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Freedom loving artistic expression adds color to the City and Occupy Wall Street sea of blue and white NYPD units.
Anyone who knows me knows I adore New York City, I do. But like any devoted lover, in my heart of hearts, I hold the picture of my City as as our best selves, which is pretty darned patient and tolerant and generous.
Occupy Wall Street protesters vow that the 99% wil have their voices heard before any thought of ending the Occupation.
We share every out door inch of space, with every form of vehicle and traveler, we squeeze in tight spaces and through incalculable obstacles, together by the millions every day the workers and visitors and residents move freely around the city with one another.
We lend a hand when one is needed, give up seats on the subways and carry strollers with babies up steep old station stairs, we have more languages spoken than any place on the planet.
Nearly all of us manage to get along peacibly enough to enjoy the freedom to go about our own lives as we see fit and it works better here in the Big Apple than anyplace I've ever been. It's one of the many reasons the city is so dear to me, our divirsity is as wide as our tolerance. That's not to suggest we're a special breed, because every group has every kind, not religion or race, heritage or political stripe makes or breaks your character, actions define it.
Intersection of Liberty & Broadway filled with NYPD, OWS marchers and media.
So what about our fine character defines us most, what makes us something to admire? We still hold the dream of Lady Liberty in our hands, we are all people who together reflect an uncomfortable truth, it is our humanity, not our Nationality that makes us what we are,
Last night when the Occupy Campers were cleaning Liberty Park I was still confident that Mayor Bloomberg would keep his word and the protesters would stay indefinitely as promised.
After all he was instrumental in making marriage equality a reality just this spring and the speech to the Assembly as inspiring a plea for human rights and progressive government as a New Age, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington! Mayor Bloomberg's Equal Rights speech to NY State Assembly.
Reminder that we have individual protections under the law & National Lawyers Guild Observers voulenteer to occupy many protests in the City as an individual commitment to protecting our freedoms.
It's a wonderful speech and I encourage you to listen and Mayor B to listen again. When it comes to the issue of human rights and equality either we are all the same or we aren't. The minute the Occupy Wall Street protesters marched out of Liberty Park, there was no question they weren't equal to all the pedestrians around them,
Nor by any means despite their individual numbers in the many hundreds, treated equally to the corporate person, NYSE who presumably has ears to sensitive to be exposed to the volume of discontent it's genderless immortal personhood inspires.
Some of the barracades around Wall Street are a lingering bit of insult and insipid combined. In the rush for Wall Street to capitalize on recovery funds that should first go to Ground Zero worker's health care and veterans benefits, living wages for troops and more, they quick burned through billions in emergency funding contracts.
Across the street at the base of the Occupy Liberty Camp is the American Stock Exchange. It's face looks as shabby as its adjoining building, NYC High school for Economics and Finance. It was known at the time of September 11 as Ground Zero High School, but its needs quickly faded, forgotten in record profits from endless war against an enemy who never attacked us.
A lot has been left out of our history of taking care of ourselves as individuals. Like the heroes of the September 11, 2001 BoatLift who spontaneously accomplished the greatest sea rescue in history, nearly half a million people in 9 hours, surpassing the previous WWII record of French and Brittish soldiers with 339, 000 rescued from Dunkirk in nine days.
The 12 minute documentary, narrated by Tom Hanks, is inspiring and enlightening if you haven't heard the whole story of the heroic lifesaving efforts of ordinary individuals.But we individuals aren't often reminded that we do for ourselves far more than Uncle Sam's contractors do. It is one of the many truths that has been a casualty of our growing corporate rule, each lie fuel on the fires that burn now.
But the Chicken Hawks who send other people's sons and daughters to risk their lives for the country and Corporate Media buddies who sell revenue for their ad base first, rebranded the monumental failure to defend America and New York City's the air space into an apptitude for protection and a cost plus, blank check for taxpayers to fund it.
The Pentagon and MSM forgot Rumsfeld's speech from September 10, 2001 that addressed the $2.3 trillion missing from the Pentagon budget and it was off to the races with security investments that did more for the bank balance of the contractors than the safety of the public.
Oddly enough they didn't also build road barriers around the Federal Reserve, its just two blocks away along Nassau Street and within eye shot. Maybe that because the Banksters knew at the time everything but the building would be written off. The real payoff and recovery funding went to the the many Dunkin Donuts & Baskin Robbins instead.
Police and protesters facing off across the fence blocking Broad Street southern access to the NYSE.
You see when Main Street is given opportunity it's essential to let the insiders take some off the top. Not many more insider than the Carlyle Group, though they keep a very low profile; America is definitely Runnin'on Dunkin' as well as its bases around the globe, but its people are none the wiser for funding the Bush Clan & Saudi Royals in the process and perhaps helped Romney before selling his stake in Bain Capital.
These egrecious inequalities of the Corporate looters and polluters have been of distress to me for quite some time and like many things too big and complex to solve quickly or alone, you develop some acceptance of the reality.
Instead we content ourselves to make small steps in diverse places as opportunity permits. All we can do is start where we stand, invest the effort in creating reality of a better vision and sow benefits for the future.
As a global community we New Yorkers have done very much in the last decade to enrich our lives as individuals and the benefits of a healthier, more sustainable community. Our green markets have exploded in numbers, our bicycle lanes and pedestrian malls by the mile.
We have become more accessible to one another by sharing more public space and we share it with any who want to share it with us. That's the city in my heart and my fellow New Yorkers.
What happened this morning was something I could barely believe in the video from weeks ago, but am outraged having witnessed with my own eyes and bruises as a reminder of the agression of some in the NYPD and attemps to create panic.
Occupy Wall Street protesters in Liberty Park seem almost like ordinary individuals and until they join together to protest the crimes of a corporate NYSE person, or seek to use the space allocated to NYSE by no one knows who, are as free in NYC as anyone else, but when they march to Wall Street its a threat for maximum police. Why?
I'm generally uncomfortable being herded like chattle through the NYPD maze of fence in the Wall Street area, despite knowing most streets and blocked areas quite well. I'm sure I am not the only person who feels anxiety knowing that in specific areas of congestion any emergency would leave us trapped or trampled.
There have been enough private planes hitting city buildings for us to know that our Defense is as solid as our infrastructure and economy, which ain't nothing to brag about in most of America.
Standing at the Southwest corner of Exchange Place and Broad Street when the protesters reached the fence dividing them from the police, I felt the kind of sickening panic that fills you when your safety is threatened and you're trapped.
We were in a bottle neck and though I'm always conscious of the path to an outlet, in the NYSE maze of fences the crowd crushing forward became a stampede wanting to happen.
Suddenly a young woman was on the ground on the police side of the fence; she couldn't have been a hundred pounds and the man pinning her down three times that. I did not see what occured prior to her hitting the ground, the mother in me didn't need to and before that was thouroughly registered another man was struggling with uniforms.
The collective anxiety level soared as people flooded out to both sides, and scores of cameras raced in to feed on conflict unleashed. I felt the kind of knot in my stomach at the sight of the police weapons in their holsters that has not rocked me in that way since the GoP Convention, when we the people of the City were the enemy for expecting Public Servants answer to those of us who employ them and NYPD the muscle to shut us up.
Mayor Bloomberg's official office space, New York City Hall a few blocks north of Liberty Park across from the Brooklyn Bridge.
The neon green hats of the National Lawyers Guild Observers converged from far flung points in the crowd and the visible evidence of a system of laws for all and those willing to give their time to uphold made more thankful for all who defend our rights than I have been conscious of in quite some time.
Much to their credit calmer heads prevailed among the protesters and hands were raised in the two fingered peace sign and chanting the words, "peaceful protest" carried through the crowd.
With lawyers taking statements and police at ease, the group trailed east toward William Street with enough cameras on them to rival the ratio of lobbyists to Members of Congress.
When I caught up to the march again a contingent of motor scooter NYPD were driving right into the packed area of protesters trapped in another bottle neck. I would object to slaughter animals being run down from behind, much less consider it acceptable for NYPD intimidation or abuse or wtf were they thinking with more telephoto lenses and live feeds than Rupert Murdoch has in his dreams.
The protesters began to chant, "The whole world is watching" which indeed they will if not live, replayed for legions connected through cyberspace making it enough of an event that American news has to report it to cling to the last shred of relevance to its steadily dwindling audience.
By then I was sick to my stomach as if I'd just discovered a cheating partner, a true love that has betrayed you. I left them to march off to the east as I wandered back to Liberty Park.
The place was swarming with media interviewing ordinary citizens like they were a novelty captured there at Occupy Wall Street and the inequities they were giving voice to was something that suddenly happened.
Maybe Occupy Wall Street has awakened the Nation to the 99% issues we share and the demographic whoring of corporate media has awakened them to the fact that truth has an audience. But regardless of what anyone else chooses to do, we New Yorkers need to stand for individual rights. It is who we are as a global city and we look to the Mayor to reflect that with his actions, to protect every one of the individuals rights, and not compromise them for any entity that seeks to be placed above individual Liberty.
This is not an Empire where the NYSE rules from an armed fortress and moat. This is a democracy, a free country or a city of millions of freedom loving people expecting nothing less that what we cherish most being here, that Individual Rights are paramount.
It is why the folks in the green neon hats walk among us and have powers to remedy wrongs when might begins to threaten rights. It is what our forefathers came to this continent seeking and it is w˙at you Mayor Bloomberg advocate as progress.
Just as gender should not deny anyone equal status with respect to government's treatment, so should mortal or immortal persons get equal rights, if not from everyone at least New York City.
As you said yourself Mayor Bloomberg, we individuals are either equal as people or we are not.
