[lbo-talk] OWS: Thursday afternoon update, from the scene

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
Thu Nov 17 20:04:35 PST 2011


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.

------------------

(*) 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.)



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