buy isotretinoin online india I was in New York City last weekend, and made two trips down to Wall Street to see what was going on. I arrived first on Saturday, and found Zuccotti Park jammed. People with signs with standing around everywhere, some signs indicating personal distress, others witty, others pithy. One sign featured a long quotation by Hugo Grotius (sure enough, I went to high school with that guy). Plenty of gawkers such as myself. And there were the sleepers and all their accoutrements: sleeping bags, tarps, tents, chairs, drums, guitars. There was a “library” of (mostly bad) books. A “general assembly” area, where speakers – almost inaudible due to the thundering drum circle at the other end of the park – spoke in brief phrases, which were repeated loudly by the people closest to them (Demosthenes and Cicero would be aghast, of course, as a major part of classical oratorical training was learning to speak normally while also roaring like a bull: the classical orators filled up public squares with their voices, speaking over entire crowds, with no megaphones). There was a kitchen, where people dished out food to long lines of demonstrators. The people were of every sort, homeless crazy people and well-heeled professionals, beautiful young people and people that no one would ever consider anything but unfortunate. In a ring of investment around the square were police and press, Eyewitness News vans and police cars nose-to-tail on the streets, in case something happened. Everything was so interesting that nothing was interesting; there was no place to stop, really, and latch onto things. I walked around the square a couple of times feeling nothing but sympathy and support, with a vague sense that I was unnecessary there and more competent people had the situation in hand. All I could add was another body, and the square was full already.
Cham I walked down to Wall Street itself, two blocks south of the occupation site, curious to inspect the security apparatus there. There was nothing new in particular, but the changes since 9/11 are still striking: Wall Street and Broad Street are pedestrian zones – fear achieved what environmentalism and common sense could not – with impressive barricades aestheticized in polygonal sheathing bronze, and remote-control chevaux-de-frise, which at the press of a button can sink into the street and let delivery vehicles through. Police were everywhere. Wall Street’s name seemed appropriate again: it was a fortress.
I walked along Wall, and let my fortune guide me: as I passed by a large atrium near the Deutsche Bank building, the neo-Egyptian style of the atrium attracted me, and I walked in. The atrium was full of seated people, and I did a double-take: they didn’t quite seem like the sort of people who work at 60 Wall Street. They were on their macs and had pads of paper and looked quite diligent, but just a little bit dirtier than they should be, and I realized I had stumbled onto the braintrust of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
There were some small groups, but I was attracted to the larger groups, who sat in circles of fifteen people or so. I stood at the outside of a circle, listening, until I was beckoned in. There I sat and listened to an hour-long debate about security in Zuccotti Park – apparently the occupation had made the park the favored spot for the city’s homeless, as well as drug dealers and thieves. The occupiers were aware that the presence of the homeless was not entirely irrelevant to their purpose, but the girls were sick of having their asses grabbed and all feared that the lawlessness would constitute an open invitation to the police to shut the occupation down.
The debates came with special hand signals, which I found a bit entrancing, actually, because they were generally effective: all-fingers-wiggling (like a catcher’s sign for a changeup) meant something like “Hear hear”, one finger raised meant “I have a fact to add,” two index fingers moving back and forth meant “I have a person you need to connect with.” The meeting was conducted with purpose and intelligence – I never felt a need to speak, because I felt that everyone there was fair, smart, and competent – and the general upshot of it was that they were going to have an identifiable group of people dedicated to security, to resolve disputes and harass people if necessary to get them out of the park.
It reminded me of the Republic – the book, I mean – as the movement gained complexity, they needed to create a city, with its differing roles, to solve problems. They were creating a security apparatus. Eventually, I thought jokingly, they would need to create corporations and invest them with personhood to solve some problem or other. But I was entirely sympathetic, really: the people there, for their combination of purposefulness and grievance, seemed truly admirable. They were not backing down and they did not want to go off-message. They were almost entirely in their early twenties.
Speaking with another friend, he found the above tableau depressing: “The occupation right now,” he said, “has become an end in itself: it’s about keeping the occupation going.” I cannot agree. The occupiers are a group of people with nothing better to do, literally: they are not taking an irresponsible vacation from their normal job rewriting American corporate law or spearheading ethical reforms at financial institutions. They are insignificant people airing a grievance – and doing so highly effectively. They should continue to do so. It is something in itself, to register the moral and pragmatic complaint against greed and luxury. I do not mind that the well-educated and well-respected people who work in those buildings in the financial district have to encounter daily a group of people whose presence alone is their cahier de doleances. It is up to everyone else to do something about it: to take your money out of the largest and worst financial institutions, for a start, and convince someone else to do the same; to make more ethical decisions with your money; to live more simply; to stop empowering these people and to drive greed of this sort to the margins of your life. And to consider further the political and other implications of this movement.
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