Spring Training, every Friday until Mayday

NEW YORK – I have come to three ‘Spring Training’ marches now—but today [April 20th] was by far the most exciting. The weekly marches on Wall Street have become increasingly well-organized and effective at getting occupiers in front of the stock exchange for the closing bell every Friday.

The marches are designed as a fun way to practice new protest tactics before May Day. The police stop us blocks away from Wall Street when we march in a group, so we have developed different tactics of going “civilian,” breaking into small groups to penetrate the police lines that circle the stock exchange before reforming the protest on the other side. This week, when we began to arrive, there were many occupiers already there who have been occupying the steps to Federal Hall since they got pushed off of Wall Street earlier this week. The police had barricaded the steps and control access to what they officially refer to as the “first amendment rights area.” Seriously, they really call it that. In addition to the NYPD, there were counter terrorism, federal park police and SWAT.

As the crowd swelled the police began making arrests and clearing the sidewalk. The police pushed aggressively and isolated everyone who had just arrived from the group that had been occupying the steps to Federal Hall, arresting at least three. Tension was high, but the crowd calmed before the people’s gong—our response to the closing bell of the stock exchange. We mic checked to the people behind police lines on the barricaded steps and celebrated together before breaking into the familiar chant, “A – Anti – Anti-Capitialista,” this time in the very heart of capital. There were police barricades and lines of officers keeping us apart, but there were a few hundred of us dancing right across from one of the most potent symbols of power; the energy was high.

A mic check broke our chant.

“Ten occupiers are laying down on the sidewalk right now, they know they will be arrested and wish to go peacefully!”

Two weeks ago a group began sleeping on the sidewalk, following the exact specifications for legally sleeping on the sidewalk as a form of protest from the the 2000 U.S. district court decision Metropolitan Council V. Safir. The occupation grew larger each night until last week, when the police started arresting people. The occupation shifted half a block to Federal Hall, which as federal property was beyond the jurisdiction of the NYPD. This was where the “first amendment rights area” had been set up. Direct Action had video cameras in place to film the occupiers laying down in accordance with the law, then immediately getting arrested for it.

“Mic Check! Next week we are going to invite everyone to come lay down!”

It was powerful. The NYPD has tried very hard to prevent us from growing roots anywhere in the city. The last few weeks have been filled with arbitrary arrests, sleepless nights and scant media coverage, but for the first time in a while, it felt like the tide was turning today; it felt like we were winning.

- John Dennehy -

Editor’s note: This is part of series of stories detailing how different occupies are getting ready for May Day. Read what other’s are up to and tell us what’s happening where you are.

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-

NEW YORK, NY–I have had strange confrontations with Bank of America lately.  In the last 8 days I was arrested twice only on the verge of approaching the Bank, steps away from the unknown possibility. And what was the NYPD working so hard to protect Band of America from? First I was dressed as a clown with a team of merry pranksters who sought to enact a short, harmless skit of pulling down the pants of “unsuspecting executives” to expose ALEC, an organization that allows corporations to draft legislation–which, no surprise, Bank of America is a prominent member.

It was raining and biting cold but the +Brigade Shenanigan team, a newly formed OWS effort of creative resistance, was suiting up in Bryant Park on F29 with bright monochromatic colors and the “executives” scavenging in trash cans for Starbucks cups to look authentic. But our pantsing skit was deterred, because as soon as we tried to cross the street, a police barricade of bodies and scooters lined up alongside us. The Bank of America tower, like the Death Star, loomed in the distance surrounded by police, like clusters of black mussels clasping onto its mammoth shape.

We had the light. There was the flashing white man walk sign taunting us with the rite of passage. Struck by the absurdity of police barring 8 clowns from crossing the street, I was immediately on my hands and knees crawling between their legs. I was promptly lifted up and put in handcuffs. I didn’t want and wasn’t expecting to be arrested. I was in that precious liminal space of free play. I felt like I could do anything.

But corporations have a way of smashing any spark of the unique human spirit rising up. As the crowd looked at me for some words of inspiration, something, I could only muster a call to bravery for the clowns to carry on, and a bad joke: “Why did the clown cross the road?  To get arrested!” As they marched me off into the paddy wagon, I began singing and dancing, “I’m Singing in the Rain!  Just Singing in the rain!  What a glorious feelin!  I’m happy again!” But as I was placed into the wagon alone, watching my comrades carry on valiantly with their march, my ridiculous wet spandex costume began to chill me to the bone at the thought of being a drenched clown in the tombs tonight. That day I was lucky to be released within 5 hours at the precinct, where I was joined by a fellow bicyclist friend, Joe, whose bike was confiscated for “evidence”; a 16 year-old mega force, Mesiah; and another cyclist, Mandolin, who tried to carry a tent on the march.  In my cell, Mesiah and I did yoga and talked about housing rights.  In the other cell, Joe and Mandolin were starting a men’s group to discuss privilege.

My next encounter, I was not so lucky. This time it was a call from the courageous Code Pink on International Women’s Day. The plan was to gather at the Bank of America at Zuccotti Park as super-Sheroes with message-ready breasts for a BUST-ing up the Big Banks action, harking on a thousand year old tradition of women putting their bodies on the front lines. I dressed in a denim jumpsuit with a red scarf on my head, re-appropriating Rosie the Riveter. I met Savitri in the park, that empty park once so full of life.  It was hot with gusts of wind shooting through the trees. She wrote on my arm, “We can do it!” and I  painted “BofA, You can suck it!” across my chest. We began to walk casually into the bank.  Savitri, Medea and Rae, all wearing suits, made it in.  As soon as I stepped up to the doors, the cop locked the door in my face.  Ah yes, the paint was peaking out from my jumpsuit.

Mark and I walked around to the other side to look for another entrance and saw customers slipping out.  People could get out, but no one could get in. Well, at least we shut down Bank of America again. I called Savitri on the inside, who said there were only three of them and they were very vulnerable.  She had a beautiful baby to get to after this.  We waited at the side exit and suddenly Savitri bounded out the door like a leaping gazelle and raced off to safety. Soon after, Rae ran out with the policeman close on her heels. I called out to him, “Hey Officer! Over here!” but he was hot on the pursuit. He grabbed Rae roughly. Mark was quick to de-arrest. The burly policeman grabbed her by the neck and threw her head down into the concrete, all the while she was crying out that she had a neck injury.

As they were detained in the bank lobby, the choir gathered and decided to sing in solidarity, walking along the sidewalk in front of the bank. As we walked past once and I began to circle back, a cop told me I couldn’t sing and had to keep moving. I said that I was moving and was not obstructing traffic. Instantly, the same rough cop threw me over the scaffolding to arrest me, my things spilling out of my bag. I lifted my leg over the scaffolding so as to not have my stomach jammed into metal and try to kick my things from falling into the gutter and another cop snapped, “Stop resisting arrest!” And off the 4 of us were carted away, at the bank manager’s request. I watched the rough cop throw around several woman walking by for no apparent reason.

Maybe it was the full moon, or the solar flares in the sky, but there seemed to be a lot of crazy in the air that day. In the precinct, two men in Mark’s cell seemed dead set on winning the crazy war. A white man in an all black suit skirted over to our side when he was released to go to the bathroom and starting messing with the cops, “How crazy do I have to be?  What do I have to do so you’ll take me to the hospital so I can get a meal?  How CRAZY do I have to be?”  The other, a young black man, was far more sympathetic in his rants.  Screaming bloody murder about injustice and racism. Despite all the machismo, you could understand his anger. We began to sing to try to calm him.  Love, Love Love, all you need is love. When we quieted, he surprised us by calling out, “Love is what I need. Keep singin’, ladies! I need you to sing.” We sang every song we knew.

First they told me I would be there for 15 mins to an hour because I didn’t enter the bank. Four hours later, we were all taken to Central booking, which was packed with men lined up against the wall in chains.  Throughout the whole process, Medea was brought in again and again to try to capture her prints, and they made ageist remarks, like she was so old that her prints were rubbed off or that she was some kind of alien. We said goodbye to Mark, fearful of what he was being led into.  Later we found out there was huge brawl in his cell and he got punched in the back of his head.

Rae and I were led into the women’s cell. Medea’s fingers were still being pushed and prodded. We had about 16 women in there, mostly in their early 20s, all of color, almost all of whom were new mothers too. It was freezing cold, the window open, a fan on. We weren’t allowed to keep our jackets because of the zippers. Rae’s neck had fingerprints on it still and she was sore. We told jokes, arrest and action stories, talked about what ideal brunch we would have. For awhile we tried to huddle on one mat but I couldn’t get warm and fall asleep until hours later, when a kind prostitute offered to cover me with her fur coat and to share her mat. We snuggled tightly and she asked me if I had lice. Said she’d been there 36 hours already, had been working the same streets for 28 years.

They woke up everyone at 5am and said we had to clean up and get ready to go to court. Only 3 women were taken. Later on, everyone felt up to chatting again and they all wanted to hear why we were arrested. They laughed and laughed, couldn’t believe we’d be arrested for protesting a bank, let alone for singing. The women there were smart, knew what was going on in the world, knew all about Bank of America and its foreclosures, its corruption. There was no surprise that corporations are criminals. They were arrested for fighting back against an abusive boyfriend, getting in a screaming match with her boyfriend, bringing in a cigarette to her son in jail, smoking pot, selling fake watches. But none of them were interested in protesting. They agree it has to be done but they can’t do it. They have to work, take care of their babies, survive. They said things have to get really bad so people will get up and do something. How much worse does it have to get?

We waited and waited. Didn’t want to drink the dirty water or the milk or the vacuum packed sandwiches. Finally, after 3pm, our names were called.  We were all charged with criminal trespassing.

It wasn’t until I was sitting in the courthouse next to Rae, when I saw my friends out there, looking tired but smiling supportively, that a rush of anger flooded over me.  The parody of this system.  There we were in this dressed up, fancy court when a foot behind us lay filthy floors covered in cockroaches and a system that has no interest in improving society. Police protect the corporate personhood and never our freedom of speech. There’s no telling what we could be arrested for any more. I can’t gauge actions by the same standards any more. As Spring blossoms, the spirit of the people is heating up again, we’ll be out on the street in big numbers. We will fill those cells so packed, the walls might explode.

-Monica Hunken-

I boarded the World Trade Center-bound E train on March 17th (M17) not knowing what to expect when I got out on the other side, a few blocks away from the now infamous Zuccotti Park. It’s been a long winter for Occupy Wall Street. The past few months have seen the movement deal with increasingly violent repression and evictions nationwide, as well as – at least in New York City – a lot of internal bickering and debate on everything from nonviolence to funding sources to housing of occupiers. Many occupiers have been referring to winter as an “incubation” period. The mainstream media pretty much considers the movement dead. Whatever it is, it is vastly different than the Occupy Wall Street of 6 months ago. Or at least it was until M17, the movement’s six-month anniversary.

I spent most of the train ride to Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti’s reclaimed name) conjuring the many nights of elation and frustration I have had in that park – the countless general assemblies, free meals, cigarettes, stimulating conversations, rain storms, arguments, marches and finally, the brutal eviction that brought it all to a screeching halt. Since the eviction, the park had been empty. Or maybe barren is a better word. A cold (literally), lifeless slab of concrete in the valley of the gargantuan buildings surrounding  it. Whatever vitality we brought to that place had long been replaced with barricades, security guards, and an eerie stillness.

When I emerged in Lower Manhattan, I was hit by a wave of déjà vu. I could hear the drums and chants inside the park reverberating throughout the neighborhood. I realized that even the sound of the neighborhood had changed since the eviction. A flash flood of warm familiarity washed over me. On the six-month anniversary of our movement, I was transported back to its beginning. I picked up the pace and almost sprinted to the park. When I arrived, I found it once again brimming over with occupiers and police.

 It was wonderful to see the park electrified with people power again. That powerful feeling of remembrance and recognition continued to surge through my body like a kind of muscle memory being reawakened.

As soon I walked into the park, I witnessed someone being arrested by the NYPD. The mood was tense and rowdy. I was surprised by the number of police, all with a dozen or so zip-tie handcuffs hanging from their belts. I saw a few old friends and gave and received many hugs. We talked about the insane tug-of-war in which we are constantly engaged with the NYPD. They show up with batons, handcuffs, guns, and riot gear and raise the tension level in the park, then put the onus on us to deescalate. There were a few other arrests, and the police shouted at us where we could and couldn’t stand and what we couldn’t bring into the park.

Throughout the day, different marches left the plaza and came back to cheers and raised fists. It was as if we were in the midst of a mighty stretch after a long slumber. As afternoon turned to evening, the overall mood of the park shifted and the police presence seemed to taper off a bit. The chants going around and the drum circle in full swing filled the park with that familiar cacophonous buzz. There is something amazing about chanting and dancing around with complete strangers. One of the more popular chants of the day was taken from the Spanish Indignados and proclaims simply and rhythmically: “Anti-capitalista!” It was refreshing to hear so many chant that radical declaration. Even through the winter, we had kept our radical roots.

At 7pm, as customary, we had our general assembly (GA). This was my first time attending a GA in a good while, and by the time it was over I was re-enamored with direct democracy and twinkling fingers. There were hundreds in attendance – probably our biggest GA of the year. It was also surprisingly lacking in rancor or squabbling, except for the traditional begging of the drum circle to keep it down or move away from GA. We consensed on signing on to a letter calling for a federal investigation of the NYPD for spying in Muslim communities and broke out into discussion groups to talk about our ideas for May Day. There was a palpable spirit of camaraderie and solidarity in the air, and many OWS veterans commented to me that they felt truly transported to “the good ol’ days” before the eviction and even before the tents went up at Zuccotti, fighting with drummers and all.

After GA a large march which included Michael Moore and Dr. Cornel West arrived from the Left Forum. Suddenly there were over a thousand people communing in the park, some playing games, some doing interviews or making media, others just talking and smoking. There was a Capoeira circle, a mic-check speak out, and of course plenty of drums and dancing. The mood was jovial in spite of everyone’s noticing that the police presence seemed to be increasing as the night went on. At one point, a barrage of bag pipes could be heard on the southwestern corner of the park. This being St. Patrick’s Day, a small Irish marching band had either purposely or by coincidence found its way to Liberty Plaza, equipped with bag pipes and snare drums. The crowd in the park erupted with cheers and applause and ran to the park’s northern perimeter to greet the band. In a confused scuffle (at least from my vantage point) the police moved in, forced the band to stop playing and moved them to the other side of the street. One officer told me they feared the band would “cause a riot.”

Suddenly an orange net appeared. Usually, this means that you have been kettled by the police and are about to go to jail. But this orange net had the words “Occupy” and “99%” stenciled on it. A group of protesters were extending the net and creating a barrier between the police and the occupiers. I admit, being surrounded by that net gave me a creepy feeling , even though I knew it was ‘on our side.’ Yellow OWS caution tape started to go up all over the park too, tied on the trees and cutting through the crowd in odd angles. I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but I could almost sense the tension in the park boiling over. An exorbitant number of police were amassing on the northern side of the park. I stood on one of the benches in the park to try to get some perspective, and I saw what all the fuss was about. A group of occupiers were erecting tents in the center of the park. The net, the tape, all of it, was to protect the tents. A light came on inside the first tent and the words stenciled on its side became visible: “You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.”

I watched as the tent was hoisted into the air and cheered with the crowd, but I knew that what had been a glorious and rejuvenating day would have an ugly ending. We paraded around with two tents for a bit, all of us enjoying what we knew were the last exquisite moments of our resurrection. Then, as if someone hit a fast forward button, we jumped from reliving those first amazing months of Occupy to November 15 – eviction day. Much like that night, the police lined up on the Broadway stairs and announced that the park was closed. They told us that being in the park was now an arrestable offense. And so those who were willing to risk arrest moved to create a human wall on the eastern end of the park, a few meters from the line of police officers. I moved toward the middle of the park and stood on a bench to see the NYPD march in and start arresting people. After about half an hour they had moved everyone out of the park and began erecting barricades around the park’s perimeter. After being pushed and shoved out of the park, those of us who remained stood on the sidewalk, most of us bewildered by the brute force we had just witnessed. We were on the western end of park, isolated from the far greater brutality happening on the eastern side. In the background I could hear people calling for a march.

By this point, I was both mentally and physically exhausted from this behemoth roller-coaster of a day, but I just couldn’t tear away. I ran through the gamut of emotions and questions we all ask ourselves in moments like these, trying to balance my sense of duty and solidarity with the sheer terror of the situation at hand and its possible outcomes. Do I want to get arrested? Or beat up? Is it worth it this time? In truth, I had to fight off the urge to wave the white flag and go home. But I was angry, dejected, and so was everyone else. In the end, I decided to march with my comrades.

A few hundred of us wound our way through Lower Manhattan, flanked all the while by police in scooters and squad cars. We turned sharply down side streets a few times, which seemed to confuse the police, but definitely caused confusion amongst the marchers. I found myself running down the sidewalks and streets with large groups of other occupiers just to keep up. This, plus the sheer volume of the police response, made for some moments of pandemonium. We took the streets several times throughout, prompting arrests and batons. Police smashed an occupier’s head against a glass door. We passed a least one broken store window (though it was unclear if it was broken by Occupy) and at one point on a side-street in the Village, some protesters emptied several trash receptacles into the streets to block the police. It worked, to everyone’s excitement. I saw several police scooters with trash and plastic bags caught in their wheel wells.

When the march reached E. Houston shortly after that, I decided to hop on the nearby F train and make the trip back to Queens. I wanted to stay, continue the march, be with my comrades, express my anger and my joy – but I just had to break away. I knew that things would only get uglier, and I was already delirious with a cogent mix of exhaustion, frustration, and the high of marching through the streets. It felt as if I had lived the whole history of occupy in the span of 10 hours. On the train ride home, I found myself thinking that despite its dystopian ending, M17 had been a success. It was a re-ignition of our imaginations; a reminder of all the beautiful things we built from scratch in that small park, and all the hardships that came with them, and how easily it can be wiped away.

Spring has definitely sprung at OWS, and it’s only the beginning.

- Danny Valdes -
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Last night was the most amazing night of my life…

The day started like any other. We woke in the truck in Brooklyn to find Julie outside her apartment. She let us take some quick showers and gave us a cup of coffee while we chatted about anything from what we do for a living to the movement–small talk, really, but nice small talk. After that, we put in our time at Milk & Roses to knock out some work as fast as possible to get down to the protest a little earlier. Unfortunately, I had a good amount of work to sift through, so we didn’t make it down to Liberty Park until about 6pm.

As has become our tradition, Joe and I walked around the park to check out any new additions to the grounds. One small table was set up near where we entered the park. They were passing out food separate from the people’s kitchen. It was the second time I’d seen them, so I was curious. When I asked who they were and what they were up to, they said they were from the shelter (they lived there, not worked there) and they were serving food to anyone at the park. They’d made it, donated it, and served it, and they were living in the shelter, themselves! Incredible!

Joe and I hung out for a while with nothing much happening. David Peel was back leading sing-a-longs, so I hung around that circle and sang and filmed for a while. I found Joe after that, having gotten separated at some point, and he was busy grubbing on dinner. I wandered off while he ate his food and we became separated again for an hour or so, until I spotted him on the south end of the park talking to a couple people–an old Italian woman and a younger friend or relative of hers. I didn’t get their names.

After talking with those folks for 45 minutes or so, my feet were anxious to move, so I told Joe I was going to go get a couple slices of pizza since I’d missed the dinner servings in the kitchen. We said our goodbyes and Joe and I headed down to Pronto Pizza, where they overcharged me for three slices of pizza, a soda, and a beer.

After dinner we wandered back to Liberty Park, a mere block away, not expecting much to happen for the night. The crowd was relatively small compared to other nights, and it was generally quiet. A small march in solidarity for Oakland passed by once, but it was tiny, so I figured it was just a marginal march, but when they came back around the park with slightly more people, I decided to join in. I grabbed Joe and we jumped into the march.

We circled the park one more time, gathering a larger crowd, then headed off down Church past the 9/11 Memorial. We paused in front of it for a moment to gather together, chanting, “New York is Oakland! Oakland is New York!” and chants of every other sort, like “Hey hey! Ho ho! Police brutality has got to go!”

From there we made our way to city hall, trying to take the streets at every opportunity. A block down, a fireman opened a fire hydrant and yelled out, “If you stand here, you’re going to get wet! I’ve gotta open it!” “Bullshit!” I yelled at him, sticking a camera out at him.

By the time we made it to City Hall, we’d become quite a large group of people. Hundreds, if not a thousand. We circled City Hall slowly two or three times, gathering together in a close-knit group to make it harder for police to drag one of us out of the crowd. On the second trip around City Hall, people started spilling into the streets, and the cops quickly took out their clubs and threw a guy to the ground, jumping on him like a swarm of jackals, beating him, throwing their elbows and knees at everyone, pushing us all back with wild looks in their eyes as we tried to drag the person being arrested to safety and the group. That guy didn’t make it and was hauled off. A few steps beyond that, I saw three or four police officers, including a detective in a plain suit violently pushing and throwing a young girl and two young guys toward the sidewalk. The girl wasn’t taking any shit, swinging at the police officers with her fists, but they didn’t arrest her, they just violently shoved them onto the sidewalk with their clubs.

I screamed everything I could in those cops’ faces when they arrested that guy moments before. “Shame! Shame!” “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!” and every foul thing I could think of. I was literally nose to nose screaming in their face. When they pushed me with their clubs, I linked arms with the people around me and yelled as forcefully as I could, “Don’t you fucking touch me! Don’t you touch me!”

We made our way a few blocks away from there and by then we were riled. We were peacefully marching in solidarity against the police brutality in Oakland and here the police were beating the hell out of people and arresting them for stepping into the street. In most cities, under normal circumstances that constitutes a whistle blow and a dirty look from a traffic cop, or at worst, a ticket. Now that we were riled up, we were absolutely determined to take the streets, and we did, but we were quickly pushed back onto the sidewalk. But now, whenever they pushed us onto the sidewalk, people would run ahead of the cops and take the street again, then we’d all rush forward and we’d completely control the street, stopping traffic and chanting. It was incredible!

Another man was thrown down and beaten by at least six or seven policemen, and even more formed a circular wall around the arrest to keep us from seeing what they were doing and to keep us from trying to drag the victim away from them. The guy next to me took a club to the gut, but we all held our ground and surrounded the cops, yelling in their faces exactly what we thought of them, who they work for–anything we could think of to shame them into seeing what they are doing is wrong, but many people also, such as myself, were so disgusted and sickened by what we saw, anger took over and we very aggressively yelled in their faces, nose to nose. I’m talking centimeters away. As long as you don’t touch them, you’re good. But if you even accidentally bump them, they’ll call it assault and beat you down.

After we had to give up and let the man be arrested, we turned to continue the march, but the police had blocked off the intersection with one of their plastic orange net barricades. People plowed through over and under it. They couldn’t stop us. Once we burst through, we grabbed it and won a tug of war match with the police. I somehow ended up at the front of it, leading the way through the streets, screaming and chanting with the crowd, holding the police netting above our heads and peace and victory signs above our heads, pumping our fists, smiling and in love with life and our brief grasping of freedom. I could feel it in my hands and heart as real as the police netting. Cabbies and truckers were honking in solidarity with us, slapping us five out their car windows as we walked by. Traffic was completely shut down. Every time I passed a cab with open windows in the back, I ducked my head in and thanked the passengers for their patience.

By then, the police were largely helpless. A way up the street, there was a bottleneck in the middle of the street between to cabs. People were spilling all around them, but the people who tried to go between the cabs were suddenly met by a singular cop out of nowhere. All the other cops were somewhere else, trying to set up another block and ambush for us, but this guy was suddenly right there. “Ah, we’ve got a fucking hero over here!” I yelled. The cop started violently pushing and punching at the protesters who came his way. We yelled, “Go around! Go around!” and kept marching. I don’t know what became of that.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were marching toward Washington Square Park. We held and controlled the streets from City Hall to Washington Square Park and back to Liberty Park. The police were absolutely ineffective and helpless. They couldn’t control us. We chanted, “Whose streets? Our streets!” changing it up now and then with “city” and “world”, rather than streets.

Everywhere you looked people were cheering, chanting, skipping, jumping, announcing updates from other Occupancies. Someone yelled out, “Oakland just took back the park!” and we all cheered and chanted as loud as we could.

We wandered through the village and everyone came out of the bars and restaurants in awe of us. Some joined in. People leaned out their windows to watch what was happening. I blew kisses at everyone I saw and yelled to them, “We’re making history! Join us!” Then we all chanted, “Join us! Join us!”

We wound our way through the streets in many directions to keep the police guessing as to where we were going. I hadn’t seen the mounted police since city hall, where we chanted, “Get that pig off that horse!” but the motorcycles were suddenly everywhere–the same motorcycles that have been used to run us over in the past. The police would head us off at each intersection and form a wall with their bikes, but we’d just run around them. Some people ran and tried to leap over them, but they were quickly snared by police and beaten to the ground.

Joe told me the guy who tried to talk us into getting arrested at Washington Square sidestepped one motorcycle that tried to run him over, only to have another come up on the other side of him trying to do the same thing. He then kicked down a police bike, knocking over several more, and the cops spilled over him in a massive horde and beat the hell out of him.

On the way to Washington Square, one guy in the march a few people in front of me suddenly started pissing on a car parked next to him and he almost got his ass kicked by fellow protesters for doing something so stupid and foul. We took care of him instantly and reigned in any violence that might have erupted from it.

In trying to evade the cops with their cars, vans, and motorcycles, we ran down one street and dragged wooden police barricades into the road to block their path. As soon as people saw what was happening, everyone started grabbing anything they could to do the same–garbage cans, many garbage bags, more barricades–anything we could find. Then we would run forward and always stay ahead of the police. They couldn’t do a damn thing.

At one point, I got a charlie horse in both of my calf muscles at the same time. I thought, “Ah hell; not now!” I just kept moving forward the best I could and was able to jog it off, thank god.

That Sgt. who’d made national news for chewing out the NYPD at Times Square marched with us, too, as did another man in uniform.

After controlling the major streets in downtown NYC, like Broadway, we decided to head back to Liberty Park and seize our victory before something unfortunate happened, or before police figured out a way to break us up. We marched back toward Liberty Park chanting, jumping, hugging strangers… Oh! and we WERE able to drag one victim out of the police’s clutches, to which we all cheered massively.

As we made our way back to Liberty Park, we dominated the streets, linked arms, slowed down, seizing our power, and sang “Solidarity Forever”.

We entered Liberty Park arm in arm in solidarity and everyone met us with cheers, applause, and noise of all kinds. It was an incredible night! The march was followed by a few speeches of love and devotion to the people. I was exhausted and drenched with sweat. I gave absolutely everything I had in me to that march. We wanted to show Oakland serious solidarity for their dedication and we did just that. We made history, and Oakland took back the park!

We are the 99%! We are too big too fail!

-Dylan Hock

BRONX, NY – A week after New York City police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly ordered officers not to interfere with journalists covering the Occupy protests, I found myself sitting in a cage in a back room of the 40th Precinct in the Bronx staring at a travel-size white bottle of Razac Hand & Body Lotion. My workday had taken an improbable turn; I’d been arrested. So now here I was, fixating on a bottle of lotion, wondering why it was there, thinking of it as “free” because it sat on a ledge outside the black iron-mesh cage, and worse, imagining the many uses of lotion in a jail. Better to pass the time trying to accept my present circumstances than trying to figure out the absurd.

I’d been covering the Occupy movement beyond Wall Street, and the Bronx had so far held eight weekly general assemblies of its own. This past Saturday, there was a planned 11 a.m. rally to bring attention to the city’s October bulldozing of the Morning Glory community garden, a long-abandoned lot that area residents had taken over two years ago for the garden. The lot was now grassy and fenced-in.

I thought that I’d report for an hour or so and then meet a friend for an afternoon brunch. Less than 10 minutes after arriving, however, I was in handcuffs.


When I stepped out of the 149th Street station at 11 a.m., my first time at that sprawling five-lane intersection, I found the protest site—a sidewalk beside an empty lot—easily because of a heavier-than-expected police presence. Early reports had indicated the opposite. I didn’t expect to see an officer of rank surrounded by 11 cops, four cars and a police van. I remember thinking, There’re more cops here than protesters.

A cluster of the protesters were walking away from where they had planned to set up. I saw a two-person Bronx News 12 camera crew and a man I assumed was another journalist; he was scribbling into a pad and interviewing. Another guy with a hand-cam, I pegged as a protester. While filming, he demanded to know why officers, in particular the black and Latino officers, were breaking up a protest over a garden in their own community.

I started asking questions, first to the ranking officer, but without identifying myself as a journalist, and then to the dawdling protesters, to figure out what was happening and why.

According to Captain Garcia, protesters had been obstructing pedestrian traffic. I looked around to verify. At this morning hour, on the sidewalk of an empty lot, in the middle of a major five-way intersection, there was no pedestrian traffic. Cops didn’t count as pedestrians, so I dismissed the charge.

Then the first arrest happened. A man whose name I later learned was David Suker had been crouching over a crate, fiddling with a stack of Occupy Wall Street Journal newspapers and simultaneously telling officers that he had a right to be stand, sit, or run on a public sidewalk. He didn’t move on cops’ requests, so they moved in. The rest of Garcia’s flank was fanning out along the sidewalk, warning the boldest protesters against standing.


A community-affairs officer gestured for me to move on, so I identified myself as a journalist. He immediately stepped back and said that he wouldn’t want me to “get caught up.” I interpreted his words as a friendly exchange, not a warning. 


I kept writing and then I heard Captain Garcia say, in my general direction, “You can not stand here. You have to move. You’ve been so notified.” It’s the last thing I scribbled before police officers surrounded me. I must’ve looked like a guppy mouth; it just didn’t occur to me that Garcia had meant to arrest me.


As officers encircled me, I kept my shoulders down and tried to moderate my tone. That sixth sense had nothing to do with journalistic training and everything to do with my being city kid. I grew up here in southeast Queens; NYPD ain’t never been nothing to fuck wit. I protested that I was a working journalist and asked if they were serious. 


One officer took my bag, lifting it off my shoulder and over my head, while another said I was being placed under arrest. 


Someone else took my notepad and pen. And another officer pulled my hands behind my back. When I felt cuffs clasp around my wrists, I started to do a weird thing.

Similar to fixating on the bottle of lotion while sitting in lockup, I kept asking after my notepad. Looking back, I see those tics for what they were: poor attempts to assert control. If freedom were an object, in my case it would have been my reporter’s notebook and a forgotten bottle of lotion. On Saturday they held roughly the same value.

As I was being led away from the sidewalk, I suddenly remembered Kelly’s mandate not to touch journalists covering Occupy protests, and I reminded every cop within a 10-foot radius.

The officers led me to the van. Kelly was in Manhattan; this was the Bronx.

The other arrestees, four male protesters, were in the seats behind me; officers sat up front.
 


I got an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. I’d been detained by the NYPD before, except I wasn’t a journalist. I was a kid in high school. When I was 15, while coming home from a dressy night out, a girlfriend and I pushed through the West 4th Street station turnstiles together on a single fare. It was a dumb thing to do. 
 


We were cuffed, packed into the back of a police van, fingerprinted, and kept overnight in jail. I’ll never forget the kitchen chair when I got home the next morning. My mother had positioned it by the window to overlook the boulevard; she had sat there, worrying unnecessarily because I had begged the officers not to call.

Another time, also while a student at Dalton, a prep school on the Upper East Side, my classmates and I were detained in the Times Square subway station while going to an annual minority-college fair at the Javits Center. We were attending during afternoon free periods. Apparently we should have traveled with notarized forms permitting us to leave school premises. Our college-fair fliers weren’t enough. Not only were the officers sneering and incredulous, they paraded us single-file through the station and into a back room to wait while they sorted out “the truth.” I eventually did make it to that fair.
 


Very rarely have I talked about these incidents with the NYPD. It’s not because those milestones didn’t deeply affect me. They did. But heavy-handed or discriminatory policing was so commonplace when I was growing up, nearly all of my black and Latino friends had experienced or witnessed it at least once—or had close friends who did. Compile our testimonies in a book, scatter the leaves in the air, and they’d blanket the city from tip to tip. I didn’t see the point of adding one more.
 


I began to rethink that approach on Saturday. After the umpteenth time I asked officers, who weren’t paying me any attention, why I’d been arrested, someone answered. From the seat behind me, Suker said, “Because you’re a black woman with dreads.”
That shut me up because for the first time that day, it occurred to me that Suker might be right. 



“Black woman or not,” I said to no one in particular, “You don’t know who I know.” 


But my confidence game was up. The statement sounded rushed. Plus, my voice cracked on that second, “know.”

What recourse did I have? I’m a freelance journalist working up a story about Occupy spreading into the communities of color that I had not yet sold. I didn’t have an assigning editor to call. I was in trouble and it was time to think about how to get out of it. Dwelling on how officers perceived me because I’m a black woman with natural hair was not going to help.

The only thing I knew how to do was my job.

The preceding intimidation, the arrests—they weren’t right. The charges didn’t match what I had seen, which, with the exception of Suker, was a small group of people shuffling along at officers’ requests, and grumbling, sometimes yelling, about having to do so. Nothing major. By the time the police van left for the precinct, the few remaining protesters were simply huddled on the opposite street corner.

In the van, I interviewed the four arrested protesters. I wanted to know who they were.


I asked officers questions like: What’s next? What am I charged with? (To which I never a straight answer.) Why are you doing that? How long is it going to take? I sounded like a 5-year-old on a long road trip. Maybe that’s why an officer twice insisted as I was standing in the station house waiting to be frisked, “You must’ve pissed somebody off.”



By the time I was released about three hours after being arrested, “disorderly conduct” had been added to my summons, and Captain Garcia warned me not to engage in similar criminal behavior. I had no intention of listening.


In what alternate universe is it disorderly conduct for a journalist in a U.S. city to scribble on a pad and question police officers in a normal speaking voice? In what upside-down town is the right to freedom of the press—and the right to assemble—considered a technicality? Oh. Right. New York City post-Occupy Wall Street. 
 


While the four protesters left, I stayed behind to complain to Captain Garcia. His flank, as always, stood close. I made some good points but so did he. Unless I carried a press pass from the office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information—which I didn’t and which no officer had asked to see, either—then I’d be treated like a protester, he said.

“You don’t say who or who isn’t a journalist,” I said. He seemed to concede the point but also fell back on the policeman’s answer, “It’s the law.” Our “discourse”—his word, not mine—was over. I was way too angry anyway, both at being treated like a criminal and at myself for feeling afraid, to remain professional.
 


Looking back, it’s hard not to conclude that the four or five officers who helped to arrest me weren’t just using a strategy of overwhelming force but a tactic of disorientation. I can’t identify who arrested me. I never got a reply as to whose handcuffs were on me. From the moment of my arrest to my release, I’d passed through at least 10 different officers’ hands. If I were to complain, whom specifically would I complain about?

I opened the door of the 40th Precinct to a boisterous crowd that had amassed across the street. A dreary morning protest of roughly 12 people in front of an empty lot had multiplied to about 70 people chanting in the precinct’s front yard for prisoners to be released.

Occupy the Bronx had gotten lucky. A local anti-gun-violence group from Patterson Housing, a public housing development visible in the distance, had planned an unrelated 2 p.m. rally in front of the 40th Precinct. After hearing that cops had arrested five protesters, though, they temporarily joined forces with Occupy. In the surrounding apartment buildings, heads were peeking out of their windows.


A familiar face, Mychal Johnson, a member of the local community board, crossed the street to greet me.

I’d walked to the side of the station to get my bearings, but also, I was uncomfortable with the protesters’ loud embrace. I was grateful for their presence; I’m not sure I would’ve gotten out of jail in a couple of hours without them. We shared a common interest in protecting the public’s right of assembly. I, too, had been a victim of the police tactics with which many of them were intimately familiar. But I wasn’t one of them.

“They weren’t leaving till you came out,” said Johnson, smiling as he walked over to introduce himself.

I’d first seen Johnson inside the precinct when the five of us arrived, although I didn’t understand his role, then. Turns out, Occupy leaders had called ahead, told him about the arrests at 149th Street and asked him to get to the station to observe the officers. It’s an old strategy among older activists in disadvantaged communities: policing the police.

“Because of Occupy Wall Street, the police are in a heightened state,” said Johnson, but, he explained, intimidation tactics in his section of the Bronx are nothing new.

We were trailing the enlarged protest group, which was now marching north toward Patterson. The anti-gun-violence group led with the call, “No guns in the community.” Occupiers closed the rear with, “No guns with the police.”

“They arrest first and find out later if you’re innocent,” Johnson said. “The system has it backwards because by the time you get to court and the judge tosses out the charge”—like, trespassing or disorderly conduct—“you’ve already been handcuffed, detained, and your name put into the system.”

Johnson stops walking and turns to face me as if emphasizing the point. “It shouldn’t work that way,” he said.

My court date is Feb. 16.

-CARLA MURPHY
This article originally appeared in The Daily Beast.

NEW YORK – This morning I woke up before dawn and rode the subway downtown. By 7:00 am there were hundreds gathered two blocks north of Wall Street, across from Liberty Plaza and every minute the crowd grew. There was a massive police presence and lines of helmeted officers blocked us from advancing south, so groups of a few hundred each started marching east. The police had frozen a large area around the stock exchange and set up checkpoints at each entrance, closing off public roads and sidewalks. If you had a political opinion, you could not enter.

We gathered at each chokepoint and we took the streets. People locked arms in long lines across the street and stopped the workers heading to Wall Street. Over the next few hours, as I wandered through the streets, every intersection toward Wall Street that I saw was jammed with people. The police would periodically push through and open a corridor, letting workers with badges pass, and we would periodically close it again. Some of the people passing through nodded their heads and smiled at us, others yelled and cursed, and a few brave ones stopped to talk. At one point, to clear the intersection, police held up metal barricades and charged into the crowd, knocking people to the ground, rushing past them, then arresting them.

At 11 am many people left the intersections downtown and gathered in Liberty Plaza, which was surrounded by police and metal barricades zip-tied together. They were only letting people in and out through one of two entrance’s and checking them as they went. Much of the crowd gathered outside, reluctant to enter the pen. Then a small group pulled the barricades apart at one section and a crowd flowed toward them to help. Within minutes an entire wall was down and the barricades were piled in the center of the park. It was amazing.

Back into the streets for me, there’s still a whole lot of action before this day ends.

-anonymous-