Yes, it’s a bit smelly. Yes, there are more tattoos, beards, and long hair than one would typically encounter in a New York City park.
There’s also tons of camaraderie, but not in a folk-music-festival way, more in a Habitat-for-Humanity type of way. The folks down here exude a pretty strong sense of purpose.
Compared to the protestors on Thursday night at Freedom Plaza in D.C., I have gotten a more radical vibe here at Occupy Wall Street.
I showed up for a teach-in by John Cronin. Cronin was lecturing on the need for a “participatory economy,” guided by a “workers council” that would determine what to produce, how much, how, and “how hard we want to work.” I understood him to be opposing the idea of an “employee,” arguing that all workers should own their company, and control, errr, the means of production.
Rob Eletto spoke with me about Chomsky and called himself an anarchist. There’s plenty of talk about completely restructuring our politics.
The D.C. crowd, by comparison, seemed to me to have a more narrow focus on specific policies: the bailouts, the Afghanistan war, even the Federal Reserve. I suppose it mostly boils down to this: D.C.’s protestors are a bit wonkier. Here in New York, many of the speakers seem to have more philosophical aims and broader complaints.
