Zuccotti Park in Manhattan is named not for some obscure Italians revolutionary hero or an oddly shaped pasta, but for John Zuccotti, co-chair of the board of Brookfield Properties, the company that owns the land on which the park is situated. A former deputy mayor of New York City, he has an annual salary of about $1,200,000 a year. Not one of your 99%.
The park fills a small city block in the downtown Financial District, at the bottom of a canyon surrounded by tall buildings. Nearby is the constant hammering of construction on the site of the World Trade Center. On the east side is Broadway with its constant stream of cars, trucks and tour buses. On the west side is Church Street with almost as much traffic. The Occupy Wall Street movement began here on September 17.
What’s going on in Zuccotti Park? On the day I visited in mid-October, it was mostly talking. Some of the occupiers had gone uptown to a demonstration in Harlem. Drummers crowded at one end of the park, playing a variety of objects that emitted a sound when banged, from real drums to metal banisters. Other musicians played elsewhere.
The people cramming the interior of the park were men and women, young and old, all races and colors, dressed in anything from suits to surplus to goth to rags. The place was packed. It took me ten minutes just to walk the couple of hundred feet from one end to the other. People were standing or sitting on stone benches and folding chairs; some were in sleeping bags, dead to the world despite all that was happening around them. People stood around the perimeter holding signs they had made, some proclaiming complicated philosophies, others just inviting conversation.
In one corner was the library with books in plastic bins. In the center was the kitchen, constantly busy; next to that was the clothing depot. On one side was the medical tent, staffed by a couple of RNs definitely not in uniform standing behind a table full of Tylenol, antacids and various herbal remedies. Everyone I met was friendly and happy to talk.
The occupiers appeared to be outnumbered by tourists and journalists. Cameras, video cameras and microphones were everywhere. Anyone who started speaking in a loud voice was immediately surrounded, filmed and recorded.
What I found myself talking about mostly with the people I met was how this movement compared to the 1960s. I suppose this would be natural with someone my age, eh? The comparison wasn’t simple, especially as today’s movement is in its early stages. I also asked a lot of questions to try to help me understand the challenges faced by younger people today who are trying to make the world a better place, as opposed to what it was like 4 or 5 decades ago. There was a lot of uncertainty, people speculating about what’s next.
The park was surrounded by police. Most looked relaxed. A weird-looking apparatus like an armored cherry picker was parked nearby, constantly moving up and down. Some kind of surveillance, I suppose. The city authorities seemed to have given up on trying to break up the occupation, considering the bad press they got when they attempted to do so.
I was told that at 4:00 a.m. on the morning that Brookfield Properties said they wanted to disperse the demonstrators in order to “clean the park,” thousands of people came from all over the city and packed the block so tightly that it would have been hopeless to try to move them without major violence.
Then one day the police sought to make the demonstrators dismantle their medical tent, and Jesse Jackson just happened to show up. He said, “Everyone link hands around the tent.” The tent stayed up.
Many writers have tried to analyze Occupy Wall Street and make wise pronouncements about it. I think it is not just one simple thing, and it changes from day to day. It is a gathering of many people who believe our present system is unfair, that it favors a small, privileged minority, and that this ought to change to favor the majority. One thing they have in common is that they are all willing to put themselves on the line for their beliefs.
Just as I was leaving, a dozen members of the Columbia University Band marched into the park, in full uniforms, playing “Stars and Stripes Forever.” It’s hard to make generalizations about this movement. If you have a chance, go down and see for yourself.
[Since this article was written, a lot has happened. The occupiers of Zuccotti Park were evicted in a 1 a.m. police raid on November 15. The order came from New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire reckoned to be the 14th richest man in the world. Since the eviction, the Occupy Wall Street movement has regrouped and held demonstrations in many parts of the city and there have been hundreds of arrests of nonviolent protesters. The situation remains fluid, to say the least.]
Arno Vosk was active in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He worked as an E.R. physician for three decades and taught at Pennsylvania College of Technology before retiring a few years ago. He is currently on the board of Health Care for All Pennsylvania, advocating a state single payer medical system, is a past member of the working group of Williamsport’s Responsible Drilling Alliance, and was recently elected to the Penn sylvania state board of the American Civil Liberties Union. He lives in Limestone Township with his wife, Cynthia, three cats and a dog.
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