“It’s 7 o’clock. Do you know where your cleaners are?” That was the jubilant cry from Occupy Wall Street protestors to the cops surrounding Zuccotti Park early Friday as the deadline for an announced “clean-up” came and went. Within a half hour much of the crowd, which numbered in the thousands in the park and surrounding areas, had dispersed – some apparently to march down Broadway in celebration of what looked like a victory over Mayor Bloomberg and Brookfield Properties, which owns the park. Peace reigned as exhausted protestors collapsed onto makeshift pallets, ignoring the “No lying down in the park” order issued last night by Mayor Bloomberg.
I was chatting with a friend on the Broadway end of the park when suddenly the mood shifted. He was just telling me how a lawyer had been around earlier writing down a phone number on the arms of protestors in case of arrest, and I was smiling at the thought that it looked like there wouldn’t be any. Seconds later a guy walked briskly through the park shouting, “Forty cops in riot gear approaching!” Within minutes there was shouting as a group of five or six cops with batons raised chased someone from the sidewalk area into the park, clearly in attack mode. A crowd swelled around shouting, “The whole world is watching!” I was temporarily crushed in the crowd. Word went around that the police were setting up barricades and attempting to restrict movement from the park to the sidewalk, blocking off entrances.
Had the cops done a bait and switch, letting everyone thing that the standoff was over, only to round us all up now that our numbers were more manageable?
Reports circulated that the person targeted by the cops was arrested for jumping over a barrier. Another clash reportedly involved an older woman who was grabbed by the police. I witnessed a tense shouting match between a man attempting to cross the sidewalk and a policeman trying to herd him. Throughout all of this, the protestors remained non-violent. An assembly of protestors gathered in the middle of the park and cranked up the ‘human microphone’ (a system of repeating phrases of the speaker so that the crowd can hear). A young woman thanked the crowd for remaining calm despite the police, and a young man called for everyone with cell phones to send word to friends and family that people were needed and that the entrance on Trinity Street was now the only way into the park. Within ten to fifteen minutes, the park was once again full of people – too many for any raid the police might have thought to undertake with the smaller crowd. It appeared that at least for the moment technology had triumphed, and that if the cops became aggressive there would likely be a similar call and response.
The image of those cops suddenly erupting into aggressive action with their clubs out in the midst of a peaceful protest will stay with me for a long time. And so will the image of a young man reading Voltaire a little while later, immersed in the words of an Enlightenment philosopher who said, among other things: “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy