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photography from Guatemala, Maryland, Italy and elsewhere by Doug Terry |
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VISIT DC? AN ESSAY ON WHY EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD VISIT |
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News, analysis, commentary, social trends, culture, politics, government, books, movies, travel, cycling and other stuff |
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T H E T E R R Y R E P O R T 2012 |
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Facts first, logic always, truth before everything |
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I made a personal visit to Zuccotti Park in NY over the Thanksgiving holiday, after having been to Occupy DC and Occupy Baltimore previously. I had a number of impressions during the visit. First, the private security guards who stand around the two limited entrance points to the park are obnoxious. These are not police officers, but people who have been hired to watch the park and, from their behavior, discourage too many people from gathering there and, heaven forbid, bring any camping gear inside. The guards stand around the barely open entrance points and make it difficult for people to get inside. They don’t actually block the way, but they hinder access with their presence and, for the more shy among visitors, turn people away entirely with their presence. When the park is approached by a visitor, it looks like you can’t even get into it, which discourages a lot of tourists, I suppose. The park has been scrubbed clean. You could almost have a meal off the pavement. So this is what all the fuss is about, dirt and disorder? So, we’ll show you, people, here’s what clean looks like! When we were there during the black Friday€¯ shopping frenzy, the park was less than half full. A lot of people had gone uptown to Macy’s to protest. What were they protesting? The consumerist ethos of America? As they say, good luck with that. Later in the afternoon, we were driving out of Manhattan just as the protesters were returning from Macy’s. We almost got enveloped in the crowd. It seemed like a good size, enthusiastic crowd, perhaps between 500 and 1,000. They were escorted by police in cars, on foot and motorcycles. As far as we could tell, there were no serious incidents of trouble during the march up or back or outside Macy’s. Everyone played their role and then went back to the park and some went home. The whole deal struck me as somewhat sad and pathetic and somewhat childish, especially in terms of the police reaction. This is what all the worry and fuss has been about? It seems like we have free speech and assembly in the United States, just so long as you don’t do it a non-approved way. That was part of the point of the encampment: making a statement that a group of people, reflecting the much larger population, is so concerned about the state of America that they are willing to live outside, 24/7, until they are heard and something is done. Well, ain’t that grand? Seems you can’t do that. You can’t decide on an unusual form of protest because...it is unusual and, hey, it causes a lot of problems. Must be stopped. Here is my question for all of those who think the Occupy movement is not such a good idea: where is the mechanism in America society or politics for people to have their voices heard outside of election time? As far as I can tell, there is no such mechanism, no means for a determined minority or an emerging majority to assert themselves in such a way that they can be heard and can get a new, different message out. Occupy Wall Street has already been a tremendous success by pushing the term “income inequality” into the national debate. Before, millions of people didn’t know what it meant and what it is. Now they do. To keep things moving forward, the Occupy movement will have to find new ways of protest and, most likely, ways that conflict with Mayor Bloomberg’s ideas of how things should go in a democracy. They are going to have to cause more disruption in order to be heard. Protests that are €convenient€¯ and operate within the established rules or within the comfort zone of public officials will disappear without a trace. People are dying now in Egypt and elsewhere in the middle east for a measure of freedom. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that here, but the willingness to put it on the line is what distinguishes serious movements from playing around. Doug Terry, 11.27.11 |
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