From Zuccotti Park to Times Square to Washington Square Park and beyond, the New York Police Department has been out in full force during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Police have donned riot gear and brought out the cavalry. They stand quietly as protesters chant, “You are the 99 percent.”
At two o’clock in the morning on Thursday, Nov. 3, two members of the Occupy Wall Street media team, Justin Wedes and a woman named Victoria, who declines to give her last name, decide it is time to head to what Wedes calls the team’s “super-secret lair.”
We wanted to know what message Brooklynites are getting from the Occupy Wall Street protests. Ink reporters Anna Codrea-Rado, Emily Judem, Ravi Kumar, and Xin Hui Lim went to Cobble Hill and Coney Island to find out.
Our reporters followed the action to Manhattan and covered the protesters as they marched along Sixth Avenue from Washington Square Park to Times Square. What started as a small gathering in the park swelled to thousands in the heart of New York City.
The Brooklyn Ink team followed the Occupy Wall Street protesters Saturday. The movement has spread to Brooklyn, and about 100 protesters started the day protesting in Grand Army Plaza, our reporters were there.
The Occupy Wall Street protest began Sept. 17 in downtown Manhattan and word spread quickly on social media networks. More than three weeks later, satellite protests have popped up around the globe and variations on the hashtag # OWS continue to trend high on Twitter. Social media is being used, once again, as a forum for outrage.
The goals of OWS are as diffuse as its participants. Demands have been made, but the occupation continues regardless. The Brooklyn Ink wanted to see what the individual protesters wanted at Zuccotti Park, so we asked them one question: What would it take to get you to leave?
Silence is as strong as speech at Zuccotti Park, where protesters took their grievances to a variety of signs and placards. On cardboard and paper, with banners borne aloft, they expressed their anger and frustration with a country they feel has let them down.
Zuccotti Park is not, strictly speaking a park – no rolling green fields but a flat expanse of dark stone. It is, however, something altogether different: an experiment in creating a neighborhood where none existed. Call it the Village of Occupy Wall Street.
When they began, the Occupy Wall Street protests seemed like a limited, informal gathering. Questions arose: Who was leading the protests? What did they want? How long would they stay? Few famous faces voiced their opinions and the media stayed mostly silent. But all that has changed.
Mon, Oct 17, 2011