December 7, 2011

Why Occupy: Zuccotti Park

Even though Zuccotti Park isn’t being occupied any more in the sense that the tents are gone and no one sleeps there, Occupy Wall Street activists told me that the occupation continues in spirit, as well as in practice elsewhere.

To that end, even though I visited other occupied locales while in New York (60 Wall St., Brooklyn), I did my ‘why occupy’ interviews exclusively at the park that launched the movement. Click on the headline above to watch the responses…

Read More

December 7, 2011

Wall Street on Occupy Wall Street

While I spent my days here with the Occupy Wall Street crowd, I generally spent my nights at bars in the Financial District talking with people who work for Wall Street investment banks.

I didn’t get a chance to drink with the 1 percent, as they frequent a very different type of establishment as I might wet my whistle at, but I did talk to what one middle manager described as the 99 percent of Wall Street.

“I don’t think it’s me they are protesting against,” he said.

While there are certainly many, both on and off Wall Street, who share…

Read More

December 6, 2011

OWS marches through Brooklyn to protest foreclosures

Occupy Wall Street marched through Brooklyn to draw attention to rampant bank foreclosures on homes. Click on the story to watch a video and to read my tweets from the action.

Joining with at least 20 other Occupations across the country in a national day of action to draw attention to rampant bank foreclosures, Occupy Wall Street and members of the East New York community marched through a Brooklyn neighborhood that has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the state.

View the story “Tweets from the march for foreclosed homes” on Storify]

Read More

December 6, 2011

Where OWS does its daily business: 60 Wall St.

An Occupy Wall Street working group hashes out its business in tha atrium at 60 Wall St.

While Zuccotti Park may be the public face of Occupy Wall Street, the nuts and bolts of the movement are hammered out in a public indoor atrium at 60 Wall St.

“This is where we do the ongoing work of Occupy Wall Street,” said Jason Harris. “Putting out fires, starting fires, a lot of learning and give and take. It’s really why we are all here.”

Just as Congress has committee rooms scattered around the Capitol, OWS  uses this privately-owned public space in the heart of the Financial District to hold its daily subgroup meetings. Starting at 9 a.m. and…

Read More

December 6, 2011

Zuccotti Park has jumped the shark

Zuccotti Park

Aside from dearth of tents and information tables and the exponentially fewer people in Zuccotti Park these days, there are also a series of metal gates, put up by police after they cleared the camping component of the protest, as well as several dozen uniformed and plain clothes officers that surround what could become known as the Bunker Hill of the occupy Wall Street movement.

Amy Miller, who has been occupying since day two in lower Manhattan, said its those metal gates and the police presence more than anything that has contributed to the demise of Zuccotti Park as the…

Read More