There's many pictures that the Rude Pundit could have chosen to end this week of the anti-Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. He could have shown you the people with brooms and scrub brushes getting down and cleaning the shit out of the park, making it cleaner than nearly every other park in the city. He could have showed you more of the great signs (his favorite from his visit yesterday: "I'll Believe Corporations Are People When Texas Executes One"). He could have shown you various people: the man standing on the corner, reading the entire U.S. Constitution to indifferent passersby or the rapper David Banner talking to the platinum blonde folk singer or the woman dressed as Marie Antoinette. He could have shown you the General Assembly when it was announced that Occupy Wall Street was going to resist the efforts of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYPD to enforce a demand by Brookfield Global Real Estate that the park be vacated for a power-hose washing. The speakers were resolved and eloquent in relaying the information they had, which was amplified in waves by the human microphone of everyone there ("This is an occupation," said one, "not a permitted picnic"), along with the plan to link arms and blockade the park in the early morning today, which turned out to not be necessary once Brookfield backed down.
Instead, the Rude Pundit chose this photo from today when, filled with the power that comes from winning a confrontation, the protesters marched up and down Broadway, heading towards the blocked-off and heavily-guarded Wall Street, while some of the police, cockblocked by Brookfield, had to relieve their aggro urges on the marchers.
Why this one? Because it is inevitable that there will be violence. The very movements that Occupy Wall Street is based on, in Egypt, in Spain, all faced violent confrontations with the police (or the military). Whether it happens now or, as numbers inevitably dwindle when it gets really fucking cold in the winter, in a revived spring of 2012, it will happen, and on a larger scale than it has happened already.
This is not said as a way to discourage the movement. No, in fact quite the opposite. It's just to say they should be ready for it, as the occupiers were ready for arrest this morning. Hopefully, as part of the training sessions in non-violent resistance that were held yesterday, they included how to look into the vicious face of the cop using the only power he's been allowed to wield as the protesters do the same.
Here's last night's Cheater and the Rude, where the Rude Pundit reports from Zuccotti Park and Jeff Kreisler reports from Occupy DC:
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