The occupation of Times Square has been well documented – mainly by citizen journalists. Around 8PM, when I got the first wind of a simultaneous occupation happening in Washington Square at NYU, I decided to make a break for it and see what develops.
In contrast to the high energy and ever-greater tension at Times Square, Washington Square Park had a festive buzz.
When I arrived, protesters had occupied the fountain – now dry for the winter. The brass band that has been making its rounds the past few days was playing a jazzy polka.
Perhaps a dozen police were milling about.
A few protestors had already made it down from Times Square. “Did you march?” I asked three new arrivals. “No, we took the train,” a woman said. “We occupied the subway.”
A massive cheer went up around 9PM as the bulk of marchers from Times Square came into the park. It was still hard to even find any police.
By now, the crowd had extended well beyond the edge of the fountain, and the commonly given estimate of 3,000 looks about right to me. In fact, that’s what I had already guessed, as had a German photographer, Kai, with whom I was chatting.
Here’s a loop I made around the conglomeration…
Kai was exhausted and trying to decide if he should stay longer. The main question was: would the protesters occupy the square, and would the police let them.
Seeing 3,000 people versus a dozen or two cops, we figured occupation was inevitable.
Things changed. At least 10 police vans and maybe 300 to 500 police had converged on the square when I returned after a pizza and battery charging break around 11:45. New York City parks close at midnight.
I hopped the fence to get past the swarms of police officers and found myself in the middle of a square.
This was the closest I’ve come to a mass of arrest-ready cops. I saw really close – like within a few feet – the power of a well-drilled, well-equipped military force.
For the first time since all this started, I felt spooked. If there were to be mass arrests, I wondered, should I be part of them – to get that angle on the story? I would be out on Sunday morning, anyway.
I might have been up for it, but the protesters themselves were streaming out of the park. Aside from about two dozen, plus about a half-dozen Lawyers Guild volunteers, no one had the stomach for arrests that night.
From the sidewalks just outside the park, the crowd alternately chided the police – “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and tried to recruit them to the cause – “N.Y.P.D. Disobey your orders!”
I saw one person get arrested, seemingly after moving out of the street to the sidewalk where the police had directed people to go. But maybe I missed something that the cops considered a provocation. (I was on the other side of the street.)
But mostly it was a period of milling about for a half hour or so. One entertaining diversion during that was when priests from a church nearby brought out a sculpture of the Wall Street Bull reimagined as the Golden Calf false idol of Old Testament fame.
The protestors made their way back down to Zuccotti eventually, in chunks.
I stayed till the end. The police were gradually pushing a small crowd back by shining strobe lights at them. I hadn’t seen that one before. “Is this a protest or a rave?!” one occupier said.
A hundred or so stragglers toyed with the idea of shutting down Broadway, but they barely had the numbers to fill the sidewalk that they ended up taking back home to Zuccotti.
