The OCCUPIED Wall Street Journal

The OCCUPIED Wall Street Journal was the title of the first publication thrust in my hand as I walked down Broadway to Liberty Plaza. It was given to me by a smiling, well-built guy in a flak jacket.

The second thing to hit me was the pulsing vibrance of Liberty Plaza, a smallish square block of gardens through which thousands of people, young, old, straight, weird-looking, black, white, brown, yellow were flowing, of all ages, with drums pounding, tambourines shaking, a young girl belly dancing in a circle near Trinity Place. In fact, the square stretched east from Broadway to Trinity Place, south from Liberty to Cedar Streets, an island of Liberty framed by an oppressive but tamed (for now) police presence. God only knows what they were planning.

But Liberty Plaza was pure déja vu of the 60s, wan urban Woodstock with an outpouring of political passion, the likes of which I haven’t seen since then, or of the activism of Union Square on May Days back when. The plaza was chock full of duffel bags, backpacks, luggage, covered with blue plastic rain-shields. The smell of sweat and funk lofted in certain places and incense sweetness lofted in others. There were mattresses for sleeping, small tents, tables with free-food, roll your own smokes, soft drinks, smiles from the servers, an upsurge of conversation that buzzed in your ears like Ravi Shankar’s sitar.

Scariest of all was the mobile police tower on wheels whose observation booth had been raised above the crowd to observe like a film crew’s lift, filming for perpetuity. Its image reminded me of a concentration camp or prison lookout, the electronic scanning data flickering most likely behind its smoked-glass windows. That fact that this tower was portable certified its ability to be used in multiple settings and events. There were thousands of people flowing in and out, a march returning from Foley Square that would march out again with different people back up to Foley Square. It was like taking the tour.

The first person I spoke to was a gray-head like myself, with a nice shirt on like mine, and a pair of pressed chinos like mine. I asked why he was here. He talked about the audacity of the criminals of Wall Street, their stolen bailouts and easements, creating a drought of capital to finance job-creation. I asked him if he thought the purpose here was to stop that flow of capital up and away from the working and middle classes and the poor straight to the wealthy. And he said exactly. We talked about our Social Security and Medicare, how endangered it was by the maniacs of the Repuglican Party, who would love to starve us out but won’t. The strike back had begun. In fact, that was what this “Occupation of Wall Street” was all about, here and in the many cities around the country and the world.

Next to him was a priest. I asked him what this event had to do with religion. And he answered Christ fed the poor and he chased the money changers from the Temple. In some way, this is the intention here. Bless him. I shook his hand. Walking into the plaza, I encountered an older hippy couple, a black woman and her unshaven white-haired, husband. They had smiles on their faces that widened when I said it’s back to the 60s, right? Yes, we hope it lasts and gets everyone involved, the woman said. Such openness this couple had in contrast with the business crowd that streamed down Broadway like zombies, the suits en route to their strategy sessions to game the system even more.

I moved deeper into the crowd and met three odd-ball folks, a tallish thin man with a beard speed-talking, a chunky-faced quiet man standing beside him, and closest to me an ear, nose, lip, cheek studded orphan of the storm, who had came from Youngstown, Ohio, or “Murder City” as he called it. He had no place to go, had lost his job, and somehow managed to get here. Later, I saw him with a big joint in his hand. Perhaps if he threw it away, he might find a way back to who he was. Lord knows, I had smoked my way through three decades and finally threw the doobie away in disgust. What an oppression it was, one man’s opinion.

There was another, tallish fellow trying to advise this Youngstown fellow and complaining about “the trust fund babies” who had landed here in search of “an experience.” He was not happy to see or hear them, “children of the rich” he called them, who should go home, though perhaps that was unfair to them. Perhaps they didn’t like their advantages as much as he didn’t and were trying to set a new course in life for themselves. It’s never too late to learn, even for politicians and streeters.

There were the obvious hangers-on, like they guy I asked when the next march was leaving. I don’t know, he said, there’s something over there that tells you. The next words from his mouth were to his friend, you know this is my 70^th day without a drink. Good luck. But there were smart people here, very smart, with a mini-press corps dealing with reporters. Ad-Busters magazine was one of the driving forces. And some smart people with money. The articles in “The OCCUPIED Wall Street Journal” showed that with headlines like “The Revolution Begins At Home,” “Learning from the World,” “Pushed out of our homes and into the streets,” “No excuses left IT’S NOW OR NEVER,” even a “Declaration of the Occupancy,” that summed up the groups fed-upness with the “mass injustice,” its own Declaration of Independence. And very well-focused and factual, I might add.

There were stories on the back cover, “Occupation for Dummies—How it came about, what it means, how it works and everything” and “Five Things You Can Do Right now—1. OCCUPY 2. Spread the Word 3. Donate 4. Follow the occupation 5. Educate Yourself,” bravo. A march was leaving like a stream from a river headed uptown again to Foley Square. I opted to stay some more and talk to Mark, the tall, seemingly disenfranchised guy, who disliked the rich with a passion. The conversation turned very personal. He told me of losing his mother to Alzheimer’s, how his family put her in an institution which didn’t properly monitor her medication. How quickly she declined, he said. How inhuman it was of his ugly right-wing siblings to this. Family members must be personally cared for and that’s what family was all about. And if you did ugly things like that, what would your children do for you? The same.

I spoke to him about my own father, and having to put him into a nursing home because he had become a danger to himself. How I had driven 40 miles each way to visit him each week, sometimes two or three times. He seemed moved. He shook my hand and asked my name. I said Jerry. He said Mark. His anger softened. He said you’re a good man, Jerry. I said so are you, Mark. He repeated it. A lump filled my throat. I swallowed it, gathered myself, and said I’ll see you, Mark, take care. You, too, he said. So these were a handful of the hapless like myself, the square pegs, more and more each day, who couldn’t fit into the narrowing holes the government was providing us. These were the bold, the brave and fighters to be. And I would be proud to join them at the barricades. And these, too, were the red-eyed, wind-tanned guy I spoke to about what was going on, who just smiled, and at some point said his bag was missing. He had left it right there, he said, looking at the blue mat. I thought how naïve could you be. This is New York. You don’t take your eyes off your gear. But he just smiled and I wished him well. Maybe someone would return it. That, too, happens in New York.

As I walked northwest past the ominous police tower on Trinity Place (Church Street), I stared into it. Recognize me, beast, I thought, and walked off to the nearby and new World Trade Center, the first time I’d seen it, having been denied access to it on 9/11’s 10^th Anniversary, shut out like victim families, first responders and clergy from the ceremonies. The new Liberty Tower thrust upwards into the sky, another icon of the arrogance, ignorance and greed, curiously AIG, the symbol of corruption as well.

I also saw the new 9/11 Museum in the distance which would catalogue every shred of myth it could to support the government conspiracy. And the endless tourist crowds, even on a Tuesday, who would eat it all up.

Behind this, too, was the hand of Wall Street’s relation to the WTC-1. Hundreds of millions of dollars that day were invested in puts for the airlines to fail and the struck Morgan Stanley in Tower 1 to fall. And more millions were poured into the great number of calls for defense stocks to rise. Some of the profits were still left uncollected by those afraid of being associated with the crime of 9/11. But, still, it was a beautiful October day, full of light and blue sky like 9/11 itself, and I, as the many were still here, duking it out with the obscene power that is.

But I could feel, see the world turning like the second hand on my watch. There was something in the air, some hope at last in this occupation of love not hate. There was a signal to join the march for tomorrow, a better world as I approached Silverstein’s new Tower 7, its forerunner hit by no plane but falling in a pre-planned internal demolition. It was the reminder of evil and its power, and what grace of raw courage, brotherhood, and strength it would take to level this playing field for America and the world again.

After all, for as long as I could remember there was war: World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, the post-9/11 Afghanistan War, the bogus Iraq War, the wars with Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somali, the endless war of greed and hegemony that sought no end it seemed, that only further engorged its energy on death, suffering, and impoverishment of the still living. But the struggle against it until one’s last breath was worth it in every possible way.

As I turned onto Greenwich Street, leaving the new Tower 7 behind like a bad dream, I walked several blocks north and asked an immigrant fruit vendor to point me to the Broadway Line. He did and I thanked him. I could see he took pride in pronouncing the words clearly: one block that way, then go left one block. I could see he was proud that he spoke the language and that he was in the New World of those who dreamt of the good life, like my very own grandparents. And I was on my way home but to a larger family that I had found today. After all was said and done, this was still America, and its dream and life still ours to fight for. And fight we will, no matter what the beast concocts.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.