protesters and sign
Union Square Park
Manhattan
April 2012

Essay of the Day

Essay of the Day features selected essays from my separate, non-public online journals.

This essay is from Urban Journal.

Occupy Wall Street

Union Square Park

In 2011 and 2012, you could not live in New York City and remain unaware of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was featured on the news almost daily. And why not? It was occurring in the heart of the financial capital of the United States and the world, in the most media driven city of all.

The Occupy Wall Street movement began in September 2011, in Zuccotti Park. It's location gave it global attention and produced related demonstrations worldwide. The main issues were social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the influence of corporations on government especially but not only from the banking sector. The slogan "We are the 99%" referred to wealth distribution in the United States between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population.

I worked a short distance from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan's financial district which became the center of the protests and I was near that location often. However, I did not go to the park to photograph any of the activity. The movement was already being covered extensively by major newspapers and television companies. But the most important factor reducing my desire to capture images of the movement in the park, in addition to my lack of a client or sponsoring publication, was the reality that the police, backed by the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose rise to wealth was drawn entirely from Wall Street), and the demonstrators were engaged in massive, daily conflict that sometimes resulted in passersby being mistreated and arrested along with those directly involved in occupying the park.

In my view, this was deliberate. Bloomberg wanted to intimidate the demonstrators, most of whom had set up a micro-community with tents, food and other types of support, and anyone who thought of going near the park. I would not have been backed by a publisher who could get me out of jail if I was arrested while photographing the protests.

This was a very different New York than the city in which I was able to freely observe and photograph protests during the early 1980s. Beginning with the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the city has been ruled by an increasingly antagonistic police state. Officers were willing to break laws in order to break civil disobedience, dissent and even freedom of expression if it challenged those in power or their own authority in the most minute ways. Protesters were maced, beaten and arrested when individual police officers believed they could get away with it.

It is true that some protesters were not angels and they engaged in far less than purely positive actions. But they were never the ones with real power. The police, backed by the sentiments of the Wall Street wealthy and deeply annoyed financial companies, intended not only to limit the demonstrations but ultimately to destroy it, although that outcome would take time.

(continued)

a sign that was based on financial laws

But the Occupy Wall Street movement continued in various locations throughout the city for many months afterward. In the beginning, the protesters were mostly young but, as the demonstrations grew, older protesters also became involved. During the occupation of Zuccotti Park between 100 and 200 people slept there each night. Many protesters used the bathrooms of nearby business establishments but sanitation was nevertheless a major and continuing problem.

The protesters were forced out of Zuccotti Park in mid-November of 2011. At the end of December 2011, protesters started to re-occupy the park. Pepper spray was used against them by the police, who eventually donned riot gear and arrested sixty-eight people. In March 2012, a similar conflict occurred but with more force used by police and more people arrested. However, at one point, protesters became aware of many instances of theft among themselves involving cell phones and laptops. Later, there were enough allegations of rape, sexual assault and groping that women-only sleeping tents were set up.

Eventually the Occupy Wall Street Movement began to shrink and slowly die. Protesters appeared in the city at various points, more often in Washington Square Park and Union Square Park where I encountered them since I visited those locations regularly.

On one day in April 2012, some protesters in Union Square Park were holding signs and making speeches in a manner that I thought was amazingly relaxed, but that was not surprising. Union Square Park, which was surrounded by restaurants, stores, movie theaters, student housing and a large green market, was also a major subway intersection. As a result, it attracted many people in general and demonstrations there were vocal but often mild and very non-threatening. I got a chance to talk with some of the protesters and photograph their activities. In a sense, it was a visually sunny end to Occupy Wall Street.