Live From WallStock! NYPD Driftnets Scoop Up A NYT Reporter
Blurry Pollys-eye view of the NYPD Going Hippie-Hunting
Our tough-talking police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, when he isn’t aiming his fire at enemy aircraft, has a devil-may-care attitude where jury-awarded compensation is concerned, and a distinct fondness for orange construction netting, as New York Times reporter Natasha Lennard discovered today when she became the dolphin in a bridgeful of penned-in protesters.
It’s been mighty exciting these past two weeks here at the Polly digs in lower Manhattan, but being able to witness the expression of free speech being quashed from our very own balcony is the sort of fantasy a girl can hardly believe could ever be fulfilled, and yet it happened!
Here, for instance, is the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street march across the Brooklyn Bridge, as taken by my awful little cell phone from the Polly porch where I was entertaining my Auntie Pat instead of being down at the demonstration the way a good photojournalist would be. Although their sign says, “OCCUPY EVERYTHING,” the marchers are properly occupying the pedestrian walkway.
The pedestrian walkway is wooden, raised above the traffic lanes, and fairly narrow, leading me to wonder how long it would take to get an obviously enormous demonstration across the bridge. It wasn’t long, though, before little figures could be seen vaulting the cement partitions separating a portion of the on-ramp that has been under repair (thanks, stimulus!):
“That’s not good,” I said to Auntie Pat. Considering that last week’s sidewalk pepper-spraying had hardly faded from the world’s mind’s eye, this seemed an ominous development. Yet marchers continued onto the bridge, without interference that I could see from the police, for another ten to fifteen minutes, no sirens, no police helicopter. Indeed, the police blocked Brooklyn-bound drivers.
The day being chilly, the march across the bridge seemingly accomplished, intrepid newshounds Polly and Auntie Pat went inside for tea, which is of course when the arrests began. I checked the Twitterfeed for #Occupy Wall Street, and ran back outside to find the on-ramp vacant and subdued groups of people walking back off the bridge (these later turned out to be the ones released from the Great EnNettening).
Now there were weird, hoarse, bursts of siren, as if the NYPD was a goaded animal, and the police helicopter circled overhead.
We could hear chanting, either from the bridge, or from the contingent of protesters who gathered, with cameras, by City Hall: “Whose bridge? OUR BRIDGE!”
“They shouldn’t have leaped the barricade,” Auntie Pat and I agreed. “So it isn’t as terrible as it looks.” Much relieved, I turned back to the computer, only to find out that, according to Ms. Lennard, the cops were allowing (or luring) the marchers onto the roadway. Then, fairly obviously, once the demonstrators were nicely contained on the bridge, Ray Kelly had his fishermen pull in the nets.
I remember the 2004 convention well. Thanks to Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg, Manhattan became a police state. I saw plenty of orange netting, and, unlike a few other dolphins, I was able to evade it (and the monetary compensation that the unjustly corralled were awarded)
Our porch overlooks not just the on-ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge, but One Police Plaza, a square chunk of red brick that stares stolidly back. It is the best-defended cube of real-estate in the city; after 9/11, all roads leading to One Police Plaza were multiply barricaded and tenderly guarded. The building bristles with cameras and radar, and I wouldn’t be surprised if missiles burst out of the roof. Yet not five-hundred yards away from the Puzzle Palace (an inverted pyramid in the Brutalist style), an exuberant, fearsome, spontaneous, messy, river of civil discontent flowed past, right under mayoral hopeful Raymond Kelly’s nose.
That certainly couldn’t be allowed.
Posted by Mrs. Polly on 10/01/11 at 09:13 PM • Permalink
Categories: Images • New York City • Brooklyn • Manhattan • News • Skull Hampers •
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