Before I occupied Wall Street, Wall Street occupied me.
Occupy Wall Street's Debt to Melville
On May 1, students and activists are planning to revive the Occupy Wall Street movement with a general strike. One poster making the rounds on Facebook and other social media features a hamster nervously eyeing a treadmill, and above it the famous words, “I WOULD PREFER NOT TO.” The hamster’s wheel of course represents the drudgery of our modern routines; the phrase, many will recall, comes from Herman Melville’s 1853 story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Subtitled “A Tale of Wall Street,” this cryptic narrative traces the sad fate of a passive-aggressive writer who refuses to vacate the offices of a corporate lawyer. Bartleby was the first laid-off worker to occupy Wall Street.
Something About Occupy: (With a Primer)
There are few answers to be found here. For a while now, I’ve been setting out to write about the much discussed Occupy Wall St. movement. I have written here and there little bits, no more than notes, about my impressions of it at any given moment. I have cautiously spied local iterations of the group, half-heartily observing it from a block or so away — not interested in engaging with it here on a street level. I have discussed it with friends, some who see it as a force for good, others who see it as the reaction of entitled youth or just entitled do-nothings. I myself have seen it in various lights: as well-intentioned but ultimately unimportant; as the next great movement of the left; as desperately doomed to fail, ill-conceived.
I have read every other article from my favorite writers, journalists, and politicians, attempting to triangulate my position a bit better. A part of me figured my uncharacteristic lack of defined opinion was simply due to having not read enough about it. Yet, the more I read, the more I tried to impose some order on this movement, the more my opinions shifted their legs.
And then I realized something: the problem wasn’t my inability to find the solid ground of an opinion; it was the ground itself quaking. The cacophonous rattling and shouting from directions left and right was sending my mind reeling. I have never experienced a real earthquake but what was happening now seems reminiscent of the stories from those who have lived through them; that ominous onset of the rumble slowly gaining power, resonating through the ground, the walls around you, a sense of panic that there is nowhere you can run to find the steady safety of solid ground — I ran regardless.
New York Magazine: 2012=1968?
In 2008, Barack Obama lit a fire among young activists. Next year, Occupy Wall Street could consume him.
NYPD is now using "sound cannons" on Occupy Wall St. protesters...
Scott Stuckey, Vice President for Business Development at the LRAD Corporation (the group who makes these devices) said that “if someone does find it too loud and they have two free hands they can cover their ears” to dampen the sound.
This is what it has come to folks.
Wall Street Actually Occupied (Briefly)
