barricades

this story is about new year's eve... sort of... mostly.

a few of us decided to hit up zuccotti park (aka freedom square, where all the 'occupy wall st.' business goes down) to bring in the new year. we showed up around 10pm and when we first got there things seemed a lot calmer than i ever remember that park being in the height of the occupation.

that all changed shortly after our arrival. a few minutes after we got there, someone was being chased inside the park by cops. i'm still not sure why... but it chased all the calmness right out of the park. two cops suddenly found themselves inside the belly of the beast. sure, they successfully made the arrest... but they were suddenly surrounded by tons of people holding out cell phones and cameras... everyone filming them, everyone screaming and chanting.

as the 2 cops dragged the one dude away, more cops showed up on the scene (there were actually tons of cops there... they were surrounding the entire perimeter of the park). the action spilled out onto the street. the cops dragged the arrestee away into a police van, the entire time surrounded by an ever growing crowd of lights, cameras, and chanting.

as this was going on, the vibe turned restless inside the park. there were barricades surrounding the entire park (the type of barricades that looked more like those fences that you chain bikes to). at first people inside the park started to push the barricades into the streets. the cops would push the barricades right back. then it escalated into people trying to grab the barricades and bring them into the park.

this is when shit got crazy. every time a group of people tried to grab a barricade, they were met with police opposition. cops started grabbing antagonizers and arresting them. this didn't stop the barricade grabbing though. that's when the pepper spray started flying. and it seemed every time someone got hit with the spray, they'd back off the front line and someone would fill right in from behind them and take their place.

at first it seemed futile, but that wasn't for long. soon people were grabbing barricades and getting into tugs of war with police for them. then cops started losing some of these tugs of war. barricades were being ripped from their hands and dragged into the middle of the park. every time a barricade hit the ground in the middle of the park, another attempt was made to grab a new one. this went on for some time.

the police tried to keep fighting. they were able to make some more arrests and more people got sprayed. but nothing would stop the relentless onslaught of barricade grabbing. soon, in the middle of the park, a pile of barricades turned into a hill of barricades turned into 2 hills of barricades. people gathered on top of them and hooted and hollered and celebrated... it was new year's eve after all.

an attempt to grab the barricades back was made by the police. two cops boldly walked into the middle of the park and started grabbing barricades and bringing them back outside the park. this maybe lasted about 3 times until the crowd around the barricades grew the courage to try and defend the barricades. the cops were outnumbered and they walked away.

and all of the sudden it was 11:40pm-ish.... and the vibe in the park turned into elation and celebration. people were playing instruments, glitter was flying, everyone was making some kinda jubilant noise. midnight came and 99 balloons were released into the air as the masses celebrated, none louder than those who stood upon the barricade mountain that had evolved in the middle of the park.

we left shortly after it turned midnight. i left feeling pretty happy about things. i hadn't gotten involved, but i felt like there was a celebrated victory in the park that night... a victory only we would know about, a feeling of glory that would never happen again.

for the record, i don't support the antagonizing of cops just for the sake of antagonizing cops. but the barricades were symbolic. they planned to keep us locked in the park that night and off the streets. but for the most part, the masses that had gathered had planned to do exactly that, stay in the park. we didn't need barricades to tell us to stay in. we were gonna stay in... zucotti park was our home for that night and this was our house party.

grabbing those barricades was a way of shouting, "YOU CAN'T CONTAIN US!" maybe the method's a little off, but the passion... the passion is fucking beautiful.

that being said, we decided to head back to jersey which turned into one hell of a cluster fuck. we got caught up in the times square area trying to get to the bus station but everything was blocked off and they weren't letting anyone walk up and down certain blocks. it seemed you had to walk 10 blocks out of the way to get anywhere. and each street was blocked off by police and barricades, the same type of barricades we just saw occupiers at zucotti park make a mountain out of.

we didn't start grabbing or do anything bold like that... but there's some kinda lesson i picked up on that night.

they use barricades cuz they don't trust us to govern ourselves in these types of situations. i may have been more offended at times square than at zuccotti park by the barricades. this was basically they're way of saying, 'we don't trust you to walk down the street around here on your own.'

and maybe they have a point. maybe if they're not there people would go crazy. but then again, maybe they wouldn't. i don't know the answer to that and nobody else does either. what i do know for sure is that me, personally, i didn't need those barricades. i would've walked to the bus stop and kept to myself and been trouble to no one. i was just a dude trying to get home.

and that's what kills me! the one thing i know for certain is i can handle walking to the bus stop to catch a bus. but here i was, totally inconvenienced by barricades and forced to walk around for way more distance and time than necessary just because they don't trust me to walk down the street in times square on new year's eve.

barricades bother me. and that's cuz i know for certain that i don't need them. i don't need to be told by an authority figure where i can and can't go. i know what's good and bad for me. and i'm all about doing my thing with pretty much the only restriction being that i can't shit on anyone else's parade.

i already barricade myself. i know my own limits. i know i'm no threat to anyone... in fact i'm way more likely to help others than hurt.

but that's just me. and i can't speak for the rest of society. i guess barricades hurt me at my most inner core. it's a reminder that either-

a- there's a force out there that wants to control us and they're willing to sacrifice what's good for us to do it.

or

b- that we do need these barricades. that we are bad business in big numbers.

and while the idea of option a pisses me off... the idea of option b makes me sad and disappointed.

(who knows? maybe it's a bit of both options.)

i'm all for bringing the barricades down. but at the same time, i only wanna do it if we're ready for it.

in the end, you can't spell revolution without evolution. there's so much radical change i wanna see in the world, but i wonder if mankind, as a creature, is really ready for what i got in mind?