Visiting Zuccotti Park

Posted by charsan on October 21, 2011 · 1 Comment 

Before I go on with my blog, I want to explain that this blog post is not so much about giving my opinion as it is really about presenting you, the reader with the information and the images that I had the benefit of taking because I live in New York City so you can make your own conclusions. Please share your thoughts, questions or comments in the comments section below. Also, if you are in the area- I happened to run into someone who volunteers for OWS- he informed me that the weekly town hall meetings on Mondays in Zuccotti Park are sign language interpreted.

I have spent a couple of hours over the last few weeks trying to figure out just what the Occupy Wall Street Movement is and quite frankly, for the first two weeks I think that no one really knew- other than getting out there and finally having a voice and the platform for saying hey, something’s wrong here.

There is a standard message- the little guys versus the big kahunas. The 1% versus the 99%, “the American people.” It is a peaceful leaderless national movement. I’ve had a hard time really understanding the motive behind the movement. Initially, they made it clear that they are not a political organization and do not have demands. Up to that point, the goal seemed to be to continue to gain international attention with two goals: to recruit more protesters and to continue to be heard and possibly influence political decision-making.

It is still early on, and the movement is quite young so it will be very interesting to see what direction it moves in- will some clear leaders start to arise? Will the movement begin to make some demands?

I personally agree with most of their arguments; there are not many people in the U.S. who can deny that there are serious problems here and world-wide, and that a small percentage of people have made decisions that continue to adversely impact the rest of us. Movements have cropped up nation-wide; there is now an Occupy Chicago, Occupy San Francisco and Occupy College movement among others. Though I still feel like a bystander and don’t quite feel involved in the movement, I think we can all agree that something is broken- on so many levels of American society, we are under-performing. Our k-12 education is experiencing low performance levels while simultaneously facing severe under-staffing with the economic “downturn”- though perhaps we should start to refer to it as a gently sloped plateau at this point. Jobs are not being created- both the new workforce and the old workforce are having a hard time finding work. Perhaps the movement is the first step in creating a more reactive society- to identifying a problem and making our politicians accountable. Wait, we’re targeting Wall Street right? Well, I feel fortunate to live right by the largest movement- Occupy Wall Street.

I just stopped by Zuccotti Park for the first time today and it was quite an interesting experience- it was fascinating to see how settled and organized they were. There were screen printing booths so people could bring apparel to print with “Occupy Wall Street,” a haircutting station, a composting area, a sleeping bag station, and so on. Here are a few pictures from my visit, courtesy of Robyn Girard.

The view on the edge of Zuccotti Park, where booths, workstations and signage abounds

The screenprinting station- a strategically placed station where people lined up to get their apparel inked with “Occupy Wall Street”

The view from outside of the park- you can see all of the barriers set up. There are also police officers set up at each corner.

The composting/recycling center

A close-up of the composting/recycling center

Thanks for looking!

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Filed under Exploring New York · Tagged with ASL, deaf, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, protest, sign language, Zuccotti Park