My morning started with me at Zuccotti Park at 6am. The occupiers were planning to close down Wall Street by literally putting so many bodies in the way that people could not get in or out of the area.
It took a while to get everyone together across the street from the park. There were many sharpie markers going around so people could write the legal aid # on their skin in case they got arrested. There was also a 'breakfast' offering. That was a man with a bag of bread passing it around, another man with a bag of grapefruit and a guy walking around with cases of water.
Once everyone had breakfast the march began. As the protesters marched to areas where they thought they could get into the Wall Street or Exchange Plaza, they found they had already been barricaded off and there was a massive police presence. Workers who needed to get in had to show a work ID to get past the barricades. It was a no win for the protesters...so they kept marching...
Once they made it to 60 Wall Street, in front of Deutche Bank, everyone took to the street, did a couple bank -bashing chants and then started marching again. Now they were trying to come up the other side of the plaza to see if there was a way in... no such luck.
I should mention here there were three different groups marching. I was in the first group. So, after not being able to get in anywhere on three sides of the plaza, there was a lot of confusion of what to do.
It truly seemed no one had considered the police would have barricaded the road off and stopped them from accomplishing their goal. I even heard people say -'Where the hell are we going", "What should we do now?". There was a lot of confusion and disorganization. This surprised me since I knew this was a planned event. At the protest I was in on Tuesday, which was an unplanned protest, they seemed to keep things together better than they were at thier 2-month anniversary event. Go figure.
So, we went down Broadway to the entrance of Exchange Plaza there, and that is where more police were waiting. They were again, letting people in only if they showed thier ID. Now, here is what I kind of chuckled at. The idea of OWS was to 'stop wall street' on Thursday. But as the Wall Street workers came up to the crowd and said, "Excuse me, I need to get through", they let them through. I am not saying anyone should be taking their anger out on people who just happen to have a job there, but if your goal is to stop Wall Street, then letting the workers get in is not going to accomplish that goal. Just saying.....
This was the first area where there were major clashes. After a while, the police got sick of the crowd of protesters in front of the barricades and told everyone to make some space. They didn't. So, after a few warnings the officers started pushing the crowd.
The way they do this is to hold thier nightsticks sideways, and literally push against the crowd of people, pushing the crowd back. They also tend to have some pretty good sized officers take the lead on this, so it's pretty effective. Well, usually I am 3-4 people back in the crowd. Not this time. I was right at the front taking pictures and grabbing audio....so... when the night stick came out and I turned to get out of the way, it was my back that it got pushed into. That was a new one.
Did I get hurt? No. It was not slammed into my back or anything, just set up against my back and he leaned in pushing me, and thereby pushing the crowd as I let the people in front of me know they needed to move by my pushing into them. It worked. the crowd moved back about 10 feet this way.
Here I am doing to take a side jaunt. Someone already asked me "But didn't they know you were a reporter?". Doesn't matter. When there is a crowd of hundreds of thousands, you cannot and I do not expect the police to stop and say 'excuse me, who are you before I decide whether to treat you like everyone else?'. I am a part of the crowd and therefore amd treated just like the rest. If I am in the wrong place and there is an action against the crowd, I'm going to get it too... Perhaps that's why I didn't see a lot of other on-air reporters in the crowd. But I think if I am going to cover something, the more I can understand what is happening, the better I can tell the story...
After the 10-foot gap was made, there was a little lull. The officers went back to their stations and we were standing about 10-feet away, with protesters plotting the next move. That's when their roit gear came out. They had made their own sheilds and such to create a wall and approach the PD with.
By the way, the police did not have shields. a few fights broke out at this time and I watched a couple protesters go down and get arrested.
Then we stood. It seemed like a long time that we were there with no one knowing what to do... more of that confusion I mentioned earlier, and then someone decided we should go back the way we came and see who was at the intersection on the south side of the plaza. Well it just so happened EVERYONE was there. The other marches had shown up and this is where the most of the clashes against police happened.
At least one time watching this unfold I was truly terrified for a pair of police officers. They were swallowed by the crowd. That's really the only way I can describe it. The officers were suddenly enveloped and cut off from the rest, with protesters on all sides. I know I have described this before, but the crowd truly seems like a living breathing creature at times like this, constricting around the officers and everyone tightening in on them. It is frightening to behold. Other officers then pushed through the crowd to get them out.
We spent a while at this intersection and I can only imagine how frightening it also was for traffic. A vehicle would pull down the street and then suddenly would be swarmed by protesters who had taken ot the street. There were regular calls of 'take the streets' where everyone would rush into the streets, only to be told by police to get on the sidewalk and then to get into fights with police when they didn't.
This off and on fighting with police went on for an hour or more and then everyone started getting bored, me included. I had the same stuff to report over and over again. About that time they decided to move back up to Broadway and to Zuccotti Park again. So we marched...
When we got back to the park, there was a quick 10 minute celebration where people cheered what they called a victory... but I am not really sure what they were victorious over... and then decided to march again. Ok.... where to this time? The subways... to clog them up.
Once again I started reporting as we left the park. We started marching down Broadway and got about three blocks up when the leaders of the pack turned around and started retracing their steps. Were they going the wrong way? Did they just not know where they were going? I'm not sure, but we switched directions. We back-tracked a few blocks then everyone stopped again. Once again we were milling about in the road with no one knowing where the protest was going to go. Just about that time, things got really ugly. You see this budget truck?
It seems it belonged to the protesters and had all their tents and supplies in it. They saw the police getting into it and confiscating it and got into a brawl. Now, I don't know why the police targeted it. Did they know it was the protesters? Maybe. But it was in a no parking area so, well ask anyone who has been ticketed or towed... that's what happens in the city. That was not good enough for protesters. They were livid. And it took many more officers to bring things under control.
I mentioned before I usually stay towards the front of the pack, but as I saw a 5-person deep police line in riot gear moving in, I stepped back a bit. In a few moments it was under control, with, yes, a handful more arrests.
The marchers still seemed confused as to what to do and circled back to Zuccotti Park to regroup once again. Well, by this time it started raining. I am not sure if it was that they were hungry, tired, or didn't like freezing rain, but the numbers dropped, substantially....to half or less of what had been there before....
My shift was over so I started to head out.... and my impression of this days protest was that it was so disorganized compared to what I had seen in the past, even earlier in the week. I know Thursday evening was a massive event with the march over the Brooklyn Bridge and I know almost 250 people were arrested over the course of the day. From the helicopter shots of what was going on it may have looked like they knew what they were doing, but from the inside, it was a mess. From in the crowd, no one had an idea of where they should be going or what to do... and it makes me wonder if the movement has turned into a number of angry people, but without the focus it had not long ago...
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