The first thing I noticed was the NBC News truck outside the entrance to my apartment building. They weren’t interviewing me, so the “Genius next door” piece still waits to be written. Then I saw the police, never a good thing. I have nothing against the police, I regard them as protection - but against what? Finally, I saw the protestors. A group of them, not many, had staked out the four subway entrances at my intersection. Some held signs reading, “Occupy Wall Street,” others, “Occupy all streets” and one that read, “Resist” on one side and “This is my vote” on the other. (For portentous obscurity, that gets my vote.) More surprisingly, a line of men and women, all in liturgical black, ran the length of the subway entrance on my corner. Like the man who was resisting and voting at the same time, their signs were legible, but not clear. Although, the marker-on-cardboard look gave them a touch of priest-like humility.
Where I live is not an obvious site for an Occupy demonstration. It is not the home of the corporate elite, nor conspicuously one per cent. Nothing in their signs suggested that they were trying to recruit supporters, either. So, I approached a woman carrying an “Occupy all streets” sign and - in my least confrontational voice – asked, “Why have you chosen this corner to occupy?” In a voice even gentler than my mine, she replied, “I don’t know.” This woman, by the way, did not look like a fire-breathing radical. If Mother Jones is a ten, she was a two. “They told us to come here and we did.” Soon after, they all left for a rally in Foley Square. Judging from the Occupy movement that appeared on my doorstep, my hopes for economic justice may have to be curbed.
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