More unedited criticism on the #takewallstreet protest - Thomas Monopoly
http://www.thomasmonopoly.com/

I went down to the #takewallstreet protest last Monday. I suppose it’s hard to say that I support a group that is so fractious and contradictory in their aims, but I’m pretty sure that once they are able to assemble a list of goals and objectives I will more than likely be in agreement with most of that list.<p>I took the J train to Fulton and headed down Nassau to Wall Street. I worked on Fulton St. for three years and passed the NYSE everyday on my way to lunch, so I was surprised to see the corner of Broad and Wall Street more orderly than ever. There wasn’t so much as a scrap of paper blowing in the wind. Fences and barriers were in place as well, forcing people to walk single file down William St. and back, then circle around. The police were not allowing anyone to tread on so much as an inch of Wall Street.<p>looks like the NYPD should be the ones hash-tagging #ourwallstreet<p>So I walked all the way down to Beaver St. and over to Broadway and I headed up to Zuccotti Park, the home base of the protest. Along the way I noticed that just about every road leading to Wall Street had been blocked off. Zuccotti Park is about 4 or 5 blocks from Wall Street. I had found the protesters recent change in tone, from #takewallstreet to #ourwallstreet, to be rather bold seeing as they were encircled by mobile police lookout towers, vans, and officers on foot ringing around the perimeter, about 5 blocks from Wall Street. But it’s just semantics I suppose. Although what I found was less an occupation than it was an internment camp cordoned off by the police.<p>The confusion of the protest grounds went beyond semantics though. The park was littered with trash and remnants of food, cardboard pizza boxes, empty bottles, and makeshift compost piles. There were mattresses and people sprawled out or curled up in sleeping bags in the middle of the afternoon. Some people were getting high, others listening to music or arguing with each other. I didn’t feel like I was at a protest as much as I felt I was in a playpen and the police were babysitting. To be clear, some of the media have been describing the people living in the park as bums and insulting them as people who don’t take showers. I wouldn’t have any problem with that if it were true. A lot of people like to complain about protestors and activists as hippies who don’t take showers. For all I care the entire protest could be made up of smelly homeless people and it would still be just as credible as if it were fully employed men and women in suits. Some of the best people I’ve met in life have been people who live on the street and I wish I were comfortable enough feeling greasy to go days at a time without showering. I mention this because I take issue with the group’s tactics, not the members of the group themselves.<p>although most of them were rude and handing out stupid flyers like this one<p>I walked into the center of the park and sat down at the group’s tactical command unit. With everyone huddles around three desks in the center of the park, I counted at least 12 computers, two large HD monitors, and multiple people on tablets and smartphones, a setup to rival that of the police. For a bunch of anti-consumerists it was pretty ironic to see them all working on Apple computers and devices though. Apple is probably one of the most overpriced, overhyped fascist corporations there is, not to mention a darling of the stock market, currently trading above $400 a share. (And that’s coming from someone who uses their products.) Glancing around at the various computer screens I saw that most people were on Twitter, though some were on Spotify, browsing through pictures on Facebook, one was editing on Premiere Pro and some others were taking self-portraits. I was wondering what so many people were doing on computers, especially at five in the afternoon, a time that seemed to be ripe for protesting Wall Street. But before I could ask what all the computers were needed for three police officers walked up and told the kids eating pizza that they were going to confiscate the group’s gasoline tank because they weren’t allowed to have gasoline in the park without a permit.<p>you can see the girl in the background start to say something but she literally chokes on her mouth full of pizza...<p>Naturally it created a scene and everyone started shouting “legal! legal!” as a call for any nearby lawyers that might be able to help. The police took the gasoline tanks without much trouble. I was pretty surprised that for a group that had been planning this protest for the past few months, the only times they’ve made the news thus far had been in reports that someone had failed to obtain the proper permits for an action. The police captain returned a few minutes later and tried to explain that they could call a number to get the permits and retrieve their gas tank, but he kept being interrupted by a girl with red hair and pigtails screaming “Is anyone tweeting this?! What’s our hashtag?! Is anyone tweeting this?! The police are taking our gasoline! How are we supposed to run a generator without gasoline?!”<p>The officer handed someone a card and said “I can’t answer your questions, you’ll have to call my supervisor for information on the permit,” and he left.<p>I wanted to talk to someone about why the group wasn’t marching or protesting, but were instead sitting in the park holding a rally about the quality of the food, which lasted for about 15 minutes. I asked the guy sitting next to me if there was anyone that could answer some questions for me in a representative capacity. He said he could. He didn’t seem to have the attention span necessary for following a line of questioning but I went ahead anyway.<p>“What’s your name?’
“Dagger.”
Hmm. “Ok Dagger. Well, for one thing I was wondering why so many computers are needed. Everyone seems to just be fucking around.”
“They’re on Twitter. Are you on twitter?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Thomas Monopoly. So why isn’t anyone marching on Wall Street?”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“What’s our hashtag!” he called out.
“We have takewallstreet,” someone from behind me yelled, “ourwallstreet, occupywallstreet, and occupiersneeds!”<p>I let the conversation end there. I tried to eavesdrop on the conversations between some of the people at the computers but all I could make out were two people trying to find a comedian online to come out and perform in the park.<p>In front of me a city employee was emptying out the park trash bins. No less than three people, one at a time, approached him and put their hand on him and said, in a very sincere voice, “I really appreciate what you’re doing. I really appreciate you as a person. Thank you.”<p>So I sat there for a few more minutes looking around. Just when I was about to get up a conversation caught my ear. One guy was saying that he’d had enough, and that he was sick of the way the protest was being conducted and he was leaving. He was upset, saying that he had tried to help and no one was doing anything that needed to be done. Another guy chimed in, saying, “What we need is a comedian down here. Or someone to get up and play some guitar, chill everyone out. Everyone’s all wound up.”<p>A few feet away the crowd was cheering a man with a megaphone who said, “We may not have toilets but we have computers!”<p>I walked over to the man who was saying he was going to leave. His name was Walter.<p>He was a tough looking Irish guy with a baby face. The guy next to him was Al, a 60 year old Italian guy who sort of looked like Jimmy Durante if Jimmy Durante had been a badass. Walter was angry and explaining to a kid with long stringy hair and bellbottoms that he was through helping out with the protest and the kid was trying to convince him to stay.<p>“I’ve told them what they need to do,” Walter was saying to him. “They don’t listen. This isn’t a protest. This is a pizza party for these kids. The cops are going to keep coming back if they keep doing things they shouldn’t be doing. I tried to help. They don’t want to listen. I’m done. I’m going home.”<p>Walter was rattling off a list of technicalities that needed to be addressed that were being ignored, “And those kids are just sitting there. Talking about how bad the peanut butter is. They’re not even protesting.” As he was saying this a meeting actually was being held to discuss the vegan options for pizza.<p>The kid in the bellbottoms was trying to calm Walter down and explained to him that they need him and that people will listen.<p>I talked to Walter after he was through ranting. He was participating in protest of Congress bailing out the big banks while at the same time writing the Zadroga Bill to withhold payments for cancer treatments and other illnesses. He was a World Trade Center first responder and was receiving treatment. I couldn’t understand exactly what his qualifications were, but he was a fire watchman and engineer of some sort and knew a lot about permits and certifications. Most of the people who passed by knew him by name so I assumed he had been working fairly closely with the group to help them conduct their protest in a legal manner and advise them on their permits and compliance issues. He was an old school union guy. The kind of person who gets things done and doesn’t like to spend a lot of time talking about them.<p>Walter told me that he had been in the park since Friday to participate in the protest. But that he was through. “Three strikes and you’re out. I try to give everyone three chances and they've blown every chance I've given them.”<p>He said that for the past few days it had been one problem after another with the people living in the park. “And why aren’t they marching! Look at them. They’re just sitting there! They just sit there all day!”<p>He said maybe 25% of the crowd marches each day and that it’s always the same group of people. “I warned them about the candles, you can’t have open fire in the park, they didn’t listen. I warned them about the garbage. Health inspectors are going to kick them out. Every night I’ve gone around picking up their trash. I said look, there’s trash everywhere, there are rats and cockroaches and there are empty trash cans right there. People need to be putting their trash in the trash bins. But they didn’t listen. They all claim they want to save the environment but they can’t even take care of their local environment. There’s still shit everywhere. I’m done. I’m not picking up after them anymore.”<p>[The next day Joanna Michele sent out a message on Twitter from the park complaining that:
health inspector may be utilized to try to shut down the square. #ourwallstreet
as well as others who claimed the health dept. was conspiring against them.]<p>“I told them that they need permits for the generator,” Walter continued, “and for the gasoline. They didn’t listen. And now they want to complain about it. This is just a bunch of kids sticking forks in a socket. They’ll learn for themselves.” He pulls out an American flag bandana and cleans his sunglasses. A girl stands up in front of the crowd assembled on the ground behind us and screams “I haven’t shaved my legs for three days!” and the crowd cheers. Walter Shakes his head. “You know who these kids are, these aren’t people who have ever worked for anything. They’re kids who don’t want to work. They’ve never had a job. That’s different than having a job and losing it. I want to work. These kids don’t want anything.”<p>I suggested that may in fact be part of their philosophy, and that maybe they were opposed to the entire economic system, but I don’t think he heard me. “The same people everyday are the ones marching while the rest sit here and eat pizza. If you’re going to protest Wall Street protest Wall Street. They’re going to get arrested for permit violations and for hanging signs where they’ve been told not to hang them. Why not get arrested for protesting instead then? Why not get arrested for marching or for actually being on Wall Street? A couple kids get arrested for being on Wall Street, I told them they have to be uniform. They’re blocking the street marching five deep. You have to march like this,” he slaps me on the shoulder, “up against one another. They want to sit around and complain and hold meetings and scream about ‘the peanut butter sucks’ that’s fine but I’m going home. I’m going home and I’m going to break every sex law in the books with my girlfriend. I’ve been out here for three days. You know how I’m going to beat Wall Street, I’m not going to think about it.”<p>Just then a kid walks up and says “What’s going on Walter?”<p>“I’m going home. This is pointless.”<p>The kid says “I know what you mean. I totally just had an FBI agent try to entrap me. I was just standing there and she came up and tried to get me to say that I support violent protesting. But I didn’t say it. She was obviously an FBI agent.”<p>Walter looks at me. “I came out here to protest. This is a joke.”<p>We were standing over an entrance door down to the park’s sprinkler system and two fire safety guys from the city asked us to move so that they could get below the street and turn off the sprinklers. They opened the trapdoor and climbed down. Walter pulled out his own flashlight and aimed it down through the passageway to give them some extra light. He stared down into the passage.<p>“I miss that stuff,” he said. “I miss rolling around in the dirt down there and working on that stuff.” The guys climbed back up and closed the trapdoor. Walter said goodbye and headed home.<p>I could understand the way Walter felt about the protest. I had been monitoring it through the weekend via Twitter and the Livestream video channel prior to showing up in person on Monday. The protestors seemed juvenile to me. If they had advertised their protest as a sit-in at Zucotti Park I may not have been so irritated. But the fact that they had been making it look and sound like they were actively marching on Wall Street each day, when Wall Street was locked down and most of the protestors dared not even try to march on the NYSE, was a little pathetic in my opinion. They have been sending out messages online such as:<p>We don't need another Kent State #NYPD<p>Which in my opinion is incredibly insulting to the victims at Kent State, since the Zuccotti Park protest has been the most peaceful protest I’ve ever read about or seen, and the cops and city have been fairly accommodating. Not to mention the park’s owner.<p>And:
At least 7 people arrested today picked off from the back of marches for nothing #takewallstreet<p>Which is a misrepresentation, they were arrested for trespassing, something I think the New York Times has photographs of. I for one think that it would be more important to state the facts, that they were arrested for trespassing, thereby bringing light to the fact that the protest is being cordoned off by the city and blocked from entering certain streets, rather than claiming that they were arrested “for nothing,” in order to make it seem like the protestors are under attack.<p>And:<p>We need technology for a global general assembly to hook us up with other protestors so we can make international demands #OurWorld<p>Which is a pretty grand statement coming from a group who stated officially that they have no demands and intend to put a list together in time.<p>And:<p>THE WOBBLIES ARE CONFIRMED - The next IWW GMB for the New York area will be held at Liberty Square!<p>Which was then retracted when it turned out that someone from the park had just mentioned the idea of inviting the IWW to protest.<p>We got carried away, it's not entirely sure but the idea is being pushed by some of our wob organizers and invitation is made<p>And:<p>6 arrested at march this is the first precinct # to demand their release 212-334-0611 #takewallstreet<p>Which seems really irresponsible to flood the phone lines of a police station to demand the release of your friend who would be released within 24 hours anyway.<p>And:<p>Rumors of censorship on facebook - any substance?<p>Which I find highly unlikely, given past situations which have unfolded on Facebook. I doubt they would pull out the censorship gong for a bunch of hippies sleeping in the park.<p>So I went back to the park on Wednesday to check in. Everything seemed the same, but I was pleasantly surprised to find my friend Caleb from New Orleans had come up and was participating in the protest.<p>Caleb is a performance artist, among other things, and was performing in the park.<p>you're just going to have to trust me when I say that he's actually a very intelligent guy...<p>He’s active in a lot of anarchist and political activism circles around the country, knows his social and political history, and is a well spoken and well reasoned young man who I always enjoy talking to. I’ve never asked him what the point of his street performances are, but they’re some of the most humorous I have seen, and I'm not a person who typically enjoys performance art. My favorite show is one I saw him perform in New Orleans, in which he dressed in a tutu, wrote the word “ART” in chalk on the sidewalk, shoved a slide whistle up his nose, took off his shoe, and began beating the word “ART” with his shoe.<p>He was set up on Liberty Street in front of a large crowd of mystified Asian tourists and police officers. He was performing some sort of a marionette show flanked by topless women. Even the police were laughing occasionally when he’d get up close to them.<p>After the performance I talked to him about the protestors. He was a perfect example of the type of person participating that Walter was fed up with and that had seemingly shown up only to be part of a spectacle. I said most of the same things as Walter, that I thought they were acting like a bunch of brats who didn’t want to protest as much as they just wanted free pizza and a campout. I mentioned that most of them just seemed to be on the internet fucking around and that by comparing themselves to the "Arab Spring" they were trivializing revolution.<p>He disagreed. “Revolutions don’t happen the way they used to,” he said. “And in America they probably won’t ever again. I think it’s more important to be sitting here talking about it online than it is to be marching. The world is run by the media. It’s important to understand that, and I’m comfortable with manipulating it. Maybe more people could be marching, but I think what they’re doing is just as important. Everything happens in the media. They’re raising our visibility.”<p>I disagreed and said that pseudo-activism does more damage than good. “They’re out here calling themselves anarchists,” I said. “Anarchism is not chaos. Anarchism requires even more responsibility than other forms of governance. It’s cells functioning independently, but there has to be coordination, or cohesion to some extent, otherwise nothing gets accomplished. Just sitting around tweeting that they’re protesting, and finding an eager audience online is what’s preventing them from actually protesting and enacting any real change. They say theyre doing something that they’re not, and then a bunch of people agree with them that they are doing it, so they’re satisfied with the response they get.”<p>“Listen,” he said, “most anarchists today are either Sex Pistols fans or angst ridden teens. No one here really gives a shit about anarchism. If some stupid hippie wants to get up and call himself an anarchist and rant about capitalism that’s fine with me. It’s one more person in the park and one less person in some skyscraper bundling toxic mortgages. That's a good thing.”<p>I think that adopting that viewpoint is fine, as long as something actually gets accomplished by the people in the park. As it is, the group doesn’t even have a set of goals. Mayor Bloomberg has been warning New York residents that unless we see a drop in youth unemployment rates there's likely to be rioting in the near future. The Occupy Wall Street group this week celebrated the Dow plummeting on fears of global recession. Which makes me wonder if they can separate their desire to see financial institutions reformed from their adolescent impulse to see the financial system collapse. One would be a good thing, the other would lead to a depression and to much more suffering for everyone around the world.<p>To me, this protest has been less about politics and economics and more about American culture. Everyone is more connected today, it only makes sense that the pseudo-activist segment of society has grown more organized too. And I guess that’s probably a good thing. But I have always believed that action without thought is no better than thought without action. I suppose a bunch of people camping out in the park calling themselves a protest will draw attention, and in time more people will show up, and by that point maybe they’ll be able to explain why they’re camping out in the park, beyond the proto-anarchist “nah man, everything’s all fucked up, it’s gotta change, from the way it is now, everything’s just gotta change,” bullshit line that I was given from most of the people I spoke with at the protest. If the protest is about TARP then protest TARP. If it’s about war then protest the multiple wars we’re in. But don’t just sit there and eat pizza and send out Twitter pictures of yourself saying that you’re protesting. If you start to change what defines a protest into surfing the internet and uploading self-portraits no one in society is going to benefit from it.<p>A few months ago there was a street fair in my neighborhood. People set up on the street selling art, performing plays, etc. One group was set up at the corner and they were water-boarding each other, as well as anyone that walked by and wished to be water-boarded. They didn’t have any explanation why. They said they just thought it would be fun to see what it’s like.<p>“These idiots will do whatever they see on television,” my friend Matthew remarked. Those words came back to me when I walked into Zuccotti park Monday afternoon.<p>It seems that as the virtual crowd swells more and more people are demanding a list of goals and are complaining about some of the delegitimizing aspects of the protest. So hopefully their attempt at crowd-sourcing their objectives will begin to take shape. But instead of going to jail for megaphone violations or for setting up tents in the rain, and then putting those videos on YouTube as proof that the police are harassing you, why not just loiter on Wall Street and get arrested for that? I’m with Walter, going to jail for protesting isn’t fun. You get locked in a bullpen for 24 hours, and then you get released and the charges are dropped and you don’t even get to challenge the arrest, and if you do you typically lose. Why go through all of that trouble over a permit violation for a megaphone? There are so many other non-violent things worth getting arrested for, choose your battles.<p>In Support,
Thomas Monopoly