“It’s like Resurrection City”, said Josh, as we entered the space that was informally becoming known as Liberty Central.
Josh’s mum had taken him to Washington, DC., in 1968, to join others who were arriving from all over the country as part of the Poor People’s Campaign. It was the last movement organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., just before his assassination. Rev. King had the vision to bring together poor people of all races to make visible the plight of poverty. Those arriving built “Resurrection City” on the mall on Washington as a shanty town which maintained dining and daycare facilities, a dispensary, and its own City Hall. For the next six weeks, thousands of participants poured into Resurrection City and staged daily demonstrations at the offices of government officials and their agencies.
Here at Liberty Central, in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, Saturday AM, people stood united against corporate and individual greed although their solutions to combat it seemed as diverse as the population itself. A meditation group sat, maintaining the purpose and energy of the gathering, while many stood watching the group manifesting this calm energy. Over to the side of the square stood a van with the words ‘Wikileaks Top Secret Mobile Collection Unit’ sprayed across it, with two men sitting on the back of the van eating what looked like veggie-burgers. In other areas there were signs of dissent – ‘smoking in a highly populated area is inconsiderate. We cannot be part of the fight if we are all DEAD’, read one sign. Another sign reminded everyone why everyone was there, ‘We are not leaving. Not while the rich (est 1%) own 75% of USA’s wealth. Tax the wealthy!’ ‘I won’t believe a corporation is a person until Texas hangs one’, said another.
At the entrance to the park a lanky guy held a handmade sign that said ‘NYC Boston is Standing With You’ and he smiled hesitantly as several photographers started taking photos of him. To his right stood a woman with another handwritten sign ‘School Teachers for a Bright Future’, where she was attracting a conversation.
We passed a man selling a bunch of ‘Never Forget Us’ US flags where sales were slow opposite the accommodation area where the term bedraggled had found its natural home. As if to acknowledge this point, one of the group mobilizers was saying to a group ‘we’re all part of sanitation, everyone is going to do shifts and we’ll have a relay system in place. Let’s show everyone we can organize, as this will send a strong message to everyone’. They looked at him, smiled and nodded in a non-committal kind of way as he moved on to the next group to give the same message.
At Organising Central, there was a schedule for ‘Day 15 of the Occupation’ (echoed by a sign that said ‘Wall Street is War Street’). 7.30am: Breakfast; 9.00am: Working Groups; 10.00am: Occupiers Meeting; 12.00: March; 1.30pm: Lunch; 1.30pm -5.30pm: Forums; 5.30pm: March in Solidarity; 7.00pm: General Assembly; 9.00pm: Poetry. Working groups in loose formation spanned Internet, Media, Outreach, Direct Action, Facilitation, Treasury, Kitchen, Art and Culture, Sanitation, Medical, Legal – and even Comfort.
There was an absence of music all around the park despite various instruments being visible. Josh spotted a woman with a banjo on her back and we asked her to play a tune. And so, ‘Laura Dunn and the Ghost of Christmas Past’, the name on her business card, spun us a song that had photographers running to get shots, the food and water stations as a backdrop to her pretty music.
In another corner of the park was a sign that proclaimed ‘The People’s Library’ where the library was as well configured as the food and internet stations. Here book titles ranged from Adios Muchachos – a Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution to Why I Ride a Bicycle: The Art of Cycling in New York. I picked up a book that could have been the manifesto for the crowd gathered: Meltdown – How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover. Written on the side of each book was ‘Occupy Wall Street’ – designed to ensure people were true to the honor system of returning each book. I looked over to where a volunteer was adding the latest addition to the pile – Anti Monopoly – The Bust the Trust Game. Here it was in miniature, with the larger version playing itself out in the wider square. While there was no unifying focus, such as getting the Tobin Tax on the political agenda, there was a sense that this citizen agitating would influence and inform the issues and direction of the Presidential campaign.
We headed next to Union Square, where we could hear the roaring sound of the crowd before we could see them. This rally to raise awareness of sexual and domestic violence had attracted more than 1,000 people. Similar rallies had been springing up in different cities across the world as people protested rape as being in any way acceptable due to a woman’s appearance. We walked through the crowd and I stopped to read the sign a woman was holding. It told the story of how she was raped and how, at the time, she was too ashamed to tell anyone because it was someone she knew. Signs telling similar stories were held by hundreds of other women and men in the square. They wanted people to know what had happened to them, they wanted to break their own silence.
We came home and Josh picked up a ukulele and started singing Pete Seeger’s song, ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’. We’d caught the mood and we were turned to, tuned to, change.
People were finding their own power and voice in these gatherings. They could make a statement simply by showing up. They could be heard, be photographed, be affirmed and made visible. I could be part of the movement by writing a blog. We could move things in a different direction to how they’ve been headed. We could rise, we could roar.
Jane Sloane