I
wasn't supposed to be sitting in a bar, my right elbow bent like a
bastard, on the night of September 17, 2012. It was the anniversary
of Occupy Wall Street – a movement I've been covering for about a
year – and the plan was to be out in the streets, tweeting, taking
pictures, and scribbling obscenities in my notepad. That's what I do.
I'm a reporter. It's my fucking job.
But I
wasn't on the streets, recording so much senseless brutality. Instead
I was a victim of it, having gotten viciously tackled and abused less
than two hours after reporting for duty. I hardly planned for this;
if I had, I would have left my weed at my motel. But having covered
comparable actions in more than 20 American cities over the past
year, I've learned how to get my story without getting bagged. Or so
I thought.
I
intentionally slept through the early morning Occupy efforts to troll
Wall Street suits as they arrived at work. I'd been up late tailing
protesters to Times Square, plus I've written about journalist
mistreatment in such circumstances, and had an inkling that there
would be mass arrests during the rush hour festivities. It turned out
that hunch was on point; when I showed up at noon in Battery
Park, most people were rapping about how ugly the AM actions got.
After
surveying the crowd of several thousand in Battery and smacking back
some water, at about 1:15pm I went to work, and headed north toward
Zuccotti Park. But between the tourists, cops, and activists there,
every slab of pavement was mobbed, and I didn't even enter the old
encampment. Instead I followed about 100 protesters – an intriguing
mix of hardcore Occupiers and labor picketers – east on Liberty
Street.
It was
hardly different from any other hot situation that I've covered. Signs
were held, chants were yelled, and after about 10 minutes of people lambasting Chase bank, cops ordered
everyone off of the sidewalk. I was in the street – tweeting,
taking notes and pictures – when a cop chased me across the
pavement and away from the action: “YOU – GET ON THE [OTHER]
SIDEWALK – IT'S THE THING MADE OUT OF CONCRETE.”
No
problem. I went exactly where they told me to go. But soon after, so
did the crush of protesters, who by that point had been joined by at
least another 100 comrades heading north on William Street. Once
there, they all began to pile into a courtyard up some steps, but I stayed on
the sidewalk, obeying orders, and snapping pics of what seemed like
an imminent dispersal. That's when the ringleader cop in the white
shirt and black leather cloves pointed directly at me. All I heard
was, “CHOPPER – SICK BALLS!”
I must
be a seriously fat shit because, somehow, my nose didn't hit the
ground as I was pushed, grabbed, and tackled while standing alone,
with no one nearby to cushion the blow. It did hurt, though,
especially since despite not battling back, I was repeatedly jabbed
in the lower back and told to stop resisting. Pleas for my cellphone,
which went flying when they sacked me, and my screaming “I'M A JOURNALIST” just made the fuzz angrier.
One
reasonable cop did rescue my horn, but only after one of his
colleagues grabbed my right arm, forced my hand far enough up my back
to touch my left shoulder, and twisted until we both heard the uneasy
sound of muscle tearing. At that, they stood me up and asked if I was
“okay,” to which I just nodded and continued to repeat, loudly,
“I'M A JOURNALIST.” Surrounded by more than a dozen cops, I doubt
that any civilians or protesters heard me ask for someone to call my
editors in Boston.
Nobody
was happy about how much shit I had in my pockets. Not me, not the
dimwits digging through my pants, and not the nice young cop who was
eventually assigned as my “arresting officer” despite having
little to do with my beat-down. As they cleaned out my jeans near the
police wagon, I was yelled at several times for carrying a notepad,
pens, a towel, my camera, and a small container full of trees, which
prompted some serious hilarity. When asked why I was holding
marijuana, I told the officers that I smoke it to prevent anxiety –
to which the biggest dope among them said, “Wait until the media
finds out that you were working and doing drugs. You're finished!”
After
the dumbest cop of all accused me of trying to escape – while tied
up, with my belongings in their custody, in the middle of a police
state – the wagon doors were slammed, and I sat alone with no
ventilation or air conditioning for about 10 minutes. Between the
lack of oxygen and plastic cuffs choking my hands, I was sure that I
would puke or pass out, but then the doors opened, and in came Tyler.
A 21-year-old day trader from a wealthy Connecticuit family, Tyler was not a
protester or a journalist. He was just a pedestrian who happened to
be passing by when I got sacked, and who made the mistake of pulling
out his cell phone to record the craziness.
Tyler
was absolutely freaked. On his way to lunch near Battery Park, his
day had taken a dramatic turn, and by the time he wound up in the
meat wagon with me, dude was really bothering the cops. I told him to
shut the fuck up – several times – and for the most part he
followed my directions, except for when he asked, half-seriously, if
we were going to be water-boarded. To diffuse the situation and calm
him down, I made a joke about there being seat belts in the bus,
which only a contortionist could possibly fasten while cuffed from
behind.
While
in custody, I made it a point to tell every cop I came in contact
with that I'm a journalist, and was either ignored or ridiculed each
time. One steroid fiend with a pre-school education quipped, “So
you're one of the blogger idiots who thought you wouldn't get
arrested protesting.” Another cop at the station took my business
card to a superior officer, who looked at it, then glanced at me, and
determined there was no way that I was really a reporter.
After
a not-so-awful booking process in which my balls were barely grazed,
I was led into the holding cell where about 75 protesters were
hanging and chanting. I realized right away that they were
entertaining company, not to mention a diverse scrum if there ever
was one. Before long I was trading arrest stories with New York
anarchists, a senior citizen from Maine, two teenagers – aged 15
and 16 – who had come down from Philadelphia, an NLG volunteer who
still had his green cap on, a minister from Somerville, two Veterans
for Peace, and an aspiring MC who spit all types of flames for us to
nod to.
If
there's one thing I've always found about Occupiers, it's that they
know how to flip shitty situations inside out. This was especially
true in the can, a despicable 800-square foot dungeon with flickering
fluorescent lights, two turd-filled toilet bowls, and a broken
telephone. Given those conditions, activists used the slices of
American cheese from our stale sandwiches to cover the security
cameras. And when the five-gallon water jug was finished, they used
it as a bongo until one of the steak boys came in to confiscate it.
Other
highlights included seeing such familiar faces as Noah McKenna from
Occupy Boston, and John Knefel, a fellow journalist who does the
internet show Radio Dispatch, which I'm sure will be waxing about
this. And how could I forget the New York Occupier who, through the
bars, kept berating a cop who was watching movies on his phone? Or
the officer who entered the pen to tell the 16-year-old from Philly
that his father had been contacted, and that his parents were
extremely pissed off. We all got a real kick out of that one.
After
roughly five hours of watching officers struggle with tall piles of
paperwork – the NYPD apparently has yet to upgrade from pens and
pads to computers – my name finally got called. So with Tyler and
another new friend – Paul Mayer, an 81-year-old Catholic priest
from New Jersey who had been in since about 8am – I collected my
belongings (though they kept my weed) and walked with a desk
appearance ticket for December 5, when I'll argue that if anyone was
guilty of “disorderly conduct,” it was the pack of Neanderthals
who rammed me into that “thing made out of concrete.”
It
should go without saying that, while I didn't get to report as
planned, the day was hardly a waste. Though half of my cellmates
expected to be arrested for civil disobedience, an equal number had
been fucked like me, and assaulted, cuffed, and stuffed because some
dope in a uniform disliked the way they looked. Hearing their stories
reinforced everything that I already knew about the extreme savagery
that's been aimed at this movement, especially in New York. To quote
Mobb Deep, “There's a war going on outside no man is safe from.”
No woman either, as it turns out.
As for
Tyler – he was kind enough to offer me some bong hits at his
apartment near Union Square, where we got wicked stoned and ate tacos before
I got to writing this. At 2pm yesterday, he was an aspiring broker
who was walking to lunch, when he got violated by people who, up
until that moment, he thought were there to protect him. By 4pm,
Tyler was chanting in solidarity with a horde of Occupiers. And by
the time that we got out, he was itching to head back towards
Zuccotti and get more footage of police beatings. If that's not the
best birthday present that Occupy Wall Street could ask for, then I
don't know what is.
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