He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. -- Yahweh
My daughter and I got up at the crack of dawn -- before it, actually -- and went downtown to join the Wall Street occupiers in anticipation of Bloomberg's 7 AM cleanup, announced yesterday. We arrived about 5:30.
I had been quite apprehensive about it. I used to be a bold fellow about this sort of thing, but age has made me timorous; and though the NYPD were always brutes, they're a lot worse now -- too numerous, too heavily equipped with expensive lethal toys, and too eager to use them: and the human material of the force seems much more twisted, degraded, and malevolent than it was twenty years ago.
Still: somebody once said that 90% of life is just showing up, and I felt that if I didn't show up for this show-down it would be even harder than usual to look at myself in the mirror. And my daughter, who's been hanging out with the occupiers for the last few days, was also eager (though also apprehensive). So there was no choice, really.
I felt a lot better as soon as I turned the corner and saw the crowd. There were lots of people there, and more streaming in along with us. I'm no good at estimating crowd size, but the square, which is not small, was chockfull and shoulder-to-shoulder, and spilling out onto the sidewalks and streets nearby.
As always, a very young crowd, though there were a few grizzled old stagers like myself. The crowd was very revved-up and full of beans, and at the same time calm and resolute. They were clearly determined to stand their ground as best they could, but one felt none of the crazy chaotic energy of a mob.
There was a look on so many of these young faces that was really beyond praise. How my old heart went out to them. It's been a while since I've felt this pleased to be a member of our peculiar species.
Some union contingents arrived while we were there and they were lustily cheered.
There was some tension in the air as the 7 AM deadline approached. A speaker was trying to circulate information about legal aid and sort out those willing to be arrested from those not; the willing were to stay in the park, the others to retire to the sidewalks adjacent and lend moral support and bear witness. I was trying to figure out whether I was among the willing or not.
I'll never know; Bloomberg blinked. The speaker broke off and then read a communique from City Hall: the "cleanup" had been "postponed" -- if I understood correctly -- "because there are too many people in the park".
Well, that last clause, at least, was truthful -- probably the first truthful thing City Hall has said in quite some time. It was a fine moment; people cheering, hugging each other and so on.
Okay, so it wasn't Stalingrad. I expect we'll see a lot of dubious Eeyorish head-wagging about the long road ahead, about the difficulty of 'building' -- what? Whatever.
An acquaintance of mine recently reminded me of a trenchant passage in the Moor's Civil War in France, speaking of the Communards of Paris:
"They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In the full consciousness of their historic mission, and with the heroic resolve to act up to it, the working class can afford to smile at the coarse invective of the gentlemen’s gentlemen with pen and inkhorn, and at the didactic patronage of well-wishing bourgeois-doctrinaires, pouring forth their ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in the oracular tone of scientific infallibility."
Old Charlie was no dope.
Not Stalingrad, okay. But it's been a long time since the Ringwraiths of Mordor-on-Hudson even had to rein in their nightmare steeds momentarily. And I don't think anybody who was in the square today will soon forget how they stared down the iron juggernaut just by being there.
There are more of us than there are of them. It's a priceless insight, and the foundation of everything else.
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Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com