Curious to see if something lasting actually comes of this, or if it’s just going to be a single day of protests.
cwnl:
Hundreds of demonstrators took to The Streets of Manhattan’s Financial District on Saturday in a largely peaceful protest aimed at drawing attention to the role powerful financial interests played in wreaking havoc on America’s economy.
A totally valid point we keep seeing on Twitter — why Saturday? If you’re going to start this, why not Monday? To give a good comparison: Back in 2000, Rage Against the Machine and Michael Moore drew a TON of press for shooting the music video for “Sleep Now in the Fire” in front of Wall Street … on a Wednesday. On Saturday, the people you’re protesting against are largely at home. And while this is the symbolic home of the stock market, the real home of the stock market has largely moved to New Jersey. This is not to undercut the points being made by the protests … but to point out the logistics at hand. If this is only the start, then our point is moot, but if the movement loses steam in a few days, the initial impact of the moment will be lost. Will be interesting to see where it goes from here.
vruz says: I’m honestly not sure, but I think that you may be missing the point a bit. the point is probably not to disrupt the US economy (that’s what the Tea Party caucus does) but to make a symbolic stand and be heard by those in positions of power who can take decisions when they feel the heat (not the bank clerks). I don’t think anyone at this point is thinking of causing shock, but making peaceful protest. It will depend on the clarity of message they deliver whether it scales up or not, not on the decibels of some Tea Party-like angry shouting, and most certainly not their guns.
» SFB says: Honestly, we’re not thinking of it from a disrupt-the-economy aspect at all, but more a public relations, push-the-message-forward one. It’s sort of like, yes, you have to start somewhere, but if you’re going to make your voice heard, timing is your best friend. A Saturday start for a protest of something that’s best-known as a weekday endeavor, it feels ill-timed to us. The impact gets lost. Tea Partiers have scale and organization to push their momentum … those protesting Wall Street don’t have the same level of scale, but good timing goes a long way to make up for that. That’s why we pulled out the example of “Sleep Now in the Fire” — that wasn’t a massive protest, but it was well-timed and as a result, it helped push the message (which was similar to this one) further. — Ernie @ SFB
(Source: CNN)
Since we’ve brought it up in the past two posts, here’s the video for Rage Against the Machine’s “Sleep Now in the Fire.” As you can see, there are many similarities with “Occupy Wall Street” in terms of message, but some differences — the key one of course is that Michael Moore and the band did not have all of the proper permits necessary (and both he and the band were threatened with arrest), whereas the protest today was fairly peaceful and by-the-books. Overall, we think it’s a good historical comparison.
Because Tumblr user PoetFire asked: Most media outlets are reporting “hundreds” of protesters (or “more than 1,000”) at today’s Occupy Wall Street event. However, a Twitter meme going around today puts that number at closer to 50,000. Above is said tweet, via @AnonOps. Below is a fairly representative crowd shot of the protests, via Twitter user @EgyptEagle, a screenshot from a video of the protests, and (for comparison) an aerial screenshot from a video that showed the crowds at the Tea Party Express protest in Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nev. The Searchlight protest had a crowd of about 9,000 people. Do you see 50,000 people at today’s protests? We don’t. (BTW: If anyone has an aerial shot of today’s protests, please send it along.)
As an update to our post last night: @AnonOps on Twitter gives a bit more realistic head count of the number of people than the one that trended on Twitter yesterday. 1,500 to 2,000 people seems a bit less unrealistic than 50,000.
The method of protest that we’re using, the purpose is to interrupt the flow of Wall Street.Occupy Wall Street protester Joe Sharkey • Revealing that the group’s purpose is to make it difficult for workers to get around the protesters — a method that will see its first real test tomorrow, when an actual work day hits. While the protest has remained largely peaceful, things could start to get thorny in the next day. Starkey says tomorrow is a “crucial period” for the group of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 protesters. ”We are going to ride and coordinate and communicate,” he said. “The process takes a long time.” The protests, put together by anti-consumerism magazine AdBusters, have been planned for a number of months. source (via • follow)
Sent to us via Twitter user Eric Brown, this five minute clip from last night does a good job capturing the mood of the still-budding protests near Wall Street in New York City. “This is a group of passionate, concerned, and intelligent people,” Brown writes. “Their behavior in the park suggested a great appreciation of democracy, and a desire to cut through the clogged media and political channels to communicate a message they feel is incredibly important.” Brown notes a large police presence was there when he shot this last night, but both sides were peaceful. Great clip. source
In what may be the most documented arrests ever, at least five Wall Street protesters were detained on Tuesday to the chants of “what’s your name!,” “fucking cowards,” and the like.
A spokesperson for the protesters writes via email:
The first arrest was a protester who objected to the police removing a tarp that was protecting our media equipment from the rain. The police said that the tarp constituted a tent, in spite of it not being a habitat in any way. Police continued pressuring protesters with extralegal tactics, saying that a protester on a bullhorn was breaking a law. The protester refused to cease exercising his first amendment rights and was also arrested. Then the police began to indiscriminately attempt to arrest protesters, many of them unsheathed their batons, in spite of the fact that the protest remained peaceful. One of the protesters received a large gash on their leg, another lost a tooth. Multiple police tackled a protester and sat on him as he continually warned them that he was experiencing an asthma attack. One of the medics on site informed the police that they needed to call an ambulance because this was a potentially fatal circumstance. They ignored him. We have no current information on this protester, but we hope that he hasn’t been murdered by the police.
One fascinating police tactic of note: the presence of officers with video cameras recording the arrests, likely to be used to defend against the inevitable accusations of brutality.
Wowza. Will be keeping an eye on this today.
A young man of color arrested in Union Square earlier today doing literally nothing but crossing the street.
I am fucking shaking with anger. This video shows Union Square earlier today. Clearly there is a protest but the area immediately surrounding the guy with the camera is just observers and people milling around. Watch the guy in the red shirt. From the vimeo link:
As you can see at around 0:30, a young man in a red shirt, Glenn Daniels Jr, is walking near the sidewalk with hundreds of other protestors. The crowd was attempting to cross the street to continue the march south down Broadway from Union Square. Daniels is peacefully walking with a water bottle, not committing any crime. At 0:35 he is approached by an NYPD officer and pushed towards the sidewalk. At 0:38 a senior police officer in a white shirt quickly approaches and grabs Daniels and another young man with a beard and backpack. The lighter skinned man is let go, but Daniels is arrested. The remainder of the video shows NYPD officers cuffing and detaining Daniels.
This is horrifying.
By the way, the Occupy Wall Street arrests are now on the homepage of the New York Times.
Took long enough for the NYT to play that up. :/
(Source: athenasaurus)
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Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
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A man is arrested on 12th Street near Union Square. Dozens were arrested after a march from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in lower Manhattan.
We imagine most people reading this currently have the same look on their face as this protester did when he was arrested. Again, why is this necessary?
In this short clip, a protester says something to a police officer. Less than two seconds later, he’s on the ground. Again. WTF? (Side note: The NY Post’s headline for this mess? “March Madness.”)
Curious if Tumblr would consider creating an #occupywallstreet curated tag. This seems like a great opportunity to do something with this feature. Who else do you guys think is doing a great job covering this story on Tumblr?
- Clyde Haberman, the New York Times, haberman@nytimes.com
- Michael Daly, the New York Daily News
- The Investigators, WABC TV (Channel 7), the.investigators@abc.com
- Jonathan Dienst, WNBC TV (Channel 4) (via Twitter)
- New York 1 News, (212) NY1-NEWS…
Great info all around. Despite the meme that’s been floating around for a week, this story is getting press coverage, but it could use more.
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