Occupy NY

Occupy Wall Street is reported every day on the first pages of the newspapers. I was near Zuccotti Park on November 12. Young people were waving their banners. Old ladies dressed in colorful clothes were singing songs about freedom and peace. The salesmen were offering some souvenir T-shirts to the tourists. They protest against greed capitalism, but one must earn their bagel. In Manhattan, there was an atmosphere of cheerful festival. In addition, the weather favored the protesters. If someone hoped that November wind would blow down the protesters’ tents, they were mistaken. The temperature was 60 F and the sun was shining. Near the monument of George Washington, who proudly looks at New York stock market, a guy dressed like a clown posed for photographs holding an artificial cake with the word OCCU-PIE. Demonstration or performance?

Newspapers complained that the Occupy movement didn’t have clear postulates. Maybe the opposition to the plutocracy is not enough? The Bostonians hadn’t already written the American Constitution when they threw the tea to the ocean either.      

*Occupy Wall Street camp in Zucotti Park was demolished on November 15. There were approx. 200 arrests.

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My friend lives at the apartment building at the corner of Park Avenue and 96th Street. She moved there in the 70s, when the whole area north of 96th Street was considered a bad neighborhood. It was Harlem. There were blacks. My friend remembers a jazz concert at which she and her husband were the only whites. But now they live next to NY financial elites. Bankers and brokers have apartments with a view of Central Park and doormen in uniforms. Here they rest after a weary day at Wall Street. Here the protesters do not make noise.