In addition to fiery purpose, large numbers out in the streets, and full-throated chants that carry, a good protest needs good accessories, and this action had many such. There were little green caps, as sported by the eponymous source of the tax, like a sprouting field over the crowd. Most were in humble felt, but some of the nurses wore an especially jaunty style, ultrasuede with real feathers, long and brown like they’d come from the rear of a grouse, or some other fowl, well-represented in Robin Hood’s vague historical era. In addition to being, or because it was Occupy’s anniversary, this was also an international nurses’ day of action and they had been focused enough in the build-up to the day to order themselves something special.
Big Scrooge McDuck bags of money accompanied the marchers–never inappropriate at any Occupy-sponsored event–and in keeping with the theme, a hilarious proclamation was delivered in faux Olde English calling out the knaves in JP Morgan Chase over a loud speaker outside their giant glass tower. The bankers looked out of their preternaturally clean windows and grinned their million dollar grins with their big clean teeth and were not chastened at all by the spectacle below, but what did it matter? The joke was on them as they stood in twos and threes behind glass, faced with that fantastic crowd. As the MC5 put it, this was the high society.
A coalition of the most far-flung groups showed up, chanting the OWS chants: “We are unstoppable, another world is possible.” “Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.” “All day, all week, occupy wall street” and the hoary classic of another group present, a chant which had once been on the lips of so many fierce activists who have now died: “When people with AIDS are under attack, what do we do? Act up fight back!”
Who was there: an anarchist or two with requisite bandana on face. Nurses with matching t-shirts and professionally printed signs, Electrical Workers Union guys wearing leather biker vests, instead of central skull patch, an illuminated light bulb, the Hell’s Angels’ style rockers above and below declaring their union allegiance. Act Up veterans, some even old men, Occupiers bringing back out the Declaration of the Occupation of New York signs for a second airing that day, bedecked with flowers like the may pole they carried at the last big event in the spring. All the other folks who come out were there too, according to the press one thousand in number: old, young, infirm, firm, looky-loos, the angry and waylaid, and cameras, cameras, cameras.
The cops were out in their staggering multitudes, on scooters, on foot, etc. etc. etc. The city, with money to burn for such things and eager to show it off, like the hosts at a bris who buy three times the amount of lox necessary, had spent their usual untold amounts to line the entire route, or most of it, from Dag Hammerskjöld, to J.P. Morgan Chase, to the MTA to Bryant Park with barricades. Where do these barricades sleep when they’re off duty? And what frightening specter are they keeping in or out?
The danger might well be epitomized by the following, overheard on the other side of Bryant Park from the rally that closed out the march. A cop on his walkie-talkie reported in to his supervisor, with a short-hand version of an all-clear. “My part’s all Yuppy,” he said, a quick summary offered of what the one percent would be up against if everyone who was affected, and everyone aware of their own class position, really did unite. To those involved and those who aren’t yet: Happy anniversary!
A protest marshal beating time on S17.