NEW YORK, NY–A few hours before I was arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, I met Nicole in Zuccotti Park. She wore dark blue jeans that stretched across her legs, a grey sweater and a blue and white scarf that hid behind her flowing brown her. It was our first date.

Nicole was handing out flyers with legal advice while saying, “Protest is not a crime.

“I work for a law firm so the legal stuff interests me,” she explained.

When Occupy Wall Street began its march the protest stretched back for many blocks as it crowded onto the sidewalk with barricades and a heavy police presence lining our way. By the time we arrived at the bridge the front of the march was already funneling onto the pedestrian walkway, though only a handful of police stood casually at the entrance to the roadway.

“We’re not taking the bridge?” I said to Nicole in disappointment.

“Doesn’t look that way, I guess they don’t have a permit,” she responded.

“That’s such a letdown; the power of OWS is that it doesn’t ask permission to disagree. There’s hardly any police, we should just take the bridge,” I said.

The crowd bulged at the narrow entrance to the walkway and had begun to fill the street in front.

Without thinking, I stepped away from Nicole and into the growing crowd to start a familiar chant.

“Whose streets?” I yelled.

“Our streets!” the crowd answered.

The chant grew quickly and more people moved into the street at the base of the on ramp. The assertiveness and ambition was back, the crowd was alive. One police officer lazily spoke into a megaphone but was drowned out by the crowd.

I shouted “Take the bridge, take the bridge!” and the crowd immediately and aggressively picked up the refrain. It was infectious. I had lost myself in the moment and briefly forgotten about Nicole. I thought my idea of protest might have been more aggressive than hers, but then she caught my eye, smiled and rushed down from the pedestrian walkway toward me. She grabbed me and put her fist in the air. “Take the bridge” she shouted with the surging crowd. We watched as the group of people closest to the police locked arms. Everyone behind them, including Nicole and I, followed their example. It was loud and tense but it all melted away when the first line took a single step forward, their legs all moving in unison, connected as one solid line at the waist. The police turned their backs and walked ahead. They were leading us onto the bridge, we won! The crowd cheered and rushed up the ramp.

Nicole and I held back a few minutes and helped people from the walkway climb onto the road with us. The crowd was thick and excited, and our hands met so we wouldn’t get separated; it felt so natural. Once the crowd spread into all the lanes and gave us space, neither of us let go. I only noticed her hand still in mine because they began to sweat against each other. Confused motorists, stuck behind us, were honking in support.

“I can’t get arrested,” Nicole told me.

“They can’t arrest everyone. I can’t see the beginning or end of the crowd. There’s no way they can arrest this many people; we already won,” I said.

“Okay, good. This is incredible,” Nicole said, squeezing my hand and looking up at me.

“Yeah. I went to a lot of protests in college, but this is different.” I said.

The crowd stopped suddenly then surged backward, pushing Nicole’s body against mine. We couldn’t see what was happening, but the joy instantly transformed into panic. The chants stopped and people started screaming a few rows in front of us in the all-of-a-sudden-dense-again crowd. “The police are attacking, go back, go back!” they yelled. I put my arms around Nicole and held her tight; her fingers clasped behind my back and pulled me even closer.

As some people from the front pushed back into us, others pushed forward, trying to reach the front line to break the police cordon.

“We have to keep going forward! We have to break through!” a man behind us yelled.

“There’s nowhere to go, people are getting crushed up there!” a woman cried, her voice cracking.

A second man with a calm but firm voice started shouting rhythmically, over and over again, “Sit down! Sit down!”

Most people sat down but there were still others pushing one way or the other and stepping on top of people. Dozens on our left, against the inner side of the bridge, were climbing up the scaffolding to the pedestrian walkway above, trying to escape the crush. It was chaos.

Nicole tucked her head into my arm as I moved my hand across her back. Our bodies moved tighter, her right leg rubbing between mine while my left leg nestled between hers.

“I can’t get arrested,” Nicole repeated, more desperate than before.

“They can’t arrest everyone,” I repeated, almost as sure.

To our left, where the people had been climbing the scaffolding, police pushed in and set up a net. They immediately walked two protesters in handcuffs down the corridor so everyone could see. They were pushing them hard, making them stumble, and almost knocking them on their face. They were sending us a message: You’re next.

The police pushed everyone off the pedestrian walkway and shut down the bridge. The crowd was tense. We were stuck in a police net, hanging above the East River, completely alone, utterly vulnerable. Rumors swilled though the crowd. “The police cleared the airspace,” someone shouted, and we realized: there were no witnesses. All of a sudden taking the bridge seemed a terrible idea.

We waited, and as we waited the fear left and the spirit of the crowd that had locked arms and took the Brooklyn Bridge returned. People started to mic check, mixing rumor and fact, but the tone changed and each message was more defiant than the last. Each time the crowd roared louder than the last.

“5,000 people are watching us on livestream.”

“A crowd is gathering on the Brooklyn side of the bridge, they are waiting for us.”

“10,000 people are watching.”

“The MTA is going on strike in solidarity.”

“25,000 people are watching.”

Even as the minutes dragged into hours and it became clear that the police were in fact going to arrest everyone they had netted, it still felt like victory. Everyone shared what they had, fruit and water passed through the crowd and people called out of work and cancelled dinner plans with borrowed phones.

Nicole and I still held each other. Long after the crowd thinned and the panic passed, our hands were still interlocked when we sat, and our bodies still pressed tight to the other when we stood.

“Mic check: It is an honor and a privilege to be arrested with you all today. Fifty years from now, when you tell your grandkids about this, you can say that you were a soldier in the Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge!” The crowd roared.
Nicole pulled her head out of my arm and we looked into each other’s eyes.

“Best first date ever,” I said.

She giggled. “This is incredible.”

People were still mic checking, still passing around markers so everyone could write the legal number on their arm, but we were isolated from all of that, stuck in our own moment. Our eyes were locked on each other and our faces pulled together, like magnets finding their mate. Our lips touched, and then opened. When we drew back our eyes were staring into each other again but in a different way than before the kiss. I could tell she was smiling though all I saw were her eyes. I could feel my own face stuck in the same pose. We moved together and kissed again, oblivious to the crowd around us.

It began to rain and the sun disappeared behind the clouds, then fell below the horizon. We had been in the police net for over three hours now and I was getting cold. “Let’s go get arrested,” I said.

“I’d love to.” Nicole smiled.

I tapped someone on the shoulder near the police blockade. “Is this the line to get arrested?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yeah,” he said.

There was a separate line for women so Nicole and I shared one last embrace and kissed one last time.
“I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait for you forever,” she said.

A police officer slapped cuffs on my wrist then walked me onto a commandeered MTA bus, and when I looked back, Nicole was gone, on her own bus I presumed. All the police stations and holding cells in Manhattan were already overflowing with protesters, so we got on the Williamsburg Bridge and for the second time that day, I headed to Brooklyn. This time, a prisoner in police custody, I made it. The first two precincts we went to were also filled and we finally stopped at the 90th precinct, which, ironically, I could walk to from my home in Bushwick. We were the third bus in line so we waited for the others to be processed first. For more than three hours we sat uncomfortably, forced to sit at the edge of our seat and lean slightly forward to accommodate the handcuffs digging ever deeper into our wrists as the blood collected in our hands and swelled the skin around the plastic rings. All the while, we took advantage of our captive audience and tried to convert our arresting officers who were acting as our guards now.

“The banks crashed the economy, and when the government bailed them out they used the money to give bonuses to the CEO’s and increased foreclosures against families like your own. When it comes down to it, we are all on the same side. You are the 99% as much as we are,” we told them.

One of the officers, the loudest one, never genuinely responded to our attempts at engagement. He would chuckle and say things like, “I think your dreadlocks are seeping into your brain,” or, “what good are you sitting in handcuffs here, why don’t you just plant a garden or something?”

My arresting officer was much quieter but also much more thoughtful.

“National elections are overwhelmingly decided by who has the most money so they can better spin the narrative in their favor, which gives great power to corporate CEO’s at our expense. The system is broken, and while we may not have all the answers, we need to start creating alternatives, we need to take control over our own lives,” I said.

“You’re right,” he said. “The country is heading in the wrong direction and people need to stand up in order to change it, but I got a job to do. I got a wife and kids so if my CO [commanding officer] tells me to make an arrest, I have to do it. I wish I could be with you guys, but I need this paycheck,” he said.

Finally it was our turn, and the police marched us off the bus and into the station.

Someone yelled my name as I was being walked to my cell.

“Anita?” I stopped, happy to see my friend smiling behind a row of bars next to me. “Hey! You got arrested too huh?”

An officer grabbed my arm and yelled, “Get to your cell!”

I kept forgetting I wasn’t free.

The cells were built for one with a single plank of wood hanging from one wall as a bed, a metal toilet filled with urine and feces and unable to flush, and not much room for anything else. The first thing everyone did was pee. There were five of us, and our urine stirred the thick brown liquid and released an even more pungent odor.

Danny, Craig, Adam and Lucas were my cell mates. We were locked in what was essentially a crowded and dirty bathroom, but it felt like a party. I’ve never felt free as I did when I was handcuffed and forced into a 5 by 8 cell. Given the chance to do it all over, I wouldn’t hesitate a second. But freedom is more than a lack of fear; it’s replacing that with the belief that we can build something better. Though I spent the day inside a police net and then locked in a cage, I saw the beginnings of a community based on altruism, compassion and solidarity, and you can’t lock that up.

Finally, after twelve hours in police custody, we were given court dates and released. It was the early morning and dark and cold outside. Two women were waiting outside to support us and gave everyone coffee and snacks.

My phone rang. “You’re out!” Nicole gushed. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m in Brooklyn, where are you?” I asked.

“I’m waiting for you in the park.”

I took the subway away from my house and back to the park. The streets of the financial district were deserted and police barricades lined every sidewalk. There was a steady stream of people rising from the subways, returning from jail. It felt like the city was ours.

I ran into Danny and Craig at the edge of the park and we embraced like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. Nicole was sitting on a wall with a blanket wrapped over her shoulders. She dropped the blanket and ran toward me, and we embraced like old lovers.

“You must be cold, take this.” She threw the blanket over me. She had enormous energy considering the hour.
Nicole brought us to a group lying on an air mattress. Though it was already crowded beyond what seemed comfortable, they cheerily made space for us. They were all drinking coffee and soon after they got up to welcome others returning from jail, leaving Nicole and I alone in their bed.

We never slept. We barely even talked. We wrapped our arms around each other and touched our lips together. It warmed better than any blanket. A few hours after I was released from jail, the darkness began to fade. On all sides the park was hemmed in by skyscrapers creating an empty shaft of air reaching toward the sky. The sun filtered between the walls of concrete and through the honey locust trees above us, bathing New York City in a new light.

It was the brightest sunrise of my life.

-John Dennehy-

MUSKEGON, MI – When the banks were bailed out a few years ago, I fucking lost it. Call me hot-headed, but I made up a series of three signs with slogans I don’t even remember— all slapped up in red paint— and hammered them into my front lawn. I lived in a shitty old house at the edge of the northern wealthy section of town, but it was the shitty old house my grandfather had died in and nearly all my friends and family had lived in at one time or another. For those reasons the house embodied many fond memories; it was the kind of place you always wanted to live in until you do.

Anyway, watching the government give up billions and trillions of taxpayer dollars to the very people who had screwed us in the first place, I fucking lost it. I lost my faith in dissent, in people, in the solidarity of mass protest … What could I do? I was just some guy with three wimpy signs in his yard— and it rained constantly, drooping the cardboard until you could no longer read my short stab at the government, blindly swiping at big business, mega-banks and the auto industry. And there were the airlines and a morbidly obese defense budget slaughtering people all over the world in the name of democracy and commerce to boot, too, but that was old hat by then— it’d been done for so long people didn’t know any different. It seemed like no one cared enough to scream and shout anymore. A dissenting voice to the Great Bail-Outs of the 21st century was nowhere to be found.

“We’re behind enemy lines, man!” I’d tell my wife. “Jesus… no one gives a shit! If this doesn’t get people in the streets, what the fuck will?” She’d shrug and we’d eat dinner with the kids. “Eat your fucking rice,” we’d say. “Good fucking beans.”

“SHIT, MOM!” my oldest son would yell. “THE GODDAMN BANKS ARE STEALING MY FUTURE! ASSHOLES!”

“No b-word at the dinner table,” my wife and I would scold him. “You know how we hate that fucking word.”

This is the caricaturized domestic life of a man who was not censored, who grew up memorizing late-night comedy routines on cable, who rolled and cried with bellyaches on the floor at George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy till his mother came home drunk from the bar and would lay down the most basic of life’s lessons— “Tell the truth,” she’d say. “Your life will be a lot easier.” So, I gave myself permission to express myself however the hell I pleased, like those funny people on cable, as long as I was honest, as long as it was the truth and sincere, and as long as the heart was involved.

A year floundered by and the world continued to stink, spin, and spew on down the line. Sure, there were puppies who found homes, bake sales were held. There’s a different colored ribbon for every f-ing cause under the sun. But anyway, a year went by, and in that time my wife and I purchased our first home.

“Put these fucking boxes in that room, and put those fucking boxes in this room,” we told the kids— even our toddler.

“DAMN IT, MOM! OUR GOD DAMN MORTGAGE IS FUCKED!” our eldest son yelled, storming off for the boxes, which our youngest echoed in tearing off his diaper, bending over and shaking his ass in the air.

Our mortgage was not fucked. It was quite fucking good, actually, but by then the media had crop-dusted so many Aqua Net politicians across the news, proclaiming and analyzing fault with the housing market, that our son began parroting all that b.s. back at us. “VARIABLE INTEREST RATES ARE STEALING OUR JOBS FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!” There was no real need to explain it all to an eight-year-old, but a good mortgage didn’t matter so much in the end anyway, either. He might as well have been right. Two years later, my wife lost one of her jobs, and the jobs we had left started providing less work. “THOSE DOUCHE BAGS ARE RUINING EDUCATION! CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE!” My oldest yelled again from behind the boxes, helping his little brother learn how to flip the bird—a prediction we agreed with long before.

By then, the whole country had its legs straight up in the air; my household’s income dropped by 75% soon after.

“This shit is all over the world!” I’d shake my head at my wife.

“Yeah, it’s disgusting,” she’d agree, shaking her head, too.

Then one afternoon, pissing away some time on the computer, avoiding discussions in my online classes and working on a novel that’s been ready for a final edit for months now, I came across the Occupy Wall St. movement.

“Some people are camping out in the middle of New York for a protest,” I told my wife.

“In the fucking city.” “Really?” she said. “What for?”

What for is old news now, but that afternoon I was still in my pajamas, still bleary-eyed and willing down a cup of coffee, waiting for it to shock the monkey back to the steering wheel, when this strange protest— this camping protest that had been going on for a little more than a week by then, with no immediate plans to stop— woke me right up, like I pissed myself ice-fishing or something— a sudden, exciting chill grabbed me and shook me around feverishly. “This shit is interesting!” I said, turning to find an empty room, my wife evidently somewhere else.

I’d been interested in counter-culture movements for years. It was always what I considered my passionate hobby reading— mostly 60’s revolutionary swag. I read a lot of books about (and by) a number of Black Panthers. I read a fair amount on the White Panthers, too, and a whole slew of bio books on different 60’s rock groups. I came across AIM at some point, and the Weather Underground, the Motherfuckers and the Yippies, which all came naturally after my earlier interest in the existential Beats, the Wobblies, the Diggers. My father is a musician and my mother’s a medicine woman; I’m Irish and Eastern Cherokee. My grandpa was a junk man and his brothers were hobos who used to fish for chickens from an old shack along the Flat River— I’m primed for this shit, and my wife knows it. Hell, I didn’t even mention Che Guevara, Martin, Malcolm, and Means…

For three or four days and nights I couldn’t work, I couldn’t sleep. Every few minutes I was back on the computer rummaging around the Internet for more news and developments about the movement. “Holy fuck!” I’d blurt out now and then. After a while, my wife didn’t even respond. I had to come up with something else to get her attention. “Holy fuck!” no longer did it. I combed every social website I could think of looking for Occupy Wall St. news, marveling at how fast it spread, and how far! Hell, it had already reached New Zealand! People were talking! Online, that is; mostly online, and I followed. I made it my personal duty to help the various Occupy pages stay connected, shuffling through the various sites obsessively, doing anything I could to feel part of it, helping to spread the information and solidarity.

And then BAM!— 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Watching the footage, my mouth fell open like a rockslide. I shook with a chill that went from my nuts to my chin and all down my spine. An involuntary grin pulled itself up from out of nowhere and put a gleam in my eyes— that wild spark that always makes my wife look at me as if my name is Willis, still pushing Different Strokes after all these years: she sees a scheme in my smile and deflects it with a prudent smirk that makes her squint her eyes slightly.

“Look at this shit!” I told her, pulling her away from her own online classes.

“They arrested 700?” she said, “What the fuck?” ”They kept chanting, ‘THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!’ and ‘SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!’ at the police! I have to go!” I told her. “You know me; I’ve talked about this for years! I have to go … It gave me chills just watching it. I have to do this!”

Then I said, “Holy fuck!” again, because I knew that this time I meant it. This time, I saw something I felt instinctually different about. The energy and approach of it all was too high. Liberty Park was constant high noon; it was a line in the sand. Camping out in front of the White House had been something I’d ranted about for years. “I should just take a fucking tent and go set it up right outside that damn place,” I’d say, coming out of the bathroom, tightening my bathrobe, running my hands through my hair, checking for thin spots. “What the fuck have people got to lose?” But camping out to take over Wall St. made even more sense than D.C. You’ve got to show up on the doorstep of power, and OWS had its finger on the bell from the beginning.

But, primed as I was for a more liberal outlook on life, I still gave myself a cushy excuse for inaction. My claim: I didn’t know where to start, how to get involved in a way that makes you feel like you’re making a difference, that you’re not just some asshole pissing away his time when he should be at home, showing the kids how to swear in new and interesting ways so they can really wow their friends on the playground and around the daycare. Those old Andrew Dice Clay rhymes don’t cut it anymore, trust me. Ya, hear? So, recognizing where and how-the-fuck to start can be a catalyst for major change in the way a guy like me lives his life. It can help lend enough direction to spark continuous action— a lifetime of it!

When I saw Occupy Wall St., I knew; I just knew, right from that first sleeping bag unrolled in the name of freedom and democracy— I was Occupy through and through. Suddenly, I had a location and a purpose. I had the interest, the motivation, and I begged, borrowed, and scrounged for the money to get to Liberty Park. The arrow had been released.

Before I left, I called up my cousin and said, “You want to go to New York for a protest?” and he said, “Why, hell yes!” He had to sell a deer rifle to do it. We left two days later, having assembled funds and donations from a handful of kind souls in the local community.

As we drove east on I-80, facing a good twelve hours of driving into the night, I wondered what would be in store for my cousin and I, whether we would be beaten, arrested, or both; whether we would get separated and whether we would be able to find our way back to each other; where we would sleep, use the bathroom and shower … Having gotten a late start, the sun was well above as the wheels spurned us forward. In my head was rock and roll; every movement I’d ever studied; every revolutionary I’d ever had the honor to meet and speak with, learn from; and the last protest I’d been a part of—the sky gray above the land, old WWII bombers circling and roaring in the rain, fake bombs bursting in the mud around me— the lone person who saw fit to call foul on celebrating Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets’ presence at the local air festival in order to raise ticket sales— a festival that has since collapsed.

My sign read, “F the A BOMB!” and “THE A BOMB IS NOT CELEBRITY!” Both sides were printed over large orange mushroom clouds I’d painted days before, and stood out against the darkness like a sudden torch in the metallic gloom.

-

-Dylan Hock -

http://www.youtube.com/embed/WIyZcfergWY

NEW YORK – My son and I arrived in lower Manhattan to march over the Brooklyn Bridge.  We jumped into the line and marched slowly in a most peaceful crowd.  This experience was life changing in a number of ways.  In all my years of visiting New York, I have never been with such patient, kind and friendly people.  There was absolutely no pushing or lude behavior of any kind which is wrongly expressed by Fox news.  No one was drunk, unkind or out of control in any way.  As we approached the top of the bridge, we had the good fortune of meeting Chris Hayes from MSNBC.  He was very friendly and polite.  We then met up with the mobile book library and donated several books in spite of the police taking over half of the library’s books while purging Zuchotti Park then not returning them.  We arrived in Brooklyn to a great deal of celebration and just in time for the General Assembly meeting.  Overall, by far the most enjoyable time in New York City in a very long time.  We cannot wait to return!

-Maureen Purdue-

A Man Named Hero

“Damn, man, I didn’t even get a chance to say my idea.”

“Shit, sorry dude,” I said. “What’s your idea?”

“A bat-signal, man. We need a bat-signal.”

“Bat-signal?”

“Yeah, like the Bat-Signal, but with 99% in the middle instead of the bat.”

His name was Hero, and we had just finished up a meeting, one of those long, disjointed, but somehow productive gatherings that you have far too many of when you’re trying to decide what the hell to do with 20,000 newly-minted revolutionaries on the two-month anniversary of the revolution.

It was complicated. We wanted to up the ante, in every respect, from the last big day of action that Occupy Wall Street (#ows) had pulled off on October 15. We wanted November 17 (or #N17 as it came to be known) to be more massive and more forceful. We wanted our actions to be in solidarity with organized labor, a very different animal than the decentralized, directly-democratic modus operandi of #ows. Some people were pushing hard for more radical tactics; others were stressing the need to reach out and bring more folks into the fold; yet others wanted to have a really cool birthday party. It was complicated. And we had very little time to figure it out.

In the end we decided to have three actions in one: “breakfast,” “lunch,” and “dinner.” “Breakfast”: civil disobedience in front of the New York Stock Exchange. “Lunch”: get out into the boroughs, tell stories, and bring more people into the movement. “Dinner”: that’s where Hero and I came in. Organized labor had already received a permit for a large rally in Foley Square. We needed an action that would allow a large and diverse group of people to be safe, while still showing labor’s commitment to fighting for jobs and against austerity, and that at the same time would celebrate the two-month birthday party for Occupy Wall Street in spectacular fashion.

We eventually settled on the idea of leading people out of Foley Square, around City Hall, and over the Brooklyn Bridge on the pedestrian walkway. It wasn’t an entirely popular choice, as many in #ows really wanted to take the roadway, as a reprise of the 700 arrests that had taken place there on October 1. Labor, too, was up for doing something more radical than a march across the bridge. The walkway was seen as too timid, too permitted. Ultimately, though, we came to a consensus: 99 union leaders, along with clergy and community members, would commit civil disobedience and take an arrest at the base of the bridge to demand jobs, while the remaining thousands would march across the bridge. It was up to us to turn that march into the most beautiful and compelling birthday spectacle possible.

First we decided to hand out 10,000 LED lights to the crowd as they encircled City Hall and went over the walkway, creating a “river of light.” The metaphor of light was important. The Occupy movement is shining a bright and piercing light on a political and economic system that is fundamentally corrupt and malignant; a system whereby our democracy has been purchased outright by corporate money and is being held captive to private interests. We wanted the “birthday party” to be a celebration of our commitment to shining a light on these and other injustices. But we needed more than LEDs.

The meeting broke up. Hero still had his hand in the air. He turned to me.

“A bat-signal, man. We need a bat-signal.”

“You’re right Hero, it’s genius. I’ll do it.”

It really is genius. For one, it’s accessible. The Bat-Signal is a part of our visual commons, part of the “spectacular vernacular” of global pop culture. No translation necessary. And what does it symbolize? It’s both a call for aid and a call to arms. Help! and Assemble!—it means both of these things. And isn’t that precisely what the Occupy movement is? Are we not, in our choice to stand up and take action on behalf of the 99%, a call for aid and a call to arms? Now, of course, Batman is actually a quasi-sociopathic millionaire-vigilante. A one-percenter, you might say. But by filling that symbol—by occupying it, with our own content: the 99%—we appropriate it for all of us. And in this reconfiguration, we are no longer waiting for some superhero to come in and save the day, whether it be a masked vigilante or the first black president. In this telling, we are the response to our own call for aid. We aren’t waiting for Batman or Superman—we are going to get to work and begin the process of saving ourselves. Genius.

A Woman Named Denise

There was no question where we were going to project our bat-signal: that massive urban eyesore, the monolithic slab of windowless concrete commonly known as the “Verizon Building.” A windowless expanse of concrete approximately 75 feet wide, low ambient light, with a clean line of sight from the Brooklyn Bridge? Really? The thing nearly begs for it. And Verizon, which has been screwing its workers ever harder over the years, has been begging for it, too. We knew that thousands of those workers—members of the Communication Workers of America—would be marching with us that day over the bridge. The light show would be especially meaningful to them.

I’m no projection artist, however. How the hell were we going to get the projection up there? And what about projections on the bridge itself? We needed those too. And how about some Graffiti Research Lab-inspired Laser Tag, like the one Free Tibet protesters used in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics? Let’s get that going too. It was getting complicated, and I’d need a lot of help. One of the benefits of working on behalf of a popular uprising is that people want to help out. I had to make a lot of phone calls, but pretty much everyone I called was eager to say yes to helping out Occupy Wall Street. A mobile projection unit team was assembled, with all the necessary batteries, power inverters, mobile video players, etcetera. Taylor Kuffner stepped up to lead that team. The laser tag crew was headed up by Nick Gulotta, a Students for a Free Tibet activist who was familiar with that mysterious technology. I would head up the bat-signal squad. The first thing I’d need was a projector—the stronger, the better. I had a friend and I made the call. Sure, he said, we could borrow the 12,000 lumen projector if we had somewhere safe to project from. Ah yes. A safe space to project from. Now, where were we going to find that?

In the shadow of that hideous, 32-story corporate monolith are the Alfred E. Smith Houses, a group of 12 buildings 15 – 17 stories high. City housing projects, home to thousands of low-income tenants. The closest of the buildings is a mere 135 feet away (I measured). It’s like they’re living in the shadow of Mordor, or Saruman’s Black Tower or something. Surreal.

I put up signs (offering $250 to rent an apartment with views for a film project) in the lobby of the closest couple of buildings, as well as the hallways and stairwells and elevators, and I waited. Over the course of the next two days I received three phone calls, none of them remotely what I was looking for. They had misread the sign. They didn’t live in the building. They lived on the fifth floor. I was beginning to think I’d wind up lurking the top stories until I cornered someone, when I got a call that made sense. She lived on the 16th floor. She could do it on November 17. She had views that I needed. I went to meet her later that day. Her name was Denise, and she worked for FedEx. She had three daughters. She was born and raised in the building. When I told her what we were actually doing, and why—for Occupy Wall Street, for the 99%—I saw her eyes light up. “Yeah, really? That’s so great, what you guys are doing is so great.” Her parting words to me that day were “Let’s do this!”

A few days later I was scrambling around trying to get Denise the money to pay her up front. It was Tuesday, the day that #ows was evicted from Liberty Square. It was a long hard day, and things were pretty chaotic. On top of everything else, the finance committee was nowhere to be found, and so I couldn’t get Denise the money I’d promised her. I felt pretty low when I finally reached her by phone around 9:00 and tried to apologize, but she wouldn’t hear any of it. “Honey, don’t you worry about that. This ain’t about the money. I watch the news. I know what’s goin’ on. I can’t take any money for this. This is for the people. We’re gonna do this for the people.”

I thanked her, hung up the phone, and wept.

Mic Check!

Things were looking good for Thursday, but as I continued to contemplate the whole project and scouted the scene more and more, the scale at which we’d be working began to dawn on me, and additional possibilities began to seem … possible. I wondered if we might even be able to get the crowd to interact with the messages that we’d be projecting. Could we utilize the “human microphone” idea through text and get the crowd to “mic check” what we projected? It was worth a shot, I thought, so I wrote a brief statement:

Mic Check! Mic Check! Mic Check!
Look around
You are a part
of a Global Uprising
We are a Cry
from the Heart
of the World
We are Unstoppable
Another World
is Possible
Happy Birthday
#occupy movement

The night before the action, I worked on the graphics with Max Nova, who had given yet another example of a full-throated yes. He came up with some additional text elements, like “Love” and “Do Not Be Afraid,” that would make the evening all the more beautiful. I tossed in some familiars like “We are winning,” and “It is the beginning of the beginning,” which is my personal favorite cardboard sign of the entire Occupation. Max stayed up all night developing the various elements, and his partner JR manned the VJ controls from our little “Oz Booth” in Denise’s bedroom.

I didn’t expect to be able to hear the crowd from the apartment. I sat in the window, where I could listen to them roar, chant, and read that statement over and over again. Each time they called out, “You are a part of a global uprising,” we had to pause to allow them to roar their hearts out. It was amazing; it was magic. We projected from up there for a full hour and a half, uninterrupted.
“We are a cry from the heart of the world”—those are my words. That’s what it feels like to me. We face such immense challenges, such urgent crises, sometimes it seems that there’s no way out, no path towards a brighter future. The crises are political, social, economic, and environmental, all at once. Together they threaten our very existence as a species, and the existence of many other species of life on the planet. What’s happening today feels to me like the immunological response of the species, or even of the planet, rising up to save itself. I am extremely grateful that the immune systems are still functional, that we carry within us this profound reverence for, and desire to serve, Life. To set things right, to fight off the pathogen that is “the order of the world that we have inherited, that has come down upon us and which at this moment is called Capitalism” (Peter Schumann), will require nothing less than a global uprising, a cry from the heart of the world, and I think that we are finally beginning to hear it.

Coming to an Edifice of Power near You

The laser tag crew got the worst of it. Arrested before they even really got started, for trespassing on a roof. Twenty-six hours in jail. The mobile projection units were able to project onto the State Supreme Court building in Foley Square, and got interviewed by Mother Jones, “Democracy Now!” and others. The 99% Bat-Signal? It blew up on Twitter, which led to Xeni Jardin interviewing me for Boing Boing, which led to an appearance on Rachel Maddow, an A.P. story, a shout-out from Jimmy Breslin in the Daily News, a viral video, etcetera. In both old and new media, we had our five minutes of fame.

Within a couple of days we’d been contacted by occupiers in Los Angeles, Boston, Boulder, and Cleveland, with more each day, all wanting to get their hands on the graphics, particularly the Bat-Signal itself. They wanted to project it using whatever means they had at their disposal, at targets of their own choosing, for their own reasons. It looks like #N17 was just the premiere of what may be a long run. Someday the 99% Bat-Signal may even become as universally recognized as the original. For now, look for it wherever you are, and when you see it blinking there in the dark, consider answering that call: for aid, to arms, and to join in the cry from the heart of the world that is the Occupy movement. Save us. Save yourself. Save the Earth. You are the 99%.

-MARK READ
Originally posted in The Brooklyn Rail, posted here with permission from the author.

Like many people I was disgusted by the Zuccotti Park raid that took place Tuesday morning.  So when I heard about the Brooklyn Bridge march on Thursday night I felt compelled to act.  I was impressed by how many people came out to show their support at this critical point in the movement.  But what really caught my attention was the overwhelmingly positive reaction we received from the drivers on the Brooklyn Bridge.  In a spontaneous gesture of solidarity hundreds of drivers slowed down, honked their horns, waved their fist in the air and cheered us on.  I imagine the last thing many of them heard about Occupy Wall Street was the nationwide crackdown that culminated in the Zuccotti Park raid.  Many may have assumed that would be the end of the movement.  For those, I believe it was especially important and uplifting to see thousands of people from all walks of like marching in defiance of brutality and in support of social change for a better society.  And this all took place in view of an amazing guerrila light show on the Verizon building.  It was quite a galvanizing moment.

(((video from the bridge)))http://www.youtube.com/embed/-ZL27BXh_AU

-Tate Harmon-

Editors note: As the six month anniversary of the mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge approaches we will be highlighting our past stories from that day and the #N17 march over the bridge. On Friday, 3/30 we will publish a new feature of an account from one of the arrested. 

NEW YORK, NY –  Despite the rain and ever-creeping cold, activists continue to occupy Liberty Plaza; slowly coalescing demands, continuing to debate and love and dance. The sheer energy of this movement is utterly undeniable. Occupations, though mostly small in scale, have sprouted up in multiple cities around the country and more are planned as October rolls into the end of 2011. There is a sense in the square now that this is real. The gravity and electricity of what we’re building here is bouncing off the buildings all around us. We all feel more alive. There are incredible ups and downs. Elation can very suddenly plunge into abject frustration, and then turn sharply upward again.

Case in point: Saturday’s march over the Brooklyn Bridge. Truly one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I was one of the 700 marchers kettled and arrested en-mass by the NYPD on that famed expanse of stone and steel. It began at Liberty Plaza, where thousands gathered to rally in solidarity with the occupation. From there, we marched through the streets of the Financial District and toward City Hall. At the outset the march was united and organized, with none of the weaving through traffic and violent pepper-spray scuffles with police that marked the march of a week earlier. We were determined to get to our destination together this time – just over the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn Bridge park where another contingent would be waiting for us with food, speakers, and activities. Or at least that was the plan. I was toward the back of marching crowd of some 2,000 people when we arrived at the bridge only a few blocks from Liberty Plaza. The exact details of what happened next are still fuzzy to most. The planned route was for marchers to use the pedestrian walkway to cross the bridge, but at some point a contingent of marchers broke away and took to the roadway, walking past a slew of cars already caught up in the spectacle of the march. Once the initial crowd of protesters marched onto the road, some 500 or more followed, most (including myself) not knowing that they were risking arrest by doing so.

The NYPD claims that they warned the initial group that stormed the road that doing so would mean arrest, but in reality they did little to deter us. In fact, I assumed that they were clearing the pathway for us because there was simply no way 2,000 people were going to use the pedestrian walkway at once. Once on the roadway, we were ecstatic. It was like no other feeling. Here we were, walking with 500 other people over one of the world’s most iconic structures. We chanted “Who’s bridge? Our bridge!” We drummed loudly and waved fists in the air in solidarity with the marchers 20 feet above us on the pedestrian walkway. Then suddenly, before we had even reached the first stone tower, the march came to a screeching halt. Nobody was really sure what was going on. I couldn’t see far enough ahead of me to know that the police had formed a blockade with the same orange nets they used at Union Square the week before. When I looked behind me and saw yet another line of police approaching, I knew that things had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. It wasn’t long before they had surrounded us with orange netting and panic overtook the crowd suspended hundreds of feet in the air over the East River on a slab of concrete.

Some 40 feet higher still the marchers who had used the pedestrian walkway luckily had a bird’s eye view of what was going on. Using the people’s microphone, they kept us updated on what was going on. I could feel the intensity of situation but also felt a wave of calm and solidarity. Like some ragged guardian angels, our fellow protesters were keeping on eye on us, telling us what was happening on either side of us, and livestreaming it all to 30,000 people around the world. We anxiously repeated their updates verbatim. “Mic check! It looks like they have surrounded you on both sides and they’re not letting anyone through. The best thing for you to do is to sit down and lock arms!” And so we did.

We spent the next eight hours in anxious limbo. We waited for what seemed like an eternity on the bridge for the police to arrest each and every one of us. They grouped us in fives and cuffed us, then put us on any vehicle they could – I was put with about 30 others on an MTA bus and taken to the 90th Precinct in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Once we arrived at the station we sat on the bus and kept waiting, this time for the police to process the inordinate amount of arrestees. As we waited, all manner of conversations erupted on the bus between protesters – gender rights (the police had separated us by gender before arresting us), organic farming, community organizing – the usual fare at an activist gathering. It was something of a party. Even our arresting officers engaged us in conversations, and they seemed genuinely interested in “what we’re all about.” Some were even borderline sympathetic! Others poked fun at our dreadlocks and discussions about GMO foods. “A tomato’s a tomato, don’t matter how it got there.” One officer, who as one protester later jested was “too Italian for his own good,” was especially talkative. He told us he agreed with the Verizon worker’s strike and was disappointed when they returned to work without a deal. I asked if he would arrest the strikers if he was given the orders to do so. He responded with a smirk and said “yeah, it’s my job.”

Inside the station, more waiting. First to be searched, then to be put in a one-person cell with 5 or 6 others. We passed the time singing and starting conversations about our lives outside of the occupation. After a while, an officer came by with cheese sandwiches and water and promised us we’d be out “in one or two hours.” Three and half hours later, close to 3:00am, we were finally released into the cold night air. It was heart-warming to find a group of people from the occupation and the National Lawyer’s Guild waiting for us.

A group of us took the J train back to Liberty Plaza, laughing and recounting the whole way. Six hours earlier, we had no idea the other existed, now we were the best of friends. This is what the NYPD doesn’t understand. The more they arrest us, the more solidarity they create between us. We built a community on that bridge and on that bus and in that cell. All of us went through this experience that was dehumanizing, but also jovial and absurd. All the arrests did was reinforce our resolve, commit us more to the occupation and make us even more connected.

I remember during the intense moments on the bridge when we all knew arrest was imminent someone yelled out and we repeated: “Mic check! It is an honor and a privilege to be arrested with you all today. 50 years from now, when you tell your grandkids about this, you can say that you were a soldier in the Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge!” And there among the tears and the worries and the panic, we found a place to cheer and stand together.

-Danny Valdes-