After the beatings and tear gas baths in the middle of the night, early yesterday morning Occupy Wall Street migrated to Sixth Avenue and Canal Street. People used wire cutters to make an entrance into the construction site of Liberty Plaza. Despite this, there was major confusion about whether Liberty Real Estate ever gave the protesters the OK to occupy the site. The cops announced that it was not OK, but the protesters said that the cops were lying like they always do and stayed in the site anyway, until major arrests and the whole site was cleared out.
There were a ton of people there I had never seen before at Occupy Wall Street. The crowd was a lot smaller and consisted of none of the masses of bums that had begun to live at Zuccotti Park. This was strictly for the true hardcore occupiers that were there out of major ideology, and perhaps spite, and were ready to really stick it to The Man and not take "no" for an answer. They set up these weird stations with their signs that also served as barricades against the police. The cops flooded through the protesters' barriers and started making their arrests, including one of my friends who hopped in to shoot up close. The cops were cool though, and gave me his Leica 35 mm film camera to hold onto till he gets out of jail. Here's what it all looked like.
The top of the fence at the entrance to the plaza became a prime perch. Despite this toughnut's surly demeanour, it soon became apparent that it was one of the safer spots to be.
Many peered out through the numerous holes in the fence, anxiously waiting for the police to burst in and start hitting people. I guess it didn't help dull the cops' bloodlust that this made the perimeter of the occupied zone look like a human Whac-A-Mole.
A few of the protesters decided that a good way to make the cops care about their student loan debts was to start lecturing them about what capitalist slave assholes in uniform they were, and how they'll never get to live on farms growing their own vegetables.
This guy had developed a GREAT blockade system that really showed up those Arab Spring guys.
However, all the plywood in the world would not have deterred the cops as they began to scurry into the plaza.
It was carnage.
This is when the cops began arresting protestors and photographers like hotcakes. Note the ratio of photographers and cops to protestors.
Some of the radicals had learned that sitting on the fence was much safer than coming down on either side of it.
This guy was there to lighten the mood with his awesome shirt.
This guy was there in an attempt to occupy the VICE DOs and DON'Ts.
This guy's outfit was a parody of the corporate machine heads whose mindless greed has brought the world to its knees…
Oh no, wait, he's just a Photo Narc. You're blowing your cover, you idiot!
At this point some cop started yelling at me for taking too many photos, so I decided to listen to the man with the big stick and call it a day.