After a day of running skirmishes here in New York between the
Occupiers and the pigs, which I missed, I finally got myself down to
Zuccotti Park around four PM today, to find a rather alarmingly sparse
crowd, with a high proportion of nut cases trying to do 'mic checks'
and then drivel on about some incomprehensible personal obsession.
I wasn't *really* worried -- not as who should say worried -- but
it was a relief when 5:00 rolled around and we took off for Foley
Square.
Very different scene there. Lots of people. The number I
heard bandied about was 20,000. I'm no good at estimating crowd sizes
but this number did not seem wildly implausible. The union contingent
was sizable, including a lot of people wearing T-shirts with the word
'MARSHALL' [sic] printed on them.
There was a PA, rather than the now-characteristic Occupy
'people's mic'. It wasn't an improvement. I ended up in a spot -- near
the corner of Duane and Lafayette -- where it was hard for my old ears
to hear the speakers.
The bulk of the crowd was across Lafayette Street from my coign de
vantage, in Thomas Paine Park/Foley Square. I think most of these
folks must have marched down from Union Square.
The cops -- there were easily a thousand of them, probably more --
had done their usual 'corridor' thing, dividing up the crowd into
little Gaza Strips with metal barriers, leaving nice wide Haussmanian
military highways in between.
Lafayette Street was one such cordon sanitaire; I was penned
on the west side of it, though there were a lot of other people there
with me, spilling back into that awful bleak 'plaza' in front of the
federal building.
The crowd was initially very polite and accommodating to all this
police theater -- as all the Occupy crowds have been, in my experience.
But after an hour or so of speechifying
and standing around in the cold, you could sense a certain restiveness
beginning to bubble up. The cops had to move the barriers on the east
side of Lafayette a few feet into the street, because the crowd there
had clearly become so huge and so densely-packed that it just had to
have more room.
A roar went up on our side -- in which I joined with
the last articulate sound I was able to make today; I'll be speaking
in whispers for a week.
The sense of a point gained was heady. My
side of the street went from bubbling to boiling. After a few
indecisive moments, a lovely young woman -- about five-two, maybe 100
pounds, raven hair and dark snapping eyes -- darted under my left
armpit and kicked over one of the metal barriers. Oh how we loved
that! Another woman, this one 70 if she was a day, but clearly very
naily, shoved over another barrier. Even I managed to kick one over,
with less conviction than the ladies, but effectively nonetheless --
then of course I beat a hasty and undignified retreat as the porkers
charged.
The pigs were relatively restrained. I didn't see any clubbings
or beatings, this time. They just pushed us back and re-erected their
erections.
But it was interesting to see them up close -- four
feet, three feet away. They were scared. You could see it in their
faces. They were trying to keep that stony automaton cop look in
place, but it wasn't working. They were pale and jittery. The facial
musculature was tense and drawn, the eyes way too wide, the pupils
dilated, the eyes darting -- a world away from that slow scanning look
they teach at the 'police academy', surely one of the most hilarious
phrases ever coined, and on so many levels, too.
They're cowards really, the cops. They're trained -- and probably
predisposed, or why would they be cops in the first place? -- for
situations in which they have the overwhelming advantage. They're
not happy otherwise. Vikings they ain't.
You could read these guys' minds very easily. They
knew that if we got pissed-off enough and really decided to charge,
they would be going down under our feet. Oh, they could go down
clubs-flying, sure, and take a few of us with them. Most were not
visibly carrying pistols, though some were, and the latter group could
have taken out maybe a dozen or so of us apiece before they were
trampled into a bloody pulp on the pavement(*). But they would still
be going down, if we charged, clubs or not, pistols or not. They knew
it, and you could tell they knew it.
This evening gave me lots of material for reflection. But perhaps this
is enough for one Rambler essay.
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(*) And not a minute too soon.
-- --
Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com
"I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President, and I think I will go along with them."
-- Barack Obama
(Okay, okay, it was really Calvin Coolidge.)