Down Against The Wall!

I was down in the Wall Street area recently and there’s plenty for the Occupy Movement to learn there – if they wanted.

Zucotti Park, quondam home of the movement, is almost adjacent to the 9/11 Memorial, an object lesson in giving too many people control over a decision. Not only were the landlord of the former World Trade Center and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey involved, but former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani promised the families of victims that they would have veto power over any proposed designs for the memorial. The result is a missed opportunity that took ten years to reach full disappointment. The 9/11 Memorial is neither as emotionally engaging as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. or as serene and welcoming as a park. Instead, it is two holes filled with water and surrounded by tourists. If Occupy Wall Street wants to avoid a similar fate, they are going to need effective leadership, not some loose, self-defeating confederation that accomplishes nothing and takes a long time not to do it.

Only a block or two away from Zucotti Park is 23 Wall Street, former home of J.P Morgan and Company. An imposing stone building almost directly across from The New York Stock Exchange, it still bears the marks of an attempt by anarchists to blow it up in 1920 by parking a wagon full of explosives alongside it. (Warning: animals were hurt in the production of this anecdote.) Instead of destabilizing society and ushering in a millenium of economic justice, they succeeded only in making powerful enemies of J.P. Morgan and the U.S. government. (Almost, but not quite, the same thing.) Not that Occupy is likely to spawn bomb-throwers, but if they are tempted to take shortcuts, this is why they shouldn’t. Strategic targets, however, can be useful, but you have to know who they are, what they do and what you expect to accomplish.

You don’t have to go a block away to find the perfect example. At 140 Broadway, the very building that faces Zucotti Park, are the offices of Brown Brothers Harriman. You can’t miss it. The name is in big letters on both sides of the building. It’s the oldest and largest private bank in the U.S. and was founded, in part, by Governor and Ambassador W. Averill Harriman with money from his father, E. H. Harriman, who owned five railroads, a steamship company and Wells Fargo. Among the people it’s employed, over the years, are former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and two guys named Bush, I forget their first names. Brown Brothers Harriman is as insular and old school as wealth and power gets in this country. If Occupy Wall Street could get on its radar, much less effect any change in its practices, that would be consequential. Yet these movers and shakers aren’t on the movement’s radar. I’ll bet that people in the park stare at this building every day without knowing or caring what goes on inside.

What about those people in the park? There weren’t many on a weekday afternoon. One man was dressed in a cape and cowl that read, “Dark Knight.” I’m sure he was an enemy of injustice, but I don’t think the allusion to Batman helps. The others were a motley crew in various stages of hygiene: past, passing and to come. Fortunately, it doesn’t reflect the vigor of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I have it on impeachable authority (not very impeachable, but not un -) that, these days, most of the movement’s work is done in committee. Like Congress.