Marching on Wall Street

So for several weeks I've been on the fence regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement. I hadn't heard much about it at the beginning and as time went on it just seemed to be a haphazard gathering of various idealists of the kind that happen all the time in New York. The mass arrests and pepper-spraying of peaceful marchers made me sit up and take notice, but information about the group itself was still sketchy. The so-called statement of purpose they sent out a week or so ago seemed to confirm all of my fears that the movement didn't have the focus to go anywhere and was doomed to burn itself out sooner rather than later.

In the last week, however, my opinion has changed. As I've read more and more about the group and how it has spread to cities across the country, and as I've seen videos of the occupiers (some - gasp - in button-up shirts! with kids!) speaking clearly about their grievances I've come to realize that it doesn't matter that they lack focus. It's their drive that is key. As their message spreads and is picked up by activists in cities around America, and as labor unions and professional organizers like MoveOn.org begin to coordinate efforts with them, I started to believe that Occupy Wall Street could become a true engine for positive change.

With this in mind I decided to head down to Foley Square in downtown Manhattan today to take part in a march on Wall Street. After I hopped off the 4 at Brooklyn Bridge I got a little turned around, as I always do down there. I walked vaguely in the direction of the square figuring I'd stumble upon it and boy was I right. After a couple of minutes I heard drums and chanting (We! Are! The 99%!) and, turning a corner, I walked smack dab into the Occupy Wall Street procession from their base in Liberty Park heading to Foley Square. Their energy was infectious and I was immediately struck by the diversity of the crowd. The average age was certainly young (mid 20s probably) and there were a fair share of hippies, punks, and disheveled undergraduates but there were plenty of young professionals and middle-aged folk mixed in as well. This certainly was not the rag-tag bunch of cop-harassers and professional malcontents that they'd been painted as. In fact they looked a lot like the crowd from last year's Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington D.C.


As we walked the police were out in force ensuring we stuck to the sidewalk, which we were more than willing to do. This was, after all, just a pre-march toward the real march. As we passed intersections, onlookers with cameras clapped and chanted along while on the street-side over a dozen police motorcycles and scores of uniformed officers kept watch, maintaining their distance as much as possible.

They got bailed out!
We got sold out!

When we turned a corner the group around me started cheering and I heard exclamations of "Wow!" and "Oh shit!" and when I looked up I saw Foley Square already teeming with people. This march was never just an OWS march, but rather several different movements coming together to finally act in concert. Student groups and the New York Socialist party stood shoulder to shoulder with out of work accountants and a slew of other middle-class, middle-aged New Yorkers, and organized labor was out in force, with transportation unions and nurses unions the most visible.

Community activists traded turns on a mic revving up the crowd (Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy look like!) and the Foley crowd cheered in kind as they spotted the giant train of people arriving from Liberty Park. Children were playing, likely not understanding the stakes of the event, while older people almost seemed energized by the outpouring of like-minded individuals just itching for positive change. Two older ladies recounted a protest they attended 25 years ago while a middle-aged woman behind me complained to an organizer that a policeman was not being nice to her.

As the rally reached its peak three labor leaders took the mic (I couldn't make out names) shouting praises to the crowd for coming together in unity.

"The media keeps asking if this movement has legs," they said. "Shit, I see around me all the legs we need. Today we'll show them our legs, our bodies, and our fists raised in the air for change."

Still others came up, like an old woman proclaiming that she'd spent years working for worker rights, and they keep taking more away. She was marching with the youth today, she said, because they were the future. The final speaker - an old school New Yorker judging by his accent - thanked Occupy Wall Street more than anyone. "You've brought us together, and you've shown us the time for meeting Wall Street in city hall and the halls of Washington is over. Now it's time to take our cause to the streets."

The mood was jubilant, even as NYPD took its time letting people out of the square. As we spread out from the park and filled the street it felt for a moment like something could change.

What do we want?
Jobs!
When do we want them?
Now!

That's the nature of protests, really.

It felt the same at the Stewart rally, and at the anti-war rallies I attended in the early 2000s. With so many like-minded individuals in one place those kind of actions always make the world seem more malleable than it is. This movement, however, has one big advantage that no other group I've been around has had: a group of motivated, energetic, angry individuals determined not to let us forget the issues. A group digging in for the long haul, set to keep the alarm blaring lest America go to sleep again. That's the real power of Occupy Wall Street, and its sister organizations sprouting up in DC, Boston, Los Angeles, Columbus and elsewhere. They won't let us just go home, feeling good that we marched and shouted for a couple of hours, back to our normal lives. They will continue to challenge us to be more, to remind us that we want and need to do more.

How do we fix this deficit?
End the war! Tax the rich!

That's the hope, at least. And freshly off the protest line, I'm brimming with it.