What I Saw At the Revolution, Part 3

Ever since I first heard Robert Palmer sing the Andy Fraser-penned "Every Kinda People" I have subscribed to the idea. Here are some of the many folks that were at the protest or passing by. 

This guy stood silently. His sign said enough. He did speak to some passersby and reporters. 

A young woman decorated the sidewalk.

Many were still asleep when I first arrived.

This man played his drums softly for what seemed like an hour.

People all over were writing or painting signs.

Some slept lying down, others bolt upright where they sat.

One person's solution to not having a shower nearby.

A young woman with a large-format camera.

Another drummer warming up. He and his friends would get going later in the day.

People walking through and checking out literature and displays.

This young man glared from behind his ski mask at all who walked by including me as I changed my lens. So I immortalized him here.

The woman with the hula hoops was one of the highlights of the day.

Sleeper cells?

The hula hoop woman got a lot of people involved. More about her later.

What I Saw At the Revolution, Part 2

In a previous post I mentioned that I spoke with a man about how the protest space, the occupied Zuccotti Park, was organized. Here are some more photos taken observing the different facets of the protest.

When I arrived at about 10 A.M., these guys and half a dozen others were lined up on the Broadway side of the park. Tour buses went by often, and the tourists would wave and snap photos. Some cheered.

Also on the Broadway side of the park was where a lot of meetings took place. Just about any time I walked by this corner a crowd was assembled for some reason.

Police flank the Broadway side of the park. They were on all sides of the park, watching. I never once saw a confrontation of any sort.

This is a gray-water system for cleaning up the dishwater. The treated water was used to maintain the plants in the park.

Signs along the Liberty Street edge of the park.

A police tower on the corner of Liberty and Trinity. I do not know if it was manned or not at the time, or if it was put there specifically for this event or not.

An information board.

 The information center. Anyone could stop here and get an idea what was going on - who was there, why, what events were going on, where's food, how can I help, etc.

Near an ersatz library, a map was displayed with pins in all the cities where similar protests were occurring.

A sign on the flowers asked people to walk around them. I saw only one spot in the entire park where a few flowers were trampled. There was a sign there apologizing for the mess, stating that the police did it. I have no idea if that is true.

A press office.

The cig-rolling committee.

Every 20 feet I saw someone sweeping. Later, I saw someone cordon off an area, mop it, dry it as best as they could, then re-open the area.

Avaaz (which according to their website means 'voice' in several European and Middle Eastern languages) had a presence here. A small generator powered their display of a website on which people spoke about about the issues in solidarity with this protest.

This QR code was at the information desk. I don't know what it scanned to.

The information booth was well-staffed all day.

I was encouraged to take what I liked from the food line, but I did not. There were boxes and boxes of supplies behind the people serving, and more rolled in on a cart from Liberty Street as I walked away.

What I Saw At the Revolution, Part 1

On Friday, October 7th 2011 I visited the protesters at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. I wanted to get some sense of what day-to-day living was like for them, and get a perspective on the size of the event. This first batch of photos and recordings is from my cell phone.

 Arriving early in the morning (about 10 A.M.) many of the protesters were still asleep,and it was rather quiet. I walked around and checked out some of the signs.

I met a man dressed in a Fox News costume. Seeing me walking around, taking pictures, and not quite dressed like everyone else he joked that they all knew I was with the FBI. As we spoke more, he started to explain some things about the nature of the protest, specifically the day-to-day organization.

Apologies for the sideways orientation. I don't know if that can be fixed. 

To give you an idea of the size of things, I walked around the perimeter of the entire park once and filmed my walk. 

I started at the western-most corner, the intersection of Trinity and Cedar, and walked around clockwise. 

I left to have lunch with a friend and returned after noon and the crowd - observers and participants - had swelled. Here is a short video scanning the length of the park from across Liberty Street.

Entertainment was in full swing: drumming and hula-hoops:

In order for one person to communicate something to the whole crowd, a protester does something called a "mic check" or uses the "people's mic"; you stand up, yell, "mic check!" and the crowd nearby repeats, "mic check!" Then you state your message or announcement a sentence at a time, and they repeat each sentence to  you as you say it. When you're done, you say, "Thank you!"

I only managed to capture one of these, but I saw an entire speech by Naomi Klein delivered in this manner, by the woman herself, on their live feed.  It reminds me of other logistics I observed at Woodstock 1994 such as calling the medic. In that manouevre, if you see a person requiring medical attention in a thick crowd you tap the shoulder of the nearest person between you and the medics at the front of the stage, point backwards, and yell, "MEDIC!" The next person does the same, and when the message reaches the EMTs, the crowd parts like the Red Sea, and the medics rush down to where the injured person is.

To sum up my impressions:

• The protest site is not a cesspool of human waste and trash, as some want to imply (I have seen that story repeated several times in the past few days, with no change and no useful observations reported). 
• The protest site and the participants are is organized, if not pretty. 

I have a shitload of pictures from my digital SLR that I will punch up later today. 

NICHE Lighting Sample Sale

Today in Beacon a local business was selling hand-made blown glass globes. They were rather expensive, even at 50% off, but they are beautiful. 

Another artist was selling bowls.

Here are the glassblowers themselves:

More Rocketry

It was a fine day to break out one of last Christmas' presents, a model rocket, and go to Beacon Memorial Park to launch it. 

The first picture is of one we've had since last year. This was the last one we fired off, and I put too strong of an engine in it. It sailed over 1000 feet then drifted far away to the southwest. 

You can see the exhaust gasses starting to flare out.

Gone.

This yellow one, below, is the one I gave Finn for Christmas last year. In the nose there are three blades that fan out and cause the nose cone to drift to the ground like a helicopter. The fuselage and fins drift with the typical parachute.

The problem was that the exhaust that is supposed to push the nose cone off and the parachute, too, was not strong enough or I packed the 'chute too tightly. The first time the nose cone came off and functioned just fine. But the 'chute failed to deploy and the fuselage fell straight into the dirt. The second time, neither deployed. The rocket is pretty beat up at the moment. But it was fun.

We only did these two launches before a concerned parent asked us to move. He was afraid that his little league game or whatever was going on would get hurt somehow. It was about 1000 ft from us, and the last rocket we fired drifted high over them, but the first two went in the opposite direction.