Thank You, Anarchy. Nathan Schneider
woman in the food cart on the corner that the place had been renamed “Liberty,” she grinned.
I stood by while Lucas Vazquez called Brookfield on his cell phone. There were rumors that maybe the company had decided to allow the encampment to remain there. He asked if that was true.
“So,” Lucas said, after hanging up, “he said they have not allowed us to sleep over. And he said that we’d be arrested for trespassing if we sleep over—his words.”
Lucas was a high school senior from Long Island, which was hard to believe, except for the fact that he’d have to leave at night to catch the Long Island Rail Road for home. He’d already helped organize the May 12 march on Wall Street and Bloombergville, and then was part of the planning GAs for this. He was serious and smart, and game for anything—but stuck in educational servitude.
“I’d rather come here than school, but I wanna graduate,” he said.
Across the park, the actress-turned-political-candidate Rosanne Barr was giving a speech through a megaphone demanding “the blessed and holy guillotine” for “guilty leaders” and “priests.” The marchers returned, victorious. The Food Committee’s peanut butter sandwiches were there to greet them.
As the sun set, just after seven o’clock, a facilitator from the planning meetings opened the evening session of the General Assembly. “You know what general assemblies are,” he cried. “You’ve seen it in Tunisia. You’ve seen it in Egypt. You’ve seen it in Spain. And now you see it on Wall Street!”
The police presence was growing, with horses and plastic cuffs. This was foremost on people’s minds, but it didn’t stop a few from taking the opportunity of assembly to grandstand about whatever. A woman who’d called for a general strike earlier did so again, and another demanded the end of corporate personhood. “Buy physical silver!” someone advised—not the only one to do so that day. Across the plaza, a drum circle nearly drowned out their voices anyway.
The real substance of the discussion was simply about what to do. Some felt that they’d come to occupy Wall Street, and they wouldn’t be satisfied except there. But Wall Street was completely barricaded off and surrounded by police. “I propose that we march to Wall Street and sleep on the people’s sidewalk,” said Lucas. A man in a suit and tie volunteered to “repair to Wall Street for repose,” set up a tent, and see what would happen. It was a tough call.
“I love this space,” another voice said. “It’s very comfortable. But revolution is not about comfort!”
Finally, the assembly arrived at the decision to stay in Liberty Square indefinitely and to take good care of it. People split up into working and thematic groups to begin the business of doing so. One of the most tempting of these to join, given the circumstances, was the meditation and massage circle; already, the crowd had thinned from a couple thousand to a couple hundred, and it was thinning more, while the number of police grew. Some were saying that there had been an undercover cop in the Media Committee, and theories were circulating about others. A group returned with dumpster-dived cardboard for sleeping.
Looking around at who was there, I noticed also who was not. Nobody from Adbusters; Micah White, in Berkeley, had taken a vow against flying on planes for the year, and Kalle Lasn had an elderly mother-in-law to attend to in Canada. Georgia Sagri wasn’t there either; “I wasn’t and am still not interested in the metaphorics of the occupation,” she would later tell me. Alexa O’Brien was “running the back end” for this and actions around the country that day. She brought supplies but would hardly be seen on the plaza thereafter.
I walked along the sidewalk to see what the police were doing. They seemed ready to move in and clear the park. A black Suburban drove up and stopped on the corner. Its window was rolled halfway down, and a small, older man with a bald head peered out and spoke to the commanders in white shirts. Not long after he pulled away, the second row of police disappeared, as well as the horses. The drumming quieted, and the newfound Occupiers started going to sleep.
There would be no raid that night. A dilemma had been posed to the powerful, and for the moment the powerful capitulated.
I saw Marisa Holmes. She was ecstatic, with the caveat of course that there were no guarantees. Along with some other organizers from the city, she left for the night. I prepared to go to a colleague’s apartment to help edit the video he’d shot that day. As I left, I wrote to myself that I didn’t think it would last. I didn’t think it would change anything. I was tired, and all I could feel was the precariousness.
“They’re so young, they think they know everything,” one police officer said to another. I heard other cops talk about how much they take home after taxes.
Neither they nor anyone else seemed to grasp what was happening in front of them. How could they? It had taken the organizers long enough to begin to realize what they were organizing, and they still didn’t really know. There would be time to start figuring it out, though, because the occupation was staying.
Sunday, day two, the Occupiers kept busy. There was such a barrage of details between them and what this could be. They were making signs, eating donated pizza, collecting trash, laying down sleeping bags and cardboard to sleep on, and running a media center on a few uncomfortable tables with a generator and a wifi hotspot. They conducted a large, loud march around the Financial District. But, mostly, they assembled. There were several hours of General Assembly meetings in the morning, and then an extended debate—from midafternoon until late at night—about what the plan of action would be for Monday, when the neighborhood’s population would turn from tourists grazing for photogenic prey to those coming to do the very business that this occupation was there to oppose.
Early in the afternoon, it seemed that the chilly first night had taken a toll. Numbers in Liberty Square were lower than they had been the evening before. Those still around sang redemption songs a little behind the beat, or intently read texts of significance, or simply sat and waited. Others tried to confirm more rumors of police agents in their midst. But as evening fell, some of the previous day’s energy returned, as did an influx of new people who’d heard about the occupation on the Internet or from friends—still only two or three hundred in all. Pizza kept arriving through the night, and through its little crisis.
At about 9:15 p.m., by way of Occupiers reporting to the General Assembly, the police demanded that all the signs that were beginning to proliferate on the park’s walls and trees be taken down. There was a fractious reaction at first. Some thought it a reasonable request and wanted to comply. Others refused on principle, not wanting to be taking orders from the police. People on either side made speeches and tried to start chants. Some took it upon themselves to remove signs, and others moved to stop them. There were whispers that undercover cops were sowing divisions, though it hardly seemed like the Occupiers required any help with that. Just when unity was needed, it wasn’t there. Officers started taking down signs themselves while Occupiers chanted, “Shame! Shame!”
The focal point of it all became a spot on the eastern edge of the park, along Broadway. Several protesters—women and men, young and older—decided to sit down there in front of a Socialist Workers Party poster (whose affiliation would later be stripped from it) that said, “a job is a right! capitalism doesn’t work.” Others tried to get them to move, but they wouldn’t. The police didn’t move them either. There were no gory arrests. The sign remained as long as they did. Police and fellow protesters withdrew, and the meeting continued.
Moments like these were messy and far from flattering, and there would be many more to come.
I slept my first night in Liberty Square without a sleeping bag, curled up on a few sheets of cardboard. There were people playing music quietly with guitars and drums in far corners of the park. Near me the medics were planning for the next day’s action. A couple dozen Occupiers had just held a candlelight vigil by the barricades that were still surrounding the blocks around the Stock Exchange, mourning the death of capitalism. The barricades proved to them that they were winning. “Wall Street is already occupied,” one person had said earlier. “We’ve already achieved our objective.”
On Monday