More unedited criticism on the #takewallstreet protest - Thomas Monopoly

http://www.thomasmonopoly.com/

I went down to the #takewallstreet protest last Monday. I suppose it’s hard to say that I support a group that is so fractious and contradictory in their aims, but I’m pretty sure that once they are able to assemble a list of goals and objectives I will more than likely be in agreement with most of that list.<p>I took the J train to Fulton and headed down Nassau to Wall Street. I worked on Fulton St. for three years and passed the NYSE everyday on my way to lunch, so I was surprised to see the corner of Broad and Wall Street more orderly than ever. There wasn’t so much as a scrap of paper blowing in the wind. Fences and barriers were in place as well, forcing people to walk single file down William St. and back, then circle around. The police were not allowing anyone to tread on so much as an inch of Wall Street.<p>looks like the NYPD should be the ones hash-tagging #ourwallstreet<p>So I walked all the way down to Beaver St. and over to Broadway and I headed up to Zuccotti Park, the home base of the protest. Along the way I noticed that just about every road leading to Wall Street had been blocked off. Zuccotti Park is about 4 or 5 blocks from Wall Street. I had found the protesters recent change in tone, from #takewallstreet to #ourwallstreet, to be rather bold seeing as they were encircled by mobile police lookout towers, vans, and officers on foot ringing around the perimeter, about 5 blocks from Wall Street. But it’s just semantics I suppose. Although what I found was less an occupation than it was an internment camp cordoned off by the police.<p>The confusion of the protest grounds went beyond semantics though. The park was littered with trash and remnants of food, cardboard pizza boxes, empty bottles, and makeshift compost piles. There were mattresses and people sprawled out or curled up in sleeping bags in the middle of the afternoon. Some people were getting high, others listening to music or arguing with each other. I didn’t feel like I was at a protest as much as I felt I was in a playpen and the police were babysitting. To be clear, some of the media have been describing the people living in the park as bums and insulting them as people who don’t take showers. I wouldn’t have any problem with that if it were true. A lot of people like to complain about protestors and activists as hippies who don’t take showers. For all I care the entire protest could be made up of smelly homeless people and it would still be just as credible as if it were fully employed men and women in suits. Some of the best people I’ve met in life have been people who live on the street and I wish I were comfortable enough feeling greasy to go days at a time without showering. I mention this because I take issue with the group’s tactics, not the members of the group themselves.<p>although most of them were rude and handing out stupid flyers like this one<p>I walked into the center of the park and sat down at the group’s tactical command unit. With everyone huddles around three desks in the center of the park, I counted at least 12 computers, two large HD monitors, and multiple people on tablets and smartphones, a setup to rival that of the police. For a bunch of anti-consumerists it was pretty ironic to see them all working on Apple computers and devices though. Apple is probably one of the most overpriced, overhyped fascist corporations there is, not to mention a darling of the stock market, currently trading above $400 a share. (And that’s coming from someone who uses their products.) Glancing around at the various computer screens I saw that most people were on Twitter, though some were on Spotify, browsing through pictures on Facebook, one was editing on Premiere Pro and some others were taking self-portraits. I was wondering what so many people were doing on computers, especially at five in the afternoon, a time that seemed to be ripe for protesting Wall Street. But before I could ask what all the computers were needed for three ...