There wasn't as large a crowd as I had expected. People were not parading in the streets and obstructing traffic because that would lead to chaos and rampant police brutality as I have witnessed on video concerning the Union Square Troy Davis street march last weekend. I felt pain, anger, outrage and all sorts of unwell emotions when I watched the videos on Youtube. These captured moments of injustice ("You're NY's finest, you're supposed to protect us, not beat us up!"; "Whose side are you on?!") and police brutality shook my heart and stirred incredible amounts of hatred, dislike, and distrust in the NYPD. The acrostic CPR no longer represent courtesy, professionalism, and respect. "Instead of this mantra ... perhaps they should first focus on 'Competence, Potency and Relevance?'” (Trevor Sumner) The white shirt lieutenants are the big dicks: they shoved idling men and women back onto the streets and they ordered their worm officers to manhandle women and drag them across the street. When the NYPD made their first sweep in Union Square, plenty of random men and women were pummeled to the ground and arrested. They were brutally assaulted and their bodies were used to sweep the ground: flesh and bone met concrete and there was substantial bloodletting when noses dived into gravel. One lieutenant took matters into his own hands and decided to shut three women up by macing them. These videos are difficult to watch because they are nightmares come true. Deep down inside of me, I try my best not to call upon Kanye West's audacious and provocative outcry "Fuck the poh-lice." I try to deny the fact that these events have taken place on the streets that I walk on. I cannot picture police officers violating my fellow New Yorkers and college students simply because their emotions ran high.
Liberty Plaza was packed with protestors. They were armed and dressed with handmade signs and their lunches consisted of granola bars, burritos, and healthy fruit. There were hippie-looking protestors (I actively made an assumption and stereotyped them based on their appearance and lotus styled position) meditating in silence. I moved in for a closer look. I had no idea what they were doing until half an hour later when they joined in a unified voice and rose their feet in social protest. Their signs were erected and they started banging on their drums. The incessant sounds of social unrest titillated my ears. Somewhere in my heart I felt like I belonged. My passive lifestyle and going-with-the-status-quo was to be abandoned. There were plenty of onlookers who wandered off the streets. Their dazed looks and curious faces scanned the protestors' handmade signs and took pictures of their song-and-dance.
As I walked further into the rectangular park, there were makeshift tents erected and cots, sleeping bags resting on their sides. I cannot imagine partaking in the cause and having to sleep in lice-ridden blankets with my back against pavement. There was a stretch of food on a table which reminded me of Kraft Service (film shoots). Two delicate farmer's market type persons were generously restocking bread and refilling the table with nutrition. There was a lack of Asian protestors---apparently everyone that was there was White and hippie-looking. Their clothing was disheveled and the parts of the park smelled of sweat. This was what happened when people stay overnight in the park. There were three Chinese women who circled the protestors. I can tell that they were not part of the protest. They were outsiders like myself, looking in. Their cameras strapped to their necks and inquisitive eyes told an outsider's tale of cautious footwork around the perimeters of the park. I was stopped by a socialist who handed me a piece of literature. He told me that freedom as the Constitution addressed has long been denied. The police want protestors to have proper permits and to fence persons in with barricades. This would only decrease the potency of the protests, segregating power and number into one section of the street. He said that this only makes people sheep by fencing them in. This denies their power by making the excuse that traffic cannot be obstructed. By citing this excuse, they are only implying that the rest of NYC must function and there are other people who do not support your cause; that is why they are driving home, so you must clear the road so they can get home to their wife and kids.
There was a stretch of handmade signs that littered a good portion of the park. These cardboard signs were crudely designed and cut out. Pizza boxes and FedEx boxes were sacrificed to etch the message: Wall Street consists of a bunch of corrupt crooks who keep the poor in the gutter and keep making 6 figures salaries. Some signs satirized freedom and democracy. Others put a spin on socialist tendencies: "Jesus was a Marxist." One sign was extremely hilarious: "If you're out of work and hungry, eat a hedgefund manager." A few other signs were noteworthy: "When have their portraits [presidents' faces on bills] become more important than their ideas?"
I was hesitant with allowing myself to open up to this protest space. Somewhere along the way after meeting with Jesse, I expanded my mind just a little bit and I saw the protestors with a lot more understanding than when I first set foot into their space. Theirs is a sacred space and a space that breeds revolution and reformulation of societal structure aka the toppling and eradication of capitalism. I left the park with a continued sense of being an outsider, but I expanded my horizon by reading the literature I received. I considered the propaganda that littered the park. I gave socialism and communist a thought, and I tried to refrain from thinking about the insidiously portrayed Mao Ze Dong and Karl Marx. Perhaps they have been ill-portrayed and vilified because their ideas were too strong and unaligned with making cold hard cash. The white men (so-called historians [C. Wright Mill's The Power Elite]) who wrote the textbooks must have wanted students to love capitalism and America while denigrating other social systems because they fear that a fear or destruction of capitalism will occur).
The message is loud and clear with Occupy Wall Street. These are courageous and determined protestors who pioneer the social unrest in order to attain true democracy. Their goals are to expose the obvious crookery on Wall Street and to eradicate the system of capitalism, and fully institute socialism. They want free institutions of learning and free healthcare for all. They demand a toppling of Wall Street and redistribution of wealth from the hands of the 1% rich who continue their thief-like behavior in the dark. But now no more because the wage disparities and wage differences evidence the social equality and eye-opening class differences (disappearance of the middle class). I believe that they fight is viewed in various lights, some not the best or the most appropriate. There are individuals who are not respectful to the cause because they do not know the protestors' full story and plan of attack. These individuals sneer at the protestors because they have no courage or willpower to change the world, or they do not feel as if the world should be changed at all. Or they may feel that their protests will be in vain. All these reasons are bad reasons to hate on the protestors. Please be respectful to their mission. Just because they are doing something while you are not doing anything does not mean you can frown upon their noise and agenda. You can not support them because you believe that they are unsuccessful, but at least they are trying while you are sitting ducks being complacent with the status quo. If you make complaints but do nothing about it, you are part of the problem, not the solution. Action versus inaction. You must come down to Liberty Plaza and absorb the energy, the determination, and the stamina these protestors embody. They are hell-bent on toppling the class difference and social structure that we have long and passively accepted. It's time for a change: a change that Obama failed to promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment