Protests are not sexy. In fact, they can be downright disgusting. As I approach Zucotti Park in lower Manhattan the day after the bizarre October snowstorm, a trail of dirty gray slush leads me to the surprisingly small commune of protesters. Tents cover patches of the park, alternating with trash bags of dirty laundry. A makeshift kitchen seems to be the center of activity, folks grabbing a bite before the 7pm General Assembly begins. Wary bystanders like myself remain on the periphery - but cannot hear the main speaker standing in the center of the park. Like a massive human echo, her exclamations spread to the fringes of the crowd by people simply turning around and repeating her words.
As an impatient and freezing citizen, I decide to walk around instead and talk to folks one on one. The first stretch of the park feels like a trade show of grievances - a booth and flyer for every cause. Signs protesting racism, hydro-fracking and corporate crimes all cover the side wall of bushes. One man guesses my Indian roots and hands me a pamphlet about the fate of Kashmir. Not two feet from him, a man cycles in place to generate power for a water filtration system. I marvel at both his endurance and ingenuity.
Rounding the corner of orange cones, media vans and police offers, I make it to a lively group of people engaged in a ‘mic check’. A thin black man kicks off the process and calls out “They can take the power”!
Others repeat it back to him, “They can take the power”!
“But we own the hour!”
“But we own the hour!”
I would later learn that Zucotti Park allows neither bullhorns nor microphones, so a mic-check cues folks to loudly repeat the speaker’s short information statements so others far away can hear. This mic-check seems like more of a pep talk, but perhaps needed in this weather.
This side of the park boasts double the amount of signage as the previous. The incorrect spelling and questionable grammar of the signs break my heart, reminding me of Nikolas Kristof’s op-ed to “Occupy the Classroom”.
A mural of “Wanted” signs follows, featuring the Wall Street cronies who facilitated the demise of our economy, and covers the majority of the wall. Friedman’s not-so-funny joke about the bankers reverberates in these pictures.
He grins, “Don’t feel like because you have a job you can’t be a part of this.”
Somehow this man taps into my question of “what is the qualification for being in the 1%”? I fear my private university education, great job, health insurance and Upper West Side apartment made me the enemy. Turns out the 1% consists exclusively of billionaires. I have nothing to fear.
The man continues, “Look at Bloomberg – he’s a billionaire who promised my part of Brooklyn a new school. Instead, he built a juvenile detention center. You’re telling me he doesn’t want to institutionalize certain populations?” I stare blankly as I have no knowledge about this. I don’t find the mismanagement of our public school system a shock, but make a mental note to check on this later. I’d heard about the Joel Klein controversy and remembered reading about the 4,600+ teacher layoff of NYC public schools in February of this year. This couldn’t be too far from the truth.
I ask if I could talk to someone about the mission of the protest and the man points me to the media booth at the top of the park. I find a table with some flyers about anarchy next to a line of protesters. More signs and more injustices. My fingers quickly approach numb and my headache from earlier in the day now dominates my thoughts.
I hop in a cab and we race along the West Side Highway. I muse about the state of affairs. I’d gone to the protest largely because a co-worker encouraged me to see it myself before dismissing it. My friends seemed surprised when I didn’t support the movement at first. “They are only protesting because they are now affected – what have they been doing all along for those less fortunate?” I argued. And truthfully, I was angry. Angry that many who champion OWS still don’t actively participate in their communities. Angry that people moaned about the lack of jobs, but did nothing to spur ideas that would create them. Angry that some of these people did not accurately represent what they purported to protest. How can you protest capitalism when it doesn’t work for you, but love its fruits when it does? I felt like Toby Ziegler arguing, “free trade stops wars”.
But OWS does force a dialogue about injustice from the sub-conscious to the surface. While that will perhaps be its only success, it is an important one. To break through the pacification of media consumption is no small task during a month of season premieres and NFL pre-games. The movement’s widespread support and headlining Oakland activity stirs many from a coma of consumption and sets the stage for change.
As the cab approaches home, I ponder what protest signs would decorate my mental Zucotti Park. I’m pretty sure they would call for the end of state dinners, campaign expenses and hobnobbing with lobbyists. They would ask for a better allocation of our tax money to fund health care, public education, affordable housing for the homeless and a robust veteran re-entry program. I say this based purely on anecdotal evidence – so hold your fire.
My recent trip to the ER for an ear infection on a Sunday afternoon yielded the following costs:
1 Remove Impacted Ear Wax $ 369.00
1 Emergency Room Fee $1,429.00
1 Docustate NA (100 MG) $ 0.01
2 Ibuprofen (400 MG) $ 52.00
Emer Dept Serv by Dr. Robert -- $ 289.00
Grand Total $1,959.01
Considering my ‘doctor Robert’ was a female physician’s assistant who partially irrigated my ear instead of actually treating the infection and who prescribed me a medication that neither CVS, Rite Aid nor Duane Reade carried – I found these charges bogus. (Not to mention the ENT who actually fixed the problem was recommended through my office’s private health center and cost nothing thanks to the company policy.) My health insurance covered 90% of the bill. But I’m almost positive uninsured people get ear infections too.
For the past four years, I’ve joined a group of young professionals every Tuesday and Saturday to tutor middle students in math as part of the Top Honors program. I tutor two seventh graders in the care of social workers to help them learn which operations to use in word problems and recite multiplication tables. One student may outpace the other – and I simultaneously lose the attention of one while dejecting the other.
In my third grade, Mrs. Jenison covered long division with a group of students whose parents taught them to read before entering kindergarten. Now I’m exhausted after two hours of teaching two students. With the average class size in a New York City public elementary school now greater than 30+ students and dwindling parental support, our teachers face a seemingly insurmountable task.
Don’t get me started on homelessness in this country.
And our troops? Our troops return to a changed economy with physical and mental scars. What the hell are we going to do to support them? The documentary When I Came Home covers this topic far better than I could in a blog post, so I encourage taking an hour out of the day to watch.
I realize I still have a litany of complaints in my head: the malnutrition of our youth, environmental degradation and unnecessary wars … perhaps that’s why the OWS message is hard to coalesce into a single sound bite. My government, my guardian of public policies that intervene when the market doesn’t self-correct, is in a state of emergency. As my brother eloquently puts it, “People assume that if a company does something bad, consumers will punish the product. Not true. The majority of America, hypnotized by advertisements and distracted by daily life, has lost the capacity to think critically and hold companies accountable”. We as consumers are largely separated from the production of our goods, so we have no concept of a product’s actual value. We have no idea how to hold a company accountable. And as an individual citizen, I pay my taxes to have my government to help us out. But it seems my government often a) lacks the caliber of employee to protect us (since why would you work for a low-paying public sector job when the private sector will triple it?) and b) will sell its soul to the highest bidder because its own debt is just that bad.
Seems OWS should focus on campaign finance reform, where the government remembers that individual citizens constitute the greatest shareholders. We have to educate folks to think critically about this topic and help raise it to the forefront of our next elections. That will be my new cause. So thank you OWS and the friends/family who discussed OWS with me – you helped me target my anger and focus on a constructive solution.
The cab pulls up to my apartment. I’ve listened to U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday on repeat the whole drive. No better words to summarize that particular Sunday night:
I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away
How long ... how long must we sing this song …
And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
The real battle just begun.
