{"id":7052,"date":"2011-10-14T12:04:23","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T16:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=7052"},"modified":"2011-10-14T12:04:23","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T16:04:23","slug":"dawn-at-zuccotti-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/dawn-at-zuccotti-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Dawn at Zuccotti Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just back from Wall Street & the driver of the X27 (Manhattan to Bay Ridge \u2014 I was the only passenger in that direction at this time, i.e. mid-morning) was dithyrambic about the importance of the protests & the fact that the country was becoming a third world banana republic with all the money in the pockets of the few & nothing left over for anyone else \u2014 which brought to mind the early morning chant of \u201cwe are the 99%.\u201d I had gone to the park with the first X27 from Bay Ridge to Manhattan so as to add one more warm body to the many already massed there & worrying about the \u201ccleanup\u201d order the mayor had issued. The first sight was an array of placards:\"\"\u00a0Which on closer inspection revealed these texts:\u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0The police were there, though many more still massed behind the big red cube & out of sight on \u201cLiberty Street\u201d a sort of ironic conjuncture \u2014 as I had noticed already when I had come across some 50 of them waiting with 4 white shirts in the same place a couple days earlier.<\/p>\n

Of course Zuccotti Park had once been called Liberty Park, but in good American fashion, a private name was made to replace a generous concept. The idea of the cleanup had worried many: once hygiene had been reasserted, dirtbags (demonstrators & their sleeping bags) would no longer be allowed to settle down. That\u2019s why there had been a call for major presence this morning. And here I was too \u2014 stumbling over the many instruments for cleanup the people themselves had gathered:\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Then, twenty minutes before the \u201cofficial\u201d cleanup was to starts, a message from the city was relayed (\u201cmic check! mic check!\u201d \u2014 & then the words of the one speaker would be picked up & repeated in all directions by the chorus of demonstrators) allowing us to claim victory: the mayor had decided not to go ahead with the forcible cleanup. And an hour and a half later, I nearly stumbled over the following objects, & am still not sure if they belong to the intention or the result of the voluntary clean-up, or if in fact impro installation art:\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

At any rate, with that little victory won, I decided to leave via the 8:50 bus which was supposed to stop right at the corner of Broadway & Zuccotti Park; though right there at the bus stop & not waiting for the bus were a long line of men in blue carrying what from a distance looked like looped lassos but turned out to be handcuffs \u2014 that came in two colors: white & black \u2014 & one of these gents told me to move on, the bus don\u2019t stop here no more, go further down Broadway, which I did, not really wanting either white or black handcuffs\u2026\u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0So I walked further south & finally caught the bus just opposite that ignoble bronze bull, which had, I must say, a somewhat bearish expression this morning.<\/p>\n

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Just back from Wall Street & the driver of the X27 (Manhattan to Bay Ridge \u2014 I was the only passenger in that direction at this time, i.e. mid-morning) was dithyrambic about the importance...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,67],"tags":[1071],"class_list":["post-7052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agitprop","category-man-made-disaster","tag-zuccotti-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7052"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7062,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052\/revisions\/7062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}