On Tuesday, the Oakland police managed to send an Occupy Oakland protester to the hospital by cracking open his skull with either a rubber bullet or a tear gas canister. No one is really sure. What they are sure of is that Scott Olsen had served two tours in Iraq before coming home and joining the protesters.
In response, on Wednesday, the Occupy New York group marched from their stronghold in Liberty Plaza Park at the frenulum of Manhattan to City Hall Park, a few blocks north. In its infinite wisdom, the NYPD blocked off the park, which split the protesters into at least two groups of a few hundred people, one of which headed north up Church Street. It was at roughly this point that I saw a live helicopter stream posted on Twitter, which was showing at least a couple hundred protesters moving through the streets of Manhattan on a Wednesday night while the police futilely tried to barricade them.
To call it riveting television would be a misnomer, because while the video was indeed coming from a television helicopter, it wasn’t being broadcast on television. The only audio came from the microphone of what had to be either the cameraman or some reporter/producer schmuck. (He kept instructing the pilot to be careful about which buildings were obscuring the shot.) Despite the fact that he was flying in a helicopter maintained by the lowest bidder, this guy kept referring to the actions of the protesters below as “dangerous”. He must have used the word a dozen times in just a few minutes.
Just looking at the video, however, it was difficult to discern any actual danger. The police would pull up at the end of a block and attempt to barricade the street with motorcycles. But the protesters would just stream around the ends or through any gaps that were left. A couple of people got arrested, but 99% of them got through without doing anything more than walking. Nevertheless, TV Guy was in full on local news mode, where panic and danger are the name of the game in keeping sleepy people from turning off their sets and going to bed.
Meanwhile, more people kept posting livestreams on Twitter, including one on ustream.tv from The Other 99, which was easily the champion of the night. (At one point, The Other 99 live stream guy was filming another person doing a livestream for a different site.) Filming with the protesters as they made their way north and eventually ending up in Union Square Park, nearly two miles north of City Hall, it was a for real “live from Baghdad” type moment. Not only could you, the humble internet user, see live video from the air, but live video from the ground as well, including police officers who gave the distinct impression that they would rather not be on camera. Combined with Google Maps, you could actually follow the protests as they moved around New York City.
All of this marvelous technology couldn’t completely stop inaccurate rumors from flying, of course. For a while many of the protesters were worried that the police were going to make a movie on Liberty Plaza while so many of them were elsewhere. But rumors were quickly shot down when reliable word came over the smart phones that Liberty Plaza was secure.
The protesters couldn’t stay at Union Square Park for long, however, because it has a curfew and people aren’t allowed to stay there overnight. This set up the potential for real drama and arrests, because they were a long way from home and the police, who clearly hadn’t expected them to keep marching once they found City Hall inaccessible, were now out in force and surrounding the park. Instead of a confrontation or an arrest risking march back south, however, most of the protesters simply hopped on the subway.
It was an amazing display of unorganized yet coordinated action. It was also almost completely ignored by the professional press. Despite all that dramatic helicopter footage, no major news organization took much notice beyond simply reporting that there had been a few arrests. That traffic had been brought to a standstill in chunks of Manhattan because the police couldn’t keep the protesters out of the street was basically ignored.
More importantly, the march, the standoff at Union Square Park, and the underground retreat displayed the futility of trying to control a city with as many avenues of transit at New York. The protesters don’t have any military style command and control function, nevertheless a military outfit would’ve done well to move, maneuver, and retreat under pressure from the enemy the way that they did. Combined with live video to keep the cops honest, the protesters made a dramatic point: we can go anywhere we want and you cannot stop us.
Whatever ends up happening with Occupy Wall Street and its various sister organizations, Wednesday night demonstrated that if they do get taken down it will be their own fault. Neither the cops nor the city can stop them, and the news organizations cannot mischaracterize them with impunity when so much is recorded instantly. It was a hell of an event, and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere, winter or no.
