The Day After

New York, yesterday:

Last night:
"99%" was among the slogans projected on the side of the Verizon building. Boing Boing has stunning pictures accompanying an interview on how it was pulled off; including this background—

Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully "there." But then I got a call from a person who sounded pretty sane. Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

Her parting words were, "let's do this."

She wouldn't take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she'd been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

"I can't charge you money, this is for the people," she said.

She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

"If they want to come up they're gonna need a warrant!," her family was saying. "If they ask us, well, we don't know what they are talking about!" They were really brave and cool.

Alternet has reports and crowd estimates (Foley Square last night at over 30,000). Coverage of police actions includes this—

One protester, however, had a hard time getting the NYPD to take him into custody. Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis, in full dress uniform, was almost begging to be arrested -- kneeling in front of a line of cops, with his hands behind his back at the southwest corner of Nassau and Pine --as he decried corporate exploitation. The police made feints at arresting him for a time, almost toying with the retired cop, but wouldn't actually do it -- at first. After he moved back through the crowd and up toward Broadway, they pounced, turning Lewis into a full-fledged OWS folk hero. Walking ramrod straight with his hands behind his back, the retired police captain was led by two NYPD officers through the intersection to the whoops, whistles and applause of the crowd.

Lewis definitely is a new hero of mine; along with Denise Vega, and thousands of people whose names I don't know.

Michael Shaw presents these juxtapositions: pretty Madison Avenue imagery versus the brutality of our militarized police forces.

In all the rush of events, we can't forget about the political shell game being played by the servants to the 1%.

As Digby offered in this morning's entry in her pretty much daily posts on the subject: "Super Committee"; Super Trouble