning maniac music” echoed across Max Yasgur’s farm outside Woodstock."
It may grow so large - but - weren't the demonstrations in Wisconsin larger by far? Didn't the March for Women's Lives in 2004 draw well over a million to DC being the largest demo including the concert that you choose as the be and end all? The Immigration Rights Rally's in 2006?
Making this seem like it's an outlier makes it seem like these concerns and actions don't form a very real and very large part of our history and the values of mainstream America.
Always have - presenting them as any different may serve some sentimental purpose for you over your youth - but it also serves a purpose in portraying these concerns as outside the mainstream.
— Poit - Bill Gates,Icahn,Madoff,Buffet ,Milken ......all lefties.Did you know the man of the people Jon Corzine took in a cool 90 million his last year at Goldman Sach!These people are protesting their own.Long live the TP!!!!!!— robwood
- Those lefties in the streets DON'T know that. They have been "educated" in a different template. The financial industry is being consolidated under Progressives. That is not good for free markets or ordinary Americans. — Falls Ed
- I wonder of those kids protesting know what Eric Holder knew and when he knew it?— tr88
- I love how the media writes about these people as if there normal, everyday Americans just like you. They are not, they are the left's grievance brigades. They are professional activists who have backing from powerful interests on the left, such as labor unions. They are not me, and not like anyone I know or work with. I guess the last time I was in the same room with people like this was college. I remember voicing to the class my opinion on labor unions, and a woman became so enraged with me that the professor had to throw her out of class. I loved every minute of it.— jmc
Comment removed.- ===}}} I laugh at these delusional dolts just barely removed from collecting an allowance from their parents, telling the rest of the world how to live. Go pay a mortgage and taxes for a while, and get back to us honey. {{{===
Indeed - just think how much better we'd all be if the civil rights protest of the 60's hadn't taken place. After all, how many of those civil rights protesters had mortgages?— Talking point sleuth - ===}}} What a joke...these children, like every other generation, are going to change the world they know nothing about. {{{===
Good point. What did the civil rights protesters of the sixties know about eating at an integrated lunch counter? What did they know about riding in the front of a bus?— Talking point sleuth - ===}}} What a joke...these children... {{{===
No doubt. These "children" are old enough to die in wars, under the idea that they are protecting our freedoms. But old enough to voice their displeasure with the current political outcomes? Certainly not!— Talking point sleuth
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