Occupy Wall Street

The protesters use the bathroom in the McDonalds across the street and they shower when it rains.

I found this out Friday night while visiting the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. The occupier I’d asked was sitting on a cardboard box, flattened to the ground with the ends of words written on it creeping out from under his legs. He thought I was asking because I needed to use the restroom myself, as if I was one of them. He was cordial, friendly, and ended our talk with, “The police won’t give us Porta-Potties. You’d think they would, for sanitation reasons.”

In other words, if left up to them, the anti-corporate protesters who’ve called the Lower Manhattan huddling ground a home away from home will not be leaving any time soon. As one sign put it, “We are too big to fail.”

But fail at what?

Despite viewing some of the protester’s blogs as well as the intense media coverage, especially in light of the multiple arrests and confrontations with the NYPD, I still didn’t get it.

When I arrived, I came with a slew of repeat questions in hopes for some clarity.

“What do you want? How long will you stay here? What does it all mean?”

“We don’t want to pin ourselves down,” said Todd Graham, 42, from Brooklyn, who said he’d visited what the protesters refer to as ‘Liberty Park’ since the first day of its occupation on September 17. “We are trying to be as inclusive as possible.”

Not giving the media a definitive message to represent the group has lent itself to a shifting cause that can be worn on any person’s back in suffrage or in sympathy.

Trolling over crisscrossing yoga mats and mattresses, among dreadlock-sporting white dudes and women with unshaved armpits, I realized there were participators wearing dapper suits, people who’d traveled from across the country and Canada, people in wheelchairs, people who were only there to watch, tourists taking photos, and incoherent sleepers who may have always used the park as a home- who maybe watched their bedroom turn into a youth hostel and maybe want their privacy back.

There were so many different signs and perspectives that I initially found it comical. One man’s sign was a direct affront to the police department. Another woman’s sign told police that the protesters were fighting for them as well.

Jesse Lessinger, 28, was manning a table on the south  rim of the park for Socialist Alternative, a socialist organization. He was pushing pins and literature and his neighbors were a food cart and a table selling New York souvenirs. Mr. Lessinger was an outsider, trying to work his way into the group, or possibly trying to steer the group toward his understanding of a solution to their grievances.

“This is not a socialist movement. We want to build a socialist movement,” he said, eyes fixed on several potential customers thumbing through the merchandise. By “we” he meant Socialist Alternative. “We support what’s happening because it’s people standing up to Wall Street.”

I asked him what he would do if he didn’t succeed in making Occupy Wall Street a part of the socialist movement. Would he go home?

“In my view, the only way to ultimately solve the problem is through socialism,” he said before getting into a shouting match with a camper about how to appropriately use the word “oligarchy.”

Cameron Conable, 22, was a registered democrat-turned-socialist before he arrived at Zuccotti Park. He’d driven seven hours with hopes of staying several days. He’s been unable to find work in computer science, his field of study at SUNY Geneseo.

“I think people are getting angry,” he said. “People are realizing that it’s the people at the top who are really holding people down.”

He told me he’d been working at the same McDonalds for seven years and had never received a raise past his minimum wage earnings of $7.25 an hour. He said that none of his coworkers had ever received raises, either. He expressed the frustration he felt watching the owner of his McDonalds drive around in new luxury cars every few years and take extended vacations to Aruba.

“A lot of the people I work with don’t see their potential to fight,” he said.

Protester Teddy Kurtis, 39, a managing director for a green energy company, stood out among the protesters in a $600 suit, a crisp tie and coiffed hair. He indulged me in a lengthy conversation about why he’d visited the park every day in support. He hadn’t yet spent the night, however. His “above 100K” salary affords him an apartment in Manhattan.

“Really, it’s about the revolving door between the Federal Reserve, the banks and the politicians,” he said. I admitted my ignorance about all things Federal Reserve so he tried to explain the “Ponzi scheme”. Befogged, I asked him whether rallying around such a complicated issue might be a turn-off to Americans who weren’t as versed in currency issues as he was.

“I think this needs time to grow,” he said of the movement. “There will have to be demands.”

Leaving the park for a minute, I noticed a steady trickle of men in suits leaving One Liberty Plaza, across the street from Zuccotti Park. I was denied comment from several, which I found odd. One would think that having to muscle your way to work through a throng of adversaries week after week would inspire the desire to express contempt publicly.

One man whom I trailed several blocks at a swift New Yorker’s pace from his office building wouldn’t give his name but at least let me write down his below-the-breath grumbles.

“They’re harmless, but I think they’re a little misguided,” he said. He told me he works for a “company that is involved in financial services.” When I asked his salary, he rolled his eyes and quickened his pace. “I take the train to work like everybody else.”

William ‘Bo’ Vastine, 46, an employee at Bloomberg Financial, spoke freely. An admitted six-figure-salary recipient, he said he was shocked that a pretty lady like myself was having a hard time encouraging businessmen to put their opinions on record.

“My observation is this,” he began. He was a good six inches taller than I was, but grew even more stately when he tried to break it all down.

“They don’t have the credibility because it’s more of a spectacle than a legitimate statement. What are they looking for?”

Then he offered his advice: “If they’re really trying to speak to corporate America, don’t call us evil.”

After giving me his card, he turned and left, followed by a smaller man toting an iPad who had been smiling and nodding at the both of us through the entire interview.

Back in the park, I approached a woman in the encampment whom I recognized from earlier media coverage. Attractive and stern-faced with shoulder-length blond hair and intense eyes, Katie Davison was as close to an authoritative figure as I’d found that evening.

A commercial director from Los Angeles who typically votes democrat, Ms. Davison, 31, told me she’d been in New York since she took the red eye flight out on September 16th. She’s taken time off from work to film a documentary on the American Dream and to participate in the occupation.

Bringing up her involvement in the press coverage I’d seen prior to arriving, I asked if she was a spokesperson.

“I can’t speak for the group,” she said, backing away from any claim to power. “Everyone is on the same level.”

When we discussed the take-away she hoped an observer would receive, she admitted their struggles.

“The list of demands is on everyone’s mind. Finding a strategy is one of the most difficult things, but how can you expect us to come up with a solution when our politicians and the intellectual elite have not been able to.”

Drawing my attention to the camp, she explained the democratic process that governed the protesters thus far. She was proud of the system they’d developed to inspire the group, which loosely calls itself  “the 99%.” No decisions are made without a consensus.

“If something could come out of this movement that would exert the kind of political pressure on the left that the Tea Party has for the right…”

She trailed off into innocent reflection, then acknowledged the criticism she and the other occupying members of Zuccotti Park have received.

“I don’t think we can actually define what we are. This is the creation of something that hasn’t been done before,” she said. “I would like to see us draw up something more like a Declaration of Independence than a Constitution- a new value system because what we have now is not working.”

As the march on One Police Plaza wound its way back to Zuccotti Park, the large mass of people began to filter down from the thousands of sign holders to the few hundred who were occupiers. Dinner was being served – pizza, pasta with peanut sauce, corn on the cob, apples- all donated.

Heading home, I passed a man with a very dissatisfied look on his face. He was eating the free dinner from a paper plate, and couldn’t help but pass on advice about the food to anyone who would listen.

“Don’t do the peanut sauce, tastes like crap, but the barley and beans is alright.”

He said he needed a meal and wouldn’t give his name because he didn’t want to sound insulting. It was unclear whether he was a devout protester or a passerby in need, but the distinction, I figured, was irrelevant. He was there, adding to the numbers, and that alone was worth remuneration.