All Day, All Week, Occupy the Beats (and Fight for a Safety Net)

Last night was peaceful and pulsing at Zuccotti Park.  When I arrived at the space, Naomi Klein was speeking at the delegate assembly.  

[T]oday everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.

We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.

After Klein finished I walked down to the Blarney Stone, a pub in walking distance of the park.  I was meeting some old friends, comrads I have known from the garden movement, biking, squatting, global justice and anti war activism dovetailing from the Lower East Side Collective to Reclaim the Streets.  As usual in these salons, the conversation vascillates between personal family issues and our awe of this new movement, propelled by a new cohort of activists.  This, of course, is the revitalizing function of movements.  Pete Seeger recalls that when  young people joined the Civil Rights Movement, they pushed the movement establishment to push harder.  They were not going to sit and accept things as they were.  And they made all the difference.  The same can be said for this movement.  Many movement veterans, including myself, are quick to note that if anyone had asked us if a movement could occupy Wall Street for weeks and rather or for even an afternoon, we would have said it could not be done.  It did not work for Reclaim the Streets in 1999 when we planned to march from Zuccotti Square.  And we could not immagine it happening today.  Forunately, no one asked us.  And a new generation of activists was willing to try something out on their own terms, take their lumps and learn their lesson.  Just like Ella Baker and SNCC propolled the Civil Rights movement to take risks few had been ready to take before, a new cohort has pushed New York to take risks and innovate in ways few can remember.   To those who have critiques of the movement, I suggest you get off the computer and go down to the general assembly and air your grievances.  This is an open ended space for ideas and hopes.  It is just too easy to be an arm chair critic without offerring alternatives.  This is a pulsing alternative.  At Zuccotti Park, everyone is invited into a pulsing conversation about economic justice astutely framed as a struggle between the 99% of whom do not benefit from our currently economic policies and the 1% who owns 6% of the wealth. This is a space where activists are not playing by the rules. In poker, you bet against the house you lose.  Some goes with movements.  Don’t ask for permits.  That is playing by their rules.  This movement is smart enough not to write their own script.  And it is not afraid to push through a few barricades.  

            As our conversation continued, we turned to the topic of friends and families and the challenges of bringing up kids in a city with expensive child care, decaying foster care, underfunded schools, cuts to transpertation services, and a crumbling infrastructure.   The core problem is a dwindling safety net.  Young people are getting out of college with debt and few opportunities, much less of the public sector jobs, education, pensions,  or social security their parents had.  Many at Occupy Wall street have nowhere else to go.  And with unemployment high, Occupy Wall street encampments are openning from coast to coast.

 Before arriving at the space, I had taken a group of students from my college to a local syringe exchange program.  Funded on a shoestring, programs such as this connect the poor with desperately needed healthcare, social services, and comradery.  Yet, today the new austerity means programs for the poor face cuts, while those who use these services are forced to cope the best they can, sometimes ending up in prisons and park benches.  The mutual aid Occupy Wall offers a distinct alternative.  I serve on the board of New Alternatives for LGBG Homeless Youth.  These are youth who have moved to New York to get away from desperate violence and abuse.  Once here, they find that there are few shelter beds or services for them, much less a place to call home. 

Every night, thousands of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender youth and young adults are homeless in New York City. Whether they have been kicked out by homophobic families, forced to flee conservative communities, aged out of foster care, or come from families torn apart by poverty, AIDS, drug abuse or eviction, these youth sleep in the City’s parks, on the subway, and in public facilities such as Port Authority and Penn Station. A fortunate minority find a safe haven in one of NYC’s handful of housing programs and shelters designed for this population, facilities so underfunded that youth wait months to get in or sleep on concrete floors and countertops. Another portion of the homeless youth population finds not-so-safe shelter in large, City-funded institutions or the men’s shelter on Ward’s Island, where they are subject to homophobic harassment- and even violence -at the hands of both staff and peers. The least fortunate of all find themselves practicing “survival sex” – trading their bodies for money or a place to stay.

This is the image of the new austerity. 

Pat of what made the Wednesday labor rally so dynamic was the mix of unions and community groups, including ACT UP, the Professional Staff Congress , VOCAL, FUREE, and members of other various harm reduction and health groups.  Each group recognizes that the social safety net is crumbling.  It needs repairing.    Mulling through the crowd of some 20,000 people, I ran into my friend Andrew Coamey, of Housing Works, a group challenging the twin epidemics of homelessness and HIV/AIDS.  He explained why he was marching.

Every day, we hear how cities and states are slashing budgets, cutting jobs and eliminating or reducing services needed by our friends, relatives and neighbors because there just isn’t enough money. Somehow, though, our federal government has found a way to launch two wars, bail out big banks and dish out major tax breaks to corporations and billionaires.

I marched last night because without food stamps, Housing Works clients can’t eat. Without Medicaid, Medicare or AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, they can’t see a doctor or get medication. Without disability benefits, they can’t pay their rent. And without student aid, they can’t access education and become the innovative, productive community members they want to be.

I marched because there are now nearly 9,000 people in the U.S. who cannot access critical AIDS medication through our nation’s drug assistance programs. I marched because last night more than 38,000 New York City residents had to sleep in homeless shelters. I marched because this movement can serve as a launching pad for real change.

I have marched with Housing Works many times. In 2005 the group formed its own  Poor People’s Campaign as a Campaign to End AIDS. 

Throughout the march, I reveled in the great signs. “Lost a Job, Found an Occupation” was one of my favorites.    A nun carried a sign noting: “My Soup Kitchen Needs a Bail Out!” Another spoofed the New York Times and corporate media, “All the News We’re Paid to Print.”  

Throughout the rally, some sang songs.  Michael Franti jammed, firing up the crowd.   A group of woman with a stand up base and accoustic guitars sang, “We Shall Not Be Moved” joined by many in the crowd.  Another group sang their rendition of Pete Seeger’s “Bring Em Home.”


We're the ninety nine percent
[unison] Occupy, occupy
Our demand is common sense
Occupy, occupy

The rich don't need another tax break
Occupy, occupy
They need to learn to share some faith
Occupy, occupy

We might be right we might be wrong
Occupy, occupy
We have the right to sing this song
Occupy, occupy

You might not see us on TV
Occupy, occupy
We'll be there when you're in need
Occupy, occupy

Wall Street is the place we stand
Occupy, occupy
And we'll circle the whole land
Occupy, occupy

We're the ninety nine percent
Occupy, occupy
Our demand is common sense
Occupy, occupy

I talked with writers and nurses, and even a friend’s five year old son who sat on his dad’s shoulders rallying the crowd with his fist up in the air: “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!”  Generational sharing and story telling was part of the space as some twenty thousand of us moved a slow amoeba from Foley Square down to Zuccotti Park. Reverend Billy was preaching.  And a smaller group continued the rally, moving from Zuccotti Park to break through the barricades protecting the banks at Wall Street.   And the police retaliated, exposing a panicked frenzy of batons and fists  reminiscent of the Tompkins Square Park riots.   The next morning, the front pages of the Daily News, New York Times, and even Fox News offered sympathetic accounts.  Its very exciting out here.  

 That evening, the Time Up! Decompression Dance Party was scheduled to start at 10 PM at Zuccotti Park.  Times UP! put out the call:

TONIGHT!!! Meet ABCnoRio, 158 Rivington, and ride to meet OWS after their General Assembly; we'll lead all interested occupiers to dance with us a few blocks away. It's sOOo good to get out of the park for a while, and to dance with the dedicated. Come support and dance in public space!
http://times-up.org/
timesupvolunteer@gmail.com
TWITTER: @nyctimesup
https://www.facebook.com/timesupnyc

I was supposed to ride up to ABC No Rio, but got stuck in the park talking.  For those who have spend the night not, this is part of the process.  My friend dropped down for lunch last Monday to make some signs.  Between meeting a new lover, making art, eating free pizza, rallying, and talking, he didn’t end up leaving for three days. 

            Those at ABC riding the sound bike asked that I notify people we were coming.  So I walked through the park telling people.  And someone suggested I use the “people’s mike.”

            “I can’t.  I’ve never done this,” I thought to myself.  But the next words coming out of my mouth were:

“Mic check!”

“Mic check” the crowd replied. And I made my announcement.    A few people clapped; some didn’t believe I was serious or turned back to their conversations, and others joined.  Emma Goldman’s sentiment can certainly be found here, so is the impulse to dance. Many roar and we dance with the sound bike down to the plaza outside the Blarney Stone.  “All day, all week, occupy the beats!!!” a young man chants, followed by more claps.  We shake it to Jay Z, New Order, James Brown, Public Enemy, and so much more.  It was not untill past 1 AM that the dancing slowed and we meanderred back inside the pub.  A friend had just come back from Europe.  “When we saw the pictures of 700 arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, we knew we had to come home,” explained.  The whole world really is watching.  Having been part of the riots and street theatrics in Greece this scene felt familiar for them.  And we talked and talked and talked until 3 AM.

"You guys are sure stimulating the blue collar downtown economy," noted the bartender.  The vendors are pulsing with business well into the night.   And people are making connections across, cultures, and generations.  Even the mayor has acknowledged the activists have a point about a economic inequality.  No one is going anywhere.   This a movement connected from the Rank and File to Civil Rights, from Global Justice t the Arab Spring.  None of us know where this is going.  What we do know is this movement is taking us into a new kind of a space and connection.

From the Matthew Shepard Political Funeral to Occupy Wall Street Brooklyn Bridge: Trans Abuses, Traps and Detainment

There is something about October in New York.  For some its baseball; for me it is a memory etched in my mind from the late 1990’s when it felt like the whole world was shaking every night.  October 19^th, 1998 I left work and went to meet some friends at the Plaza Hotel.  I was expecting to run into a few hundred activists for a political funeral for a young college student who had been killed because he was gay.  Yet, instead of 300, some 5000 had descended into the park in front of the Plaza.  I got there at 6:15.  In the next few hours, 136 of us were arrested as the Matthew Shepard Political Funeral found its expression as an unpermitted march. With the crowd expanding by the minute, the people had nowhere to go but the street. Police horses charged and activists fought back in a riot which some compared with the events of June 1969.  The events of that evening thirteen years ago were certainly not on my mind when I arrived at the public space known as Zuccotti Park for Saturday’s Occupy Wall Street rally. The space was pulsing with energy, filled with people who had participated in the previous night’s two thousand strong general assembly.  The day has been filled with action – the Slutwalk at 1, the No Nukes speak out – but this was the main event.  Arrests, NYPD pepper spray, and brutality the week before helped create the kind of Bull Connor scene of exposed injustice which ignited the civil rights movement.  One friend was tackled, another given a concussion, another arrested while photographing the action.  The similarities between the 1998 political funeral and the Occupy Wall Street march over the Brooklyn bridge were strikingly, and sadly familiar. 

Over the previous week the media image of the protests had shifted from peripheral to sympathetic.  The message that there is too much unemployment, economic inequality, and influence peddling damaging our political system was finding traction.  More and more people seem to be understanding that this is a movement about those who have gotten out of school without a job, those with debt, those who cannot find work, the underemployed, those without insurance, many of whom are part of the ever increasingly ranks of the unemployed.  But the NYPD appeared to not be having none of it.  After the previous night when activists stormed One Police Plaza as a protest of police abuses, I was sure the NYPD would be out for retaliation, especially after the  negative reports on the department’s approach to crowd situations over the previous week.  Many carried the  plastic cuffs they would use for arrests.  

Photo by Brennan Cavanaugh 

With this in mind, some two to three thousand of us meandered up and out of the Zuccotti Park.  It took nearly an hour to get out.  The police seemed to know we were marching up to the Brooklyn Bridge. Yet, unlike the week before the police were not giving an inch.  Everyone was pushed onto the sidewalk.  And we tried to make it. “We are the 99%” the crowd called. “And so are you,” others responded in cadence.  But it was hard to stay lyrical with the NYPD treating us like cattle.   By the time, we got to Brooklyn Bridge, the walking entrance of some ten - fifteen feet wide bottle necked. 

The NYPD can't treat people like sardines. When you have 3000 people marching, they ain't all going to fit onto a walking path of a bridge.  Many jumped over the walking path into the car path when the walking area was overflowing with people. FYI NYPD, there are only so many who can fit on a sidewalk. It causes riots over and over again.  My first arrest was for the Matthew Shepard political funeral in 1998 when 5000 arrived to mourn Shepard's death. 3000 people left Zuccotti Park. They could not all fit on the sidewalk.  Eventually, they would have to take the street.  And so they did.  After wall to wall police throughout the walk Zuccotti Park to the Bridge, the NYPD seemed to escort the surging crowd into the walking path of the Brooklyn Bridge, where so many activists have laid claim to power over the years.  When activists blocked the entrance to the bridge in 1995, the NYPD security detail took to physically blocking the entrance, as they did before the Diallo protests of 1999, when a group of queer activists ignited a wave of civil disobedience over then Mayor Giuliani’s murderous NYPD.

Midway through the march across the bridge, the police started arresting some 700 activists. Having walked the activists half way across the bridge, the police changed course, blocking the bridge for hours as they initiated arrests.  Immediately after the arrests at 6:59 PM, the Times would publish a report indicating police “allowed” the activists onto the bridge.  By 7:19, the paper changed it number, editing the word “allowing” off the report, substituting it with the words: “In a tense showdown above the East River, the police arrested more than 700 demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street protests who took to the roadway as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon.”  

A number of police observers would argue the police had engaged in “trap and detain” approach used to lure activists into a closed space and then sweep them up.

In the following days, several of those arrested would initiate litigation against the NYPD.

Many during the Matthew Shepard political funeral did the same thing.  Tim Santamour would later receive a $15,000.00 settlement from the city. He had been thrown to the ground during the action by the police.

Countless other activists would receive settlements from the city over the years as result of similar treatment.   February 15th,2003 the NYPD  cracked down on New Yorkers from all walks of life during the when cities around the world organized rallies against the war, resulted in the NYACLU report Arresting Protest.  It was the  largest day of protest in world history.  And the NYPD was not going to have it.  The following year, some 1800 people would be arrested for attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights during the Republican National Convention. 

A few days after the Councilwomen Gale Brewer wrote an open letter to NYPD Comissioner Ray Kelly, ccing council speaker Chris Quinn after an abusive experience from the NYPD during the June Pride Parade.  During that day, she experienced: 


"an attitude of unwarranted belligerence... among officers assigned to work with crowds... an abuse of discretion, a pattern of needless and angry over-reaction, an attitude of contempt and insult toward both elected officials and private citizens, and an apparent license among the rank and file of the NYPD to act inappropriately and insultingly whenever they choose... widespread bad conduct... with little restraint and no accountability."

Iconic trans activists Sylvia Rivera and Leslie Feinberg were arrested during the Matthew Shepard Political Funeral, with Feinberg, a transgender man, placed in the male cell.  Last Saturday, transgender activist Justin Adkins, was arrested and mistreated by the NYPD.  Misunderstanding and abuse of trans activists, such as Dean Spade, who was arrested while going to the bathroom after the 2002 World Economic Forum, is part of a long the pattern of police abuse.  


Adkins describes his experience after being arrested on the bridge.

They took me away from the cellblock where they had all of the protestors locked up andbrought me to a room with 2 cells and a bathroom. One small cell was empty and thelarge cell had about 8 men who had been arrested on charges not related to the protest.  Unlike me, these men had been arrested for a variety of crimes…

entered the room they had me sit down in a chair on the same portion of the wall as the restroom, and then handcuffed my right wrist to a metal handrail. I thought that this was a temporary arrangement as they tried to find me a separate cell as part of some protocol regarding transgender people, which I later discovered does not exist in NewYork City. After about an hour I realized that they had no intention of moving me. I remained handcuffed to this bar next to the bathroom for the next 8 hours. The cells, on the other side of the precinct where they had locked up the other 69protestors, did not have working toilets so every person who had to use the toilet was brought to the one next to where they had me locked to the railing. This was not only disgusting but also embarrassing. The smell of urine was so strong that I, and the men locked up in the cell in the room that I was in, mentioned the odor on more than one occasion.

Later in the night, Adkins recalled:

… a young man who had participated in the earlier NYC Slutwalk march to protest against explaining or excusing rape by referring to a women's clothing, came into use the bathroom wearing a mini-skirt. He was one of the protestors arrested with me on the bridge in the Occupy Wall Street March. The officer escorting him started poking fun at his mini-skirt at which point I explained that he looked good and the skirt was fine. When he sat down to go to the bathroom the officers laughed even more saying that they had "seen everything tonight". The attitude of the officers made me realize that as much as I needed to urinate it would not be a good idea to do so. The space did not feel safe. By the time I was released I had not gone to the bathroom for 11 hours…

Few expect the NYPD to change its approach, yet it would be welcome.  Yet, the NYPD appears intransigent.

One of my favorite signs from Saturday was “Sex Workers support Occupy Wall Street.”  At this point, the multiple movements overlapping and pouring into Occupy Wall Street appear to be holding together (not that New Yorkers do not tend to bring their own dramas into many of our organizational practices).  For many involved, this is a movement for the rest of us, trans folks, the unemployed, queers, the poor, those on the edge, with fear, love and even anger - those aspiring for something better.

Most certainly, organized labor stands strong in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the 99%  not benefitting from business as usual.  Tonight the head of my union, the Professional Staff Congress, sent out the following message:

Dear Members,

Don’t miss what may be a historic march tomorrow, Wednesday, October 5.  The city’s labor unions—including the PSC—have come together in record time with student and community groups to demonstrate our solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.  Together we will show the force behind our common demand for an alternative to economic austerity for 99% of the population and unprecedented wealth for 1%.

As support for the march has grown, the route has changed, and it will now begin at Foley Square (between Duane Street and Centre Street).  But the location for PSC members to assemble HAS NOT CHANGED.  We will gather at the intersection of Broadway and Warren Street at 4:15 PM, then at 4:30 we will march together to join the demonstration at Foley Square, a few blocks away.

Members who arrive after 4:30 should head directly to Foley Square, between Duane Street and Centre Street.  Look for the red signs that say “PSC Supports You.”   

I look forward to being with you there.  This is a demonstration not to miss. 

Barbara Bowen  

Those in the growing Occupy Wall Street movement are paintfully aware of what we are up against. 

 "The power of the corporatocracy is supported not only by campaign financing and lobbying, but also by relentless public relations spin,” notes Jeffrey Sachs.  “A number of studies in recent years have deconstructed the ways in which key sectors---military contractors, oil and coal, health care insurers, and Wall Street---use public relations firms and disinformation campaigns to disguise the damage they are doing to society." It appears, this ever expanding new movement is onto their game. 

See you in the streets.