Day 136…
I rode a bike down to City Hall yesterday to see how the Occupy encampment was doing.
The heat dome that had been sitting over the country must have dissipated because it was about 20 degrees cooler than it had been over the middle of the week. The humidity was at about 90% so it still wasn’t all that pleasant. But it was better.
The last time I went down there was just this past Monday. On Monday, like the time I was there before that, everything seemed orderly and calm. Food was being distributed, People were talking, and somebody was playing a guitar.
Yesterday, the whole thing was gone.
I knew that something was up even before I got there because there were police barricades everywhere. The encampment had been on the east side of the park, but as I approached from the west there was a double perimeter of fencing around the whole thing. Chambers Street to the north of the park was completely blocked off and there were policemen stationed everywhere.
To get to where the camp had been, I had to walk north, around the block and enter from the side. None of the officers stopped me, I am an old white guy after all, so I walked into what had been a thriving protest community just a few days before and it was now… empty.
A friend of mine who is an actor, posts pictures online of ghost signs from all over the country. Ghost signs are those extremely faded painted advertisements for obsolete products and services that remain on the sides of brick buildings, seemingly forever. Clothing stores, vaudeville houses, import-export companies, long gone, remain as distant almost forgotten memories to those few people who think to look up as they pass by. It’s always a big deal in New York, when a building gets torn down to make way for a new one and an old sign is revealed.
The last one I remember was, I think, down near Lincoln Center. It announced an establishment that was offering the latest in comfortable horse carriages. There was a lot of press about it until the new building was built and it got covered up again.
I had a facetime chat with another friend of mine yesterday who is also a neighbor. Their family has been out at their country house for the entirety of the last four months. Coming into the city on Wednesday for the very first time since this all started, they were all shocked by the changes that have happened.
Each little change and adjustment, I’ve watched as it happened. I’ve seen each little step. They experienced it all at once.
The streets around the office where they both work in midtown felt to them alarmingly similar to how they felt back in the 1970’s. Dangerous.They went out to get food from a favorite neighborhood place only to find it boarded up and gone. The lack of tourists thronging the area that I don’t even really notice anymore, hit them like a smack in the face.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning between three and four, a whole squadron of 100 police officers in full riot gear descended upon the sleeping Occupy encampment and pulled it apart.
Protestors were given ten minutes to gather their things and clear out. Tarps and tents were pulled down and thrown into dumpsters. Tables were over tuned and tossed as well. Once the area was cleared of people, teams of workers wearing white helmeted suits and carrying hoses came in and water-blasted the paint off the pavement and statues on nearby buildings. The little knoll where the tents had been set up was re-sodded.
By the time that the sun came up on Wednesday, it was all gone.
There were no news teams present so there is only one shaky video taken by one of the protestors that shows what happened. The whole thing got very little news coverage. I certainly had no idea and I’ve been paying attention.
The sod covering the knoll is still in visible checkerboard squares. As it takes hold, those lines will fade, and the pieces will blend together. It will just look like grass that has always been there.
The Surrogate Court of New York County across from the park, had been completely covered in graffiti. The statues in front of it painted and their eyes taped over. All of that is completely gone.
Well, not completely. Underneath one of them, you can still faintly make out the words Black Lives Matter where the black paint had seeped deeply into the porous stone. You can also still see the very light outlines of the giant BLM letters on the side of the Tweed Courthouse steps.
Many blocks uptown in Washington Square Park, the ghostly remains of a Fu@# 12 scrawl is still visible on the base of the iconic Arch. It was sprayed there during the first night of protests following the murder of George Floyd.
Much of the plywood art in SoHo has been taken down, but there is still the occasional door or storefront with a remnant of it left. The plywood went up to protect the buildings from vandalism and then transformed the entire area into an art gallery.
Time passes and things change, but traces and reminders remain.
It would be a mistake for anyone to think that because a bunch of graffiti and a group of protestors have been made to all but disappear that the issues that caused them to be there have just gone away as well. The scab has been pulled off the ugly wound of this country’s racism and discussions have been had that will never be un-had. The fights and the arguments have come off the streets and are now happening inside.
We are all thinking about it because many of us actually have nothing else to do. We aren’t all distracted by the usual noise of our lives. Now is when the real work is starting to be done.
It is hard to imagine what the effects of this movement will mean to our society once it gets back up and running because it isn’t up and running. It’s a bit like learning Italian from an app at home without being able to use it. When you finally get to go to Italy you can see if you can make yourself understood. You often can’t. At least at the beginning. As you get going with it and gain some confidence, maybe then you start to get a bit more fluent.
Until we are actually back in our jobs and interacting with each other, there is no way to know how any of the changes being argued for are going to be integrated. Or even if they will be integrated. Logic dictates that some will, and some won’t.
There have been radical changes in our lives, and we need to remember that. I almost envy my friends for the shocking experience of seeing all at once what we here in New York have all grown to accept as normal.
I’m glad that the ghost signs from these past weeks are there. They need to stay.
The real work is happening now in a far more rational and thoughtful way, but we need to be reminded of the passion and anger that sparked it to keep the momentum going.
There will be distractions ahead.
The people of this nation are all going to lose their unemployment assistance by next week. The House has put forward a bill to extend it, but the Senate and the President don’t want that to happen.
30 million Americans are currently unemployed. Without money, how will consumers continue to spend? Without that financial assistance, the job gains that we’ve seen in the last few weeks are going to reverse and disappear. That unemployment number is going to rise.
That could drive us all back into the streets.
To quote the final lines of Tony Kushner’s monumental play Angels in America:
“We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.”
The band-aide has been pulled off
and now
The Great Work can begin...
( gorgeous quote! / thank you)
It seems as if the city has been stripped bear, a metaphor for all we need to see.
Can’t change what you can’t see.
At least the masks are covering our mouths, not our eyes
To see the Great Work that must be done
we can
and some of us
are