I went down to Wall St. to shoot last Thursday when OWS attempted to block the NYSE as it opened. First thing I found was the check in point at the entrance to Wall St., where the media had been quarantined to a small barricaded area, and officers were checking for work i.d.’s.
A man yelled “This is a police state! This is Nazi Germany! Look at this! You have to show i.d. to walk down a street! This is not democracy! This is not fair!” The officers checked i.d., said “Keep it moving,” looked tired. One in particular stuck out to me - he wore a weary expression, his eyes had seen untold moments. Maybe he was one of those officers who lost a lot of friends on 9/11, and at that time received warm smiles walking down the street in uniform. Now a man in a hat spoke into his right ear aggressively. The media waited expectantly for something to happen that would sell this story.
I walked up to where the protestors had gathered across from Zucotti by the red cube. More expectant looks, though waiting for something else entirely. The first march began, I walked slowly and looked all around. Got down the street, coincidentally found some friends and we walked back up to the second set of marchers and fell in with them. Walking down the street, they clutched their cardboard signs, flags, coffee cups, phones, cameras.
Now the protesters had physically blocked the street and sidewalks on both sides of the entrance to NYSE. Riot police lined up, a different opinion on every face. I saw one officer beaming, one who tapped his baton against his leg, others bored by the whole thing. Also waiting for something to happen, some more reluctantly than others. In comparison to the Times Square March, I felt the cops now had grown distant from the protesters. At Times Square, there was a lot of joking, funny faces, but here the officers were in lines like the military, little to no eye contact. The people marching: all ages, seeming to be many walks of life represented. Some I think had been waiting for years for this kind of opportunity to speak out, others just smiled and enjoyed the feeling of community.
I became nestled in a crowd of people, trapped between the people and a police van. Looking back, the line of riot cops, now their masks were down. looking forward, hundreds of people crammed into the intersection and police on all sides. I won’t lie, I was afraid to move any further into the crowd as it looked like I’d be trapped. And I don’t know everyone else’s story, but I needed to be at a job by 10, and the next day and the day after that was committed to shoots. If I missed these jobs, I would have trouble paying December rent, let alone paying to develop the 9 rolls of film I had just shot. This was not a day for me to be in the middle of the action, the action that sells newspapers, magazines and racks up viewers online. So I hung back and tried to document my angle on things in those moments the best I could.
The cop with the megaphone said “You do not have a parade permit.”
The protesters responded, “THIS IS NOT A PARADE”
A girl called out “The cops are moving people out of the street. It’s your choice whether to get arrested or not. If you stay, you’ll get arrested.”
A woman who couldn’t get to work told the cops desperately, “But I’m not with them. I’m just trying to go to work.”
We were all looking at our watches. Eventually the protesters shouted, “The New York Stock Exchange has been delayed by one minute!” and that was my cue to go drop off the film, and get back to work.
I hope to see everyone keep up the dialogue that’s been sparked and not resort to playing the aggressive cop/wildly thrashing protester roles that we’ve all seen over and over that create such compelling/disturbing images. Let’s all try to bear in mind that whether you’re an officer, a mother, an unemployed vet, a student, a Wall st. exec….we are ALL people, have families, have hearts, blood, experiences. There’s no good reason for this movement to become violent.
