Why We Occupy

November 16

Luis

I’m here specifically for school. I think it’s ridiculous to treat our kids, the future of this country, like complete garbage.

I think this is a country that was based on ideas. And revolution? That’s the only reason why we’re the United States of America.

And I think it’s completely ridiculous that they just go in and kick us out like that. They’re treating us as if we’re convicts now. Look at the security; they’re watching our every move. Like I said, I was questioned about a schoolbag. You know, that’s not the way you treat . . . people. We’re here in peace!

I’ve been here for a month. I have yet to see any of us pick a fight with a cop. I’ve always seen it the opposite. Everyone who talks all of that—that we’re not here for a specific reason, you know, and they talk badly about us—they haven’t been here for more than ten minutes. I can guarantee that.

We’re down, but we’re not out.

What’s their plan for the park? Are they going to open it all the way, or is this it? Is this the best you get?

Well, I think what they’re planning to do is just to annoy the hell out of us until we decide, “Okay, it’s time to leave.” So I’m guessing it’s going to be like this until the last protester leaves. But mark my words: We’re not leaving. We’re not going anywhere.

Do you think there’s going to be a move to another park?

No. I mean, it might spread out to other sects, I guess—other Occupy movements—but this is the main one. We’re not leaving. ❖

Paul II

I’ve been sleeping here for a month now. I went home this weekend to get some rest. I was kind of sick and needed to get some energy back. I wasn’t really paying attention, but I found out about it yesterday, and I rushed here. I had a tent. I had a crew here, but when I came, everything was gone. I have been up all night, making sure that there’s a presence here until we figure out what’s next.

What’s going on tomorrow?

I don’t know about everything that’s going on. I know that there’s plans to block the subway lines. We’re going to do all kinds of direct action. They’re expecting something, but they don’t know what. Direct Action has been planning all kinds of things, you just wait and see.

And in the meantime, you’re holding down the fort.

Right now, yes. That’s what I’ve been doing. That’s my short-term agenda, but in the long term, we can’t know yet what the outcome of this is going to be. Can we come back? Can we not? What retaliation can we do in terms of legality, or in terms of civil disobedience? We’ll see. Who knows what the future will bring?

This movement is not just about the park. The park is a symbolic thing that we have to defend, but it’s bigger than the park, and they’re not going to just shut it down like this. If they chop off this head, millions will grow. We have, like, B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I . . . you know, the whole alphabet beyond. It’s so dense. This movement is so dense. You can’t just sum it up in a few words.

For example, I went to a meeting last week about planning for occupiers to squat empty buildings owned by banks in the neighborhood. Squat buildings could be a good road we could explore, just to keep things going having this community. That’s what Occupy Wall Street was engined by, this little town square where people met, where you could come and actually express your ideas, meet people who disagree, agree. Networks of ideas—networks of political action—keep that energy going. We’re going to have to do that if we want this movement to survive and go somewhere.

It’s important to have a place to go.

Exactly. So I think we could try, also, to fight using the law, continue occupying this park, have a presence in Lower Manhattan, try to see other places we could occupy, and continue to support the Occupy movement overall, in the U.S. and in the whole world.

Yeah, you shut down Occupy Wall Street, which is the symbolic epicenter, but there’s Occupy all over the world, so it’s not like this is the end of it. Just look at what happened in Oakland, what’s happening in Europe right now. We’re unstoppable. We’re unstoppable. They’re pulling their hairs out right now, you know. It’s not like it’s a relief for them. They’re still scared. ❖

Mike

All right, Mike follow-up. Tell me what happened to you.

As much as I remember.

I’d just gotten back from the Spokes Council. It was fun for me because the group I’m with, O.W.S. en Español, got through into the Spokes Council. We have a spoke. [Laughs.] “Great!” you know?

[Laughs.] I want to say, “Great!” but it’s more like, “I’m sorry!”

It was sort of funny. We just got back. I was like, “Okay, fine. Let me just step into my tent and get, like, fifteen minutes.” Actually, way before that, when I was coming back from the Spokes Council, I did notice the cops dropping off barricades, but I just thought it was like, “Oh, they’re preparing for the seventeenth. No big deal. They do that all the time.” But as soon as I stepped into the tent, I just saw the whole corners of the park: Bam! Stadium lights, and I was like, “Wow!” Then people started freaking out, and that’s when I kind of knew.

Freaking out how? Like, loud mic checks?

Yeah, mic checks, as well as, “Wake up! Wake up!” and what not. Just going from tent to tent, shaking it, waking people up. I mean, I just knew right away. I just kind of assessed whether or not I was going to lock down and get arrested or whatnot.

I had already started protecting the stuff I had, in terms of material I use to do what I do here. I started bringing them on- and off-site.

You were bringing it to the storage space?

No, I was just bringing it to—like, dumping it somewhere off-site where I could recover it. I’ve brought it to a couple of train stations, or I’ll throw it behind some bushes.

So I left. And then when I came back, they were just not letting anybody in. I stopped right here, on Liberty, and then I pushed back all the way to Fulton. I tried walking around. I pretty much watched when they were starting to haul stuff away.

I went to a friend’s house. I tried watching some of it on LiveStream, then went to bed, and I was here early the next morning.

Did you go to the G.A. in the morning?

No, I didn’t. I helped facilitate the G.A. here, last night at seven.

People said it was very optimistic. You had it here in the park?

Yeah, it was right here. The G.A. was held right here in the park, as usual, seven o’clock. I think it was refreshing for people, because people were, you know, “What are we going to do now?” I think people got the chance to know that everyone they met—the faces they saw here—were safe, and they felt really better.

How many people were arrested?

I’m hearing a lot of conflicting reports. I know when I was leaving, there were probably between thirty-five to fifty people trained in direct action—who were willing to stay and get arrested—and I just saw those people preparing themselves for a direct action.

How do they do that?

Well, locking arms, and locking themselves around the kitchen, for example. People were trying to lock themselves around structures that are in place. That’s pretty much it. Around trees or whatever, I don’t know. But those are people—they have goggles, you know? They call their families, let everyone know, that kind of deal. They’re okay with getting arrested, and they’re okay with being pepper-sprayed and all sorts of cool stuff. And they did, by the way.

[Laughs.] They did get sprayed.

Yeah. [Laughs.]

Would you say some people were arrested who were not prepared to be arrested?

Yeah, of course, some people were probably not aware that these people are willing to get arrested. Some of these people panicked, you know? Yeah, there were random arrests.

Were a lot of people hurt?

Some. I’m hearing a lot of conflicting reports of that, too. I did see a video of a dog getting hurt. It got left behind, and it wasn’t going to be picked up. So I know a dog got hurt. I’ve seen weird handcuff injuries, like, purple and yellow and whatnot. I think people’s spirits are okay; some people did get kind of physically hurt. I don’t know how much or what scale of injuries. I think, in general, people are doing okay.

It’s good that things didn’t turn out too violent. It was probably the most passive a raid could ever be. The people we know—we’ve called around and figured out they’re okay.

It gives us some time to re-evaluate, refocus, and think about where we’re going as a movement and what message we’re sending.

Did you stay here last night?

Yeah, I did.

So you haven’t slept?

Well, I got, like, an hour nap or so. The deal is: I’m going to try to maintain a position in the park as much as possible. I’m working in a lot of other working groups, and a lot of the stuff we’re doing is off-site, anyways. For example, O.W.S. en Español—we have a lot of stuff geared toward Latin communities, so I definitely have to pick up energy in those areas. I want to hold up our presence, and we’ll figure out how to do that systematically, but there’s a lot of things we have to do, a lot of educational stuff we have to do, all over the place.

What about tomorrow?

I’m not too particularly concerned about tomorrow. I think people get it in general that we’ve been the most nonviolent we can be. People get it that we’re a nonviolent movement. With that said, you never know what kind of provocations are going to happen, from cops or other areas where people get provoked. And again, the people who are willing to step out and do serious direct action—they have assessed the arrestability of the direct action they’re doing.

There are direct actions that are a very low risk of being arrested. There’s rallies, which will have the safety of our crowd. So I’m excited about it. I know it will be successful. I think, then, it will show people how hard we are.

Where are people meeting now? Where is everybody?

A lot of people are meeting in cyberspace, and that was always the deal. People are meeting here, and working groups are meeting wherever they usually meet. Sixty Wall Street is still open. Charlotte’s Place—I go there every day to get my phone charged, and I eat there. A lot of people are meeting there. There’s a meeting at twelve o’clock today. And to be completely honest, meeting here, too. Today I was talking to some other guys on the Facilitation team. We were thinking of probably doing some trainings here because we have the space now.

Will you read your sign?

It says: “Park rules: No constitutional rights allowed. All equal, but some are more equal than some. Yellow vests can be cops if they feel like. Park rules can change any minute. Signed, Doomberg.” ❖

Michael

What happened?

I was over here by the kitchen, and we had locked arms. They came up, and at first I thought all they were doing was checking the perimeter. I even talked to one of the police officers. I said, “Okay, you’re going to do the perimeter, lock us up while you clean up the first half, and then you’re going to do the back half.” And they said, “Okay, that’s fine.” They cleaned up the first half, and then they came in like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They picked us up. They picked us up out of our locked arms. I was dragged out of my coat—you remember the coat I had? Torn to pieces! Shredded! I mean, it was a coat, but it was a coat I got here, you know what I mean? It meant something to me.

So I went to a paddy wagon. I’m going in the paddy wagon, I look to my left, I see tear gas bombs going off. It was like something I’ve never seen in America before in my life. It was horrible! It was horrible!

Bystander: It was horrible!

Michael: Terrorism at its worst!

Went to jail, stayed for a long time. The police are usually polite, courteous, respectful and responsible. They know what’s going on here. But a police officer—maybe thirty, mid-thirties—looked at one of the girls—I mean, one of the young girls: eighteen-, seventeen-year-old girl—and said, “There goes another one of those Zuccotti hotties!” I almost lost myself! He said it more than once, about a few of the girls that came in. I didn’t know what to do. I was like, “Really? This is what’s happening?” I’m hearing stories about sexual assault with the N.Y.P.D., when the girls are booked and everything. I’m just beside myself now. I don’t know how to fix that.

But I do know that we will be here. We will be here until the day arrives that we have peace in this country and throughout the world. We will! I’ll die for it! I’ll go on record to say that! I will! That’s why I’m here. That’s my purpose. Honestly, that’s it.

What of my kids here in the park? They have no home! The homeless kids! I mean, that’s when I really started weeping. What will they do? This is the first place where they really felt safe, and they really felt, “Wow! We do have a place in this world! We do have a purpose!”

They took it all away because they didn’t know. They were doing what they were told, but they weren’t doing what was in their heart. I believe that if any police officer came in here and talked to those kids, saw what they were doing, saw the change, saw the love, saw the hope, saw the everything that was happening in here, they wouldn’t have done what they did last night. They wouldn’t! I know that, because I believe, in spite of everything, that people are good. People are good. People are good. Anne Frank said that, not me.

I will try to believe with you that that’s the case. So what’s . . .

The next step? Occupy Together. November seventeenth.

Tomorrow.

Yes! Week before Thanksgiving, take a day off from work, from school. Be with your family. Turn off the television. Read the paper. Talk about what’s happening.

I’m encouraging people who are working for companies like Walmart and Kmart, who don’t pay their people for the amount of work that they do. I’ve been in these stores. I know people who work for these stores. It’s not right! I’m saying: Let these people know that it’s not right what they’re doing. It’s predatory, you know? I’m asking everyone—pleading—I’m getting on my knees and saying, “Please take that day off!” because the world will see that the power is still with the people. It always has been. It always has been. It’s like Dorothy going to the Wizard: “It’s always been with you. You’ve always had the courage! You’ve always had the heart!” That’s it.

As somebody told me down here, “Without courage, there can be no other virtue.”

There you go. Except for patience. You have to have patience . . . with the police, and with each other as well.

It’s hard, right?

I don’t know; I’ve never had a baby before! [Laughs.] I don’t know how hard it is. I’m getting one now, and it’s okay. It’s a matter of reclaiming what’s yours. It’s not just the money, but it’s the space! We belong here! We’re here! Get used to it! ❖

Rafael

Cops came in and they did their job, I guess, which was to block the airspace so no one could see how bad they were. They stopped any helicopters from going above so that no one could film what they were doing. They arrested all the reporters who went in here, and they pushed them back—those who wouldn’t leave the area—to a block or two radius away from here. They stopped the subway, and closed down all the bridges and tunnels, and then when they were sure that no one was looking, they came in and they simply mowed this place down.

Some people tried to tie themselves up in the kitchen, and those people were maced and thrown out of here. I was here until the last minute. When they came into the kitchen, I was getting my hands cuffed and I said, “I’m leaving! I’m leaving right now!” So when they were done, I walked over to the side and they let me go. They walked us up to the corner.

I left all my belongings here. They said, “Break down your tents!” So I did that, thinking that I could come back the next day to get my stuff. Kind of foolish of me to think so, but I already knew what time it was. I have nothing that I’m so attached to here that matters, you know? It’s the long term that matters.

And they did what they did. They came back, went to court—though the judge that ruled in our favor was removed from the case because she worked for the A.C.L.U.

Are you serious?

Yeah. So then the case had to be reheard again, and the decision had to be overturned. And then once that decision was overturned, another judge had it that we had to argue before him about whether we could be here or not. Now Brookfield Properties put up all these rules about people sleeping, about it being open twenty-four hours. They put these signs up saying you can only be here until ten o’clock. But that was a big mistake because it’s in their deed. In order for them to get the extra floors that they got, they had to build this park and make it public twenty-four hours. So people stayed twenty-four hours regardless of the signs that say you can only be here until ten o’clock.

Did you stay all night last night?

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to stay because . . . since it was supposed to rain and we don’t have any tents yet, there were some places that were giving shelter to the occupiers. They wanted security there to make sure that if there was any disruption, our own security would handle it. So I went to a church around Seventh Street and Second Avenue, and I did security there. They told me they needed five or six people. We wound up with, like, eight people there doing security, but we only needed two people in the front, so we took shifts. So I got some sleep. That was my first sleep in two days.

The night before that, when they came, we all gathered and decided to march down Broadway. They made us turn on Fulton, and we all went down. Then, on the corner of the next block, they let a few of us go by, and then the rest of them they gathered and they started beating them. You know, there was a couple hundred arrested that night. They just kept the process going. We would be marching, and then they would stop and tell us that we had to go down another street, and they would do the same thing with the people that wouldn’t keep going. They would start arresting them and making them go.

Eventually, by the end of the night—four something in the morning—we wound up at Foley Square, which is where we were all trying to meet. Some were on Pine and Broadway, and we were trying to get the two groups together. While we were in the process of that, the cops surrounded us in the park. Luckily, they used a bullhorn, and told us that if we didn’t leave immediately, we were all subject to arrest. So everybody had to gather up again and start marching. We went through the same process of coming back, getting people locked up, and at five something, almost six o’clock, we wound up back at Foley Square.

They told us that we had to leave, but we had Norman Siegel from the American Civil Liberties Union with us by this time, and he went and spoke to the police. They decided—since it was only, like, twenty-five minutes to six—that they were going to allow us to stay. Finally, this walk of all night . . . I feel like I walked, like, eighty blocks, man, a hundred blocks, and all the stress of every couple of minutes about to go to jail, you know? That finally settled down. We went from there to a property that Trinity Church was supposed to be donating to us, but then the board of directors voted against it.

The church’s board of directors?

Yeah. They had spoken about it, but they weren’t prepared for it to actually take place. This emergency came up, and since we were in talks with them, we assumed that they were going to go through with it right away. They didn’t want to have their hand forced. You know, they’re going to do it, it just wasn’t going to be that minute. So that gave the police a chance to go in. We had announced before that this was a new place, that we had already planned for this, that we’re working on it. And then all of sudden . . .

Five hundred cops in riot gear show up, and you know, the tensions are between: They’re on the phone with Trinity Properties, the board of directors are in the meeting and they’re not answering the phone, somehow or other the cops got in touch with them and they’re like, “Look, we’re going to warn you guys before we go in.” It was very tense. I was doing security for one of the reverends, and when it came down that cops were going in, I had to snatch him, and basically, carry him and shelter him through the crowd of people so that he didn’t get mauled by the stampede.

Who was the reverend?

I don’t know his name. I don’t know if he’s a reverend, or . . . I don’t know what you call him. There’s a bunch of different names of the people that dress like pastors, but . . . it wasn’t “reverend.” It’s a congregation of clergymen that had organized this.

Then we made our way back here to find out that the park was still closed. We were waiting on the court for a decision. We got our decision, and then we walked around for a couple of hours, heard the G.A. I was so happy to see it was so big.

It was here?

Yeah, it was here. They finally let us in. It came all the way down to, like, the middle of the park—a little bit more than the middle of the park. It was an enormous G.A., and there were more people in the park now than there were before. Before it seemed like there were so many people, but it was because of the tents. Now there were no tents, and every inch of space was being occupied by a person.

Then I had to leave. Somebody came up: “Ralph, we need for you to get five guys together and do security.” I was like, “Oh, my God! I haven’t slept!” I was just hoping to go home for the night, like, “Finally, we got the park. Okay, I can go home to sleep.” Instead, I was like, “All right, no problem.”

Then I couldn’t find no one from Security! So I started just pulling volunteers out the crowd. I had the address. We went down there, and luckily, I got some sleep.

Now I’m back here today, trying to look for, you know, the people, and see what the next step is to organize and get together. Tomorrow, we have a big event.

It’s a general strike?

It’s supposed to be a general strike and a march to Wall Street or whatever, but I have a feeling that for a lot of people—not for me, but for a lot of people—peace is over. The cops have demonstrated that. People are frustrated. There’s no more freedom of speech. There’s no more transparency. They did all this in the dark. They closed the airspace.

I hope it’s not true that people are giving up.

No, they’re not giving up; they’re just giving up on the nonviolent part of it. You know, a lot of people actually attacked the police. They were throwing bottles. During those marches, they were turning over garbage cans in the street. Some people broke windows. But we’re frustrated, you know? Our hands are tied.

I wonder about tomorrow, too.

I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as people think it is, but . . . it may get worse than we think. One little drop of negativity could turn into a whirlpool of it. So far we’ve been pretty peaceful, and there’s a great deal of violence that has come against us. If you look at the big guy over there, he’s got bruises on his legs, on his forehead. I spoke to another woman last night who—her finger . . . the girl who’s pregnant? She lives in the Women’s Tent? I don’t know if you spoke to her, but they beat her in the hand, and—

They beat a pregnant woman?

See, this is not personal. These are soldiers, and they work for the one percent. They’re just doing their job: removal. It didn’t matter whether you were young or old. You had to be moved, and that’s it. There’s no talking to you. There’s no sitting here trying to reason this out, you know? The order is: “You must move, and if you don’t move in a timely fashion according to me, I will move you.”

When I talked to you on Monday, you were like, “It’s two weeks, tops.” People in the library were like, “No way! It’s going to be here forever!” but you called it.

I know the truth. I’m here. I’m in all these meetings. I know what’s going on. I mean, there’s still things that I’m not talking to you about that are going to happen, but . . .

If I turn the tape off, will you talk to me about it?

You can’t help but to spread it. You’ll ask other people about it, and before you know it, “I heard this!” and, “I heard that!”

You’re right, you’re right.

What’s the next step for the park?

They might fight to put the tents up and to get looser restrictions on the park simply because of what the park represents to the rest of the world. You know, it’s like if we’re taken down, then it’s understandable how another occupation, maybe not as well-organized, can be taken down. It’ll help people feel like the movement is dying or over. But as long as we keep this alive, as long as this is strong, then it’ll keep hope up in the world. So we kind of have a responsibility to make sure it stays up. We can’t allow them to win. ❖

David

Were you here the other night?

Yeah.

How’d that go for you?

Well, it wasn’t pleasant. Basically, they took the tent down around us. We had a lot of medical stuff, which they said they would protect. First they said that by leaving, we were abandoning it, and we didn’t want to do that. But then they said they would protect it. And I really don’t know if—well, I know they didn’t protect it well, but I don’t know if we’re going to recover any of it.

There were three of us, and we grabbed what we could, so we have a strange assortment of stuff left.

How long had you been working here?

Maybe about since the second half of October—October twentieth or something.

What drew you down originally?

Well, I was watching Operation Wall Street, and I first thought, “What is the point? Where is Occupation Wall Street going? What demands do they hope to realize?” But I came to feel that what we were doing was making people aware of the situation in this country.

People don’t seem to be aware that one percent of the country owns thirty-five percent of the country. They don’t seem to be aware that our rights are fast disappearing. They don’t seem to be aware that environmentalists—people who know—tell us that too much carbon dioxide is going into the air. Not only is too much going into the air, but it’s going into the air faster and faster.

They’re going to have a pipeline from Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico, which they have a sample of in Canada which had fourteen leaks last year. And they’re going through prime farmland. I mean, there’s nothing going through desert or any land that where it’s okay if we have a couple thousand gallons of oil spilled there. And besides that, that’s the worst kind of fuel, which just shows that they’re not really serious about the environment.

So that’s part of it. Another thing is increasing secrecy in the government—ignoring laws, putting people who reveal law-breaking in jail instead of the people who break the law. I don’t understand that.

People need to be aware that we’ve passed some kind of critical point in the United States. Things aren’t really changing, and somebody needs to do something. Operation Wall Street is making people aware. There are a lot of conversations going on here about a lot of things, and there’s a sense that things really need to change. There’s a feeling that a lot of people are thinking about it and trying to put it together, trying to find something that will work.

Take medicine, for instance. Just working in the Medical tent, we had Western medicine—allopathic medicine, like me—and we also had herbalists and organic medicine people, and people who do alpha wave generation for relaxation and massage. Because people weren’t in positions where they needed to look at the bottom line—at how much profit they were making—we found ways of working together where we really were doing better together. I mean, I learned a lot about herbal medicine that I never knew. And it was convincing because we had patients coming back and saying, “You know, that concoction really worked!” That’s pretty convincing if people come back and say it, just independently. They weren’t actors, you know? So I learned a lot, and they learned things, too. And I think that would be the way it would be if everybody wasn’t looking for the profit.

I think the question really should not be “Why am I down here?” but “Why isn’t everybody else down here?” you know?

Yeah.

So you have a sense that this is really, really important, and we really have to do something. I sense it. People have to do something, you know? I mean, I have grandchildren. I’d like to see them grow up in a decent world and live a full life. And you have a child, and you’d like, I’m sure, to see your child have a happy life.

Absolutely.

And I just don’t see it happening if we’re going the way we’re going. It’s like on the Titanic: They rang the bell and said, “Iceberg!” and then they sped up and headed toward it, you know what I mean? It would take a long time to turn a planet around. It took a long time to turn the Titanic around, but not as long as it takes to turn a planet around. And they’re not even going in that direction!

So it doesn’t seem weird for me to be here. I’m in a special position because I retired early. I was thinking that I like my job, and I was thinking I’d probably work until seventy-five or seventy-seven or something like that, but my partner had diabetes, and he became pretty disabled. We decided that he might be happier in a nursing home, so he went into a nursing home. He was absolutely miserable. He couldn’t eat. He stared at the wall. He didn’t do anything. And I thought I had to take him home.

So that was in 2008. I changed our apartment around: widened the doorways and took out the thresholds, and put a door into the bathroom that a wheelchair could go into. And I took him home.

After six months, he was so badly off that I had to take him to the emergency room. They diagnosed severe dehydration, severe anemia, and mental changes. He needed blood transfusion and a week on I.V. therapy before he could come home.

And then he didn’t think that the apartment was actually the same apartment because of the changes I had made. He said, “No, we live at the other apartment!” So I took him out in his wheelchair to show him that it was his building, and he started calling to people, “I need to go home!” We went back in, and he told the doorman, “Could you call me a taxi?” and then he gave the address. The doorman thought he was kidding, so he said, “Oh, that’ll be twenty dollars to go that far.”

Then he called 9-1-1, and the people talked to him for about half an hour. The E.M.T.’s talked to him, because he was very rational in explaining why he knew it wasn’t [his apartment]. They finally said, “We have news for you: This is your apartment.” And he was just quiet for a while. Then he said, “That’s hard to believe.” And they said, “Yes, and that’s why we’re going to take you to the hospital, because we want to find out why it’s hard for you to believe that.”

So we went to the hospital, and his primary physician took him off the psychotropic medication that he had been receiving at the nursing home. In about a week, his confusion totally cleared and never returned.

Wow. That nursing home was—

It was a good nursing home. The people were trying—he was not a good patient—but they didn’t realize they exhausted him. They did physical therapy because he was walking on crutches. They were into improving his mobility, but he ended up in a wheelchair.

He didn’t realize the extent of his disability. He had diabetes since the age of eight, and he was sixty-nine years old. He had four injections a day. He had been on crutches since forty. He was in the hospital with osteomyelitis. He was in the hospital innumerable times with complications from diabetes. You can’t be a brittle juvenile diabetic and be in good shape after sixty years of that. So they exhausted him, and they were just a little angry at him all the time and he knew it.

But he wasn’t happy, anyway. He wouldn’t even listen to the radio, which he loved to do. He had C.D.’s and everything. So I’ll never regret taking him when he was . . . he was home for over two years, and we did a lot of things. He got a three-wheeled scooter. He got a big twenty-four-inch iMac computer. He took lessons at the Apple Store, and learned to be really adept with YouTube.

He came from the Bronx, and back in the Bronx they have old Bronx things. He went to William Howard Taft High School—P.S. 75—and they have pictures of it—how it looks now. He found all these things, and he found old Gertrude Berg—The Goldbergs—which he loved. And he found a movie. She had a full-length movie that showed in theaters.

Snippets on YouTube. He put it all together, and it was really nice. It’s a nice movie. It’s a good movie. He did lots of things like that. He put together shows from T.V. that he recorded.

We went out to eat. We got a wheelchair van and a three-wheeled power scooter so that we could. Once he called me—he went out, and he called me from Broadway and Sixty-Eighth Street. He said, “Meet me because I want to go to the library.” He had been in bed about to die in the nursing home, and he was going out to eat. We went to Washington. We went to Maine. We went to Vermont. And you know, stayed at disabled-access motels. We had a good time, and he did okay.

His previous partner had died in 1997. He moved from the Bronx in ’79 or ’78 because his previous partner, Paul, lived somewhere else. Paul died after they were together for twenty years. He had a bad heart. And then Eli was alone for a few years until we got together, and we were together after that.

We were not at all polite, but we really got along together, and we never went back to the nursing home, either. He couldn’t stand. He had to have a stand lift to stand, but then he wasn’t able to use the stand lift. He wasn’t able to sit up by himself. And so I called Adult Protective Services. They said we needed a lift that you didn’t have to do anything, and we couldn’t get it without him being in the hospital. You need a hospital just to get that.

And then the day when I was going to take him home—we had gotten permission—I came in, and he had aspirated food into his lungs. He was unconscious. They expected him to die. They had him on two antibiotics. He was breathing with a mask, and he was unconscious.

But he recovered, slowly. After he recovered, he wasn’t able to keep food from going into his airway when he tried to eat. He gradually got better at it. But [his doctor] checked him and said, “He’s dying. He needs hospice care.” I asked if we could go home, and he said we could. So we came home, and we had home hospice care, and he only lived eleven days. So he died on February twenty-seventh.

I’m so sorry.

The visiting nurse people explained to me that he had been dying for a while and I didn’t realize it. His appetite had been decreasing, and he had been sleeping more, and the weakness; these are all signs that he was dying already. When they got him home, they said, “He has two or three days to live.” But he lived eleven days. I had sort of started hoping that he would be better.

So anyway . . . since then I’ve been thinking about going back to work. I feel able to. But this [Occupy Wall Street] has been pretty good, actually. You know Shakespeare’s comment, “Conscience doth make cowards of us all”? I raised two children—family to raise and people to support. And when I was an intern and resident, I was involved in the same kind of thing: medical, and getting better medical care for people. I worked in the covered hospital system in Washington. I did things only sporadically, because you just get too busy.

Some of the kids don’t understand that the cops—they have families to support. Somebody tells them to do something, they’re going to do it because it’s not easy to get a job these days. And they can be very much in sympathy with us, but they still are going to be here with their riot helmets on and their billy clubs out. It doesn’t mean that they hate us; it just means that they’re doing their job, the policemen and the firemen. So I keep reminding people of that, because it was a mistake that we made. We used to call the police “pigs,” and saw them as enemies, and it was stupid. We all gradually realized that, so . . .

It would be better to start out with that awareness.

Yeah.

Maybe I told you too much.

I understand. It’s difficult to lose someone.

Well, it takes a while to get over it.

Yeah. If ever, right?

I guess I’ll get a job eventually. I get Social Security, and I get some retirement money from the state, so I can sort of get by without working. But this . . . I mean, I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile, you know? ❖

1. The judge removed from the case on the morning of November 15 was Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lucy Billings. ↑