In many but not all senses of the word, the Occupy movement is at war. As I see it, it’s a war primarily of values and ideas against institutionalized inequality, corruption, and injustice, but in some respects and certainly on some occasions, it’s also a war both for and about territory; and the locus of that aspect of the struggle is beyond any doubt Zuccotti Park –also known as Liberty Plaza– in downtown Manhattan.

Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street activists were only days away from celebrating the two-month anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park when Mayor Bloomberg deployed the NYPD to clear the park in what can only be called a para-military raid, undertaken during a media black-out in the early morning hours of November 15th. Over five-thousand books and much personal property were destroyed in the raid and most of the other major Occupy encampments throughout the country, including Oakland, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, were evicted within weeks. In its battle for territory, the Occupy movement had suffered an enormous setback.

But last night, 31 December, 2011, the Occupiers could relish a major, if short-lived, victory in their territorial struggle. Protesters and revelers at Occupy 2012: Wall Street New Years Eve Celebration wrested many of the steel barricades that had been placed around Zuccotti Park after the eviction and had surrounded it ever since, from the perimeter and threw them into a huge pile in the middle of the plaza. The police, many of them clad in riot gear, were greatly out-numbered and handily out-maneuvered by the protesters, and even their pepper-spray, which they discharged into the face of more than one protester, failed to give them the tactical advantage needed to overcome the crowd or prevent the victory pile of steel barriers from growing larger.

Once the mountain of barricades was complete, some of the protesters climbed triumphantly on top of it with banners and an American flag, while others decorated it with Christmas lights and yellow and black Occupy caution tape. Unsurprisingly, a vibrant and ecstatic drum circle quickly followed.

At around 1:00 a.m., dozens of police officers began to converge on the north side of the park and at about 1:30, many of them entered the plaza with riot-cuffs, batons, and helmets and began to make arrests. Two police officers forced a young Hispanic man against a tree and as he was being hand-cuffed he shouted, “Can you tell me why I’m being arrested?! What am I being charged with?” As he was led to a police van, many protesters asked him his name. He yelled in response, “Angel Rodriguez!” In total, sixty-eight people were arrested.

Once police had cleared the park by either arresting or threatening to arrest anyone present, they were joined by a group of men and women (presumably employees of Brookfield Properties, which owns and maintains Zuccotti Park) and began dismantling the pile of barricades in the center of the plaza and re-placing them around the perimeter. The last thing I heard as I left Liberty Plaza early this morning was the loud and triumphant declaration of a man who had been supplying pizza to the protesters throughout the celebration. Addressing a group of police officers who were escorting us off the sidewalk and away from the park, he shouted, “We won this battle! You may win the next one, but this one was ours!”

Images © 2011 and 2012 Eric Walton
Text © 2012 Eric Walton

by Eric Walton

Lincoln Center has given much to the world of art, and thus given much to the world at large. It’s home to the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, and the New York City Opera and since its inception in 1956, has given the world something it desperately needs: a place to enjoy the performing arts. Last night, December 1st, 2011, Lincoln Center gave the world something it decidedly did not need: a new synonym for the word “hypocrisy.”

Satyagraha, the opera by Phillip Glass that closed last night at the Metropolitan Opera, is the story of the early years of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent protest and peaceful resistance in South Africa. And although I have not seen the opera myself and am therefore open to correction on this point, I assume that Satyagraha casts Gandhi and the tactics of non-violence that he and his followers employed, in a favorable light. If so, that is a view apparently not shared by some at Lincoln Center toward actual, living and breathing non-violent protestors in the twenty-first century.

In a breath-taking display of untrammeled hypocrisy and tone-deafness, the powers that be at Lincoln Center, one of the world’s great cultural institutions, blocked the main entrance to Lincoln Plaza (which is, according to my sources anyway, a public space) with steel barricades in order to keep peaceful, non-violent protestors from the Occupy Wall Street movement from assembling there; and in doing so demonstrated plainly and unequivocally that the principles of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience advocated by Gandhi were to be glorified on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, but scorned on the steps of that very same building. It seems that the basis upon which non-violent protest and, for that matter, Constitutional liberties, are to be tolerated in and around Lincoln Center can be summed up in three simple words: location, location, location.

Naturally, the NYPD, to which Mayor Bloomberg had referred only two days earlier as “[his] own army,” were on hand to contend with those who dared to breach the barricade or defy the orders of Lincoln Center’s director of security, Susan Bick. At one point, the hundreds gathered on the sidewalk used the people’s mic to address Bick directly and by name, asking her politely to approach the crowd and discuss her tactics. In response, Bick folded her arms, turned her back, and then defiantly walked away. I can recall no time at which I have been addressed by name by a group of hundreds of people speaking in unison, so in fairness, I can’t say what my response would have been in that situation; but apparently condescension, annoyance, and dismissal were the best Ms. Bick could manage under the circumstances.

Ms. Bick's feckless response was, just like Lincoln Center’s decision to obstruct the right of free assembly of non-violent protestors in a public space on the closing night of an opera about non-violent resistance, a completely wasted opportunity.

I have taken up numerous causes in my lifetime and I have marched and rallied for many of them. I have marched in support of animal rights, climate-change awareness, gay rights and Tibetan autonomy and against the wars in the Persian Gulf and Iraq. I have rallied among tens of thousands of protestors in Washington D.C. and among mere dozens of fellow-traveling activists in New York City. I have stood in solidarity with members of PETA, the ACLU, 350.org, Greenpeace, Students For a Free Tibet, GLAAD, Moveon.org and many, many other local and national advocacy groups whose supporters have taken their causes to the street. In the course of these otherwise peaceful demonstrations, I have been upbraided by pedestrians and motorists, scorned by counter-protestors and was once even assaulted (albeit mildly) by a police officer.

These and other credentials notwithstanding, it would be entirely disingenuous for me to claim to be a career activist. That is a distinction of which I am by no means worthy. I am at best a part-timer in the field, a free-lancer who sometimes (and certainly not often enough) joins like-minded people at rallies or protests either in support of some political or social cause or in condemnation of some injustice or another perpetrated by either my own government, someone else's or by some immense and nefarious corporation or group of corporations. The issues have been many, but the purpose for showing up has always been the same: to affect change and achieve justice through dissent.

I entered the fray once again this week and was, as ever, in good company.

The men and women protesting in lower Manhattan as a part of Occupy Wall Street are performing admirable work and they deserve to be commended for it. How dare Sean Hannity have called them un-American. They are organized and focused and display the kind of resolve, will and personal restraint that are the ingredients of a strong and viable political movement. How encouraging it is to see that that similar protests have begun in Boston, Seattle, San Fransisco, Austin, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. I was especially pleased to learn that the city of Philadelphia offered a permit for the occupation of Dilworth Plaza “in perpetuity”. Apparently the General Assembly is split on the decision regarding the permit, but it should encourage the thousands already gathered in Philadelphia that at least one resource necessary to bring about change is likely to be in ample supply: time.

Below are photos I took at Zuccotti Park at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration on Columbus Day.

by Eric Walton

"Gullibility and credulity are considered undesirable qualities in every department of human life -- except religion." -Christopher Hitchens, author and journalist (b. 1949) 

It is inconceivable that I could have reached the age of twelve without being lied to. I had, after all, not been raised in isolation from other human beings. And as I reflect on it now, it seems altogether implausible that I would not have recognized the perpetrators of at least some of these inevitable falsehoods for what they were and called them out on their lies. It seems implausible, that is, until I consider that as a child I was both extremely credulous and incredibly timid. I was, in the parlance of the midway, an “easy mark”. My childhood timidity, credulity, and tractability also made me an excellent target for religious inculcation, but I'll grind that ax another time.

The very first occasion on which I can recall another person telling me something that I knew to be utterly false and on which I marshaled the courage to confront the liar with the known facts, was, fittingly, on the midway.

The midway in question was at the Oklahoma State Fair, an annual gathering in Oklahoma City of corn-dog, funnel-cake, and cotton-candy vendors; trinket peddlers; mechanical-bull, thrill-ride, and sideshow operators; Alibi agents; lot lice; Flatties; townies; and, rubes like me who just couldn't wait to be separated from their hard-earned cash.

One of the many sideshow attractions on offer at the Oklahoma City fairgrounds in the summer of 1983 was A GIANT ALLIGATOR!!! MEASURING OVER TEN FEET IN LENGTH AND WEIGHING MORE THAN 800 POUNDS, THIS ENORMOUS AND TERRIFYING, MAN-EATING MONSTER WAS CAPTURED IN THE AMAZON AND IS ON DISPLAY NOW, ALIVE AND ON THE INSIDE!!!

Or words to that effect.

As anyone who has ever visited the midway knows, for attractions such as these, the bally often isn't delivered live, but is pre-recorded and played in a constant loop over a PA system that invariably sounds as if someone had simply placed a bull-horn in front of a gramophone.

The quality of the PA system notwithstanding, I was powerless to resist the hypnotic spiel that promised a rare glimpse of a powerful and prehistoric animal, the likes of which I had only seen on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I paid the price of admission to the attendant, a man in his mid-forties with the leathery skin and cynical demeanor that is either the product of or pre-condition for life on the midway, and ascended the platform to see THE RARE, EXOTIC, AND DANGEROUS CREATURE THAT COULD SWALLOW A GOAT ALIVE!!!

I will now tell you what you undoubtedly already know: the alligator was not real. It was a fake. And a shoddy one, at that. The only claim made regarding this attraction that was not completely false was the one regarding its length: it was, by my best reckoning, approximately twice as long as I was tall, making it indeed ten feet or thereabouts, but otherwise, every word used to describe what was obviously a cheap, plastic simulacrum of an alligator was unquestionably false. I suppose it can be granted that it was “enormous” and “on display”, as stated in the extravagant and misleading description, but it was nonetheless a gross and fraudulent mischaracterization of the attraction and I felt, for the first time, that I had been duped (which I had).

I then had the following exchange with The Man With The Leathery Skin:

Me: Um, sir, that's not a real alligator.
The Man With The Leathery Skin: Yes, it is.
Me: No, it isn't. It's fake. It's totally fake. It's not even moving. Not even its eyes are moving.
The Man With The Leathery Skin: Just cuz it ain't movin' don't mean it ain't real. Don't you sit still sometimes?
Me: Yes, but...
The Man With The Leathery Skin: Well then, there ya go!
Me: Some of the paint is even chipped off of it. Why would you ever need to paint a real alligator? Under what circumstances would you need to paint a real alligator?
The Man With The Leathery Skin: Listen, son: if that alligator was fake, I would have the Oklahoma City police department on my case like white on rice, but I don't see no police around here, do you?
Me: No, but..
The Man With The Leathery Skin: Well then, there ya go!

Or words to that effect.

I asked for a refund and was (it will come as no surprise) rebuffed. Never again would I see the two quarters that I had eagerly surrendered to The Man With The Leathery Skin only moments prior in exchange for the privilege of looking at a phoney alligator in a shallow pool of murky water. Oh, the injustice! But if attractions like these gave refunds to every man, woman, or child with enough sense to distinguish an ersatz alligator from a real one, it would make the sideshow a very poor business model indeed. I do not, however, regret the expenditure or the experience, as it marks my first exposure to several aspects of human nature that I have encountered numberless times since and against which I constantly arm myself -- the foremost of which being the willingness of some persons to stake their credibility on claims that they know to be both patently false and easily disproved. “How fascinating,” I thought.

And thus were the seeds of skepticism sown in my boyhood mind. It would take several years and much careful tending for those seeds to bear fruit, but bear fruit, they eventually did.

Perhaps it can be said that I owe something to The Man With The Leathery Skin, though certainly that something is not my gratitude. He had no intention other than to lure me and others like me into his ramshackle exhibit under false pretenses and take our money – to enrich himself (albeit slowly) by exploiting the gullibility of strangers. To say that I should be grateful for the man's fraudulence and conniving would be absurd; but as he was, in his own subversive way, instrumental in my early education, I suppose I do owe him something.

And as he doesn't deserve my thanks and already has my money, perhaps I could offer him something of even greater value: A RARE GLIMPSE OF THE ELUSIVE HIMALAYAN ALBINO TIGRESS!!! THIS AMAZING CREATURE HAS TO BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED!!! WITH FUR THE COLOR OF PURE ALABASTER, THIS MAGNIFICENT AND FEROCIOUS ANIMAL IS A WONDER TO BEHOLD!!! STEP RIGHT UP, SIR, AND MARVEL AT NATURE'S MAJESTY...

Text and photos © Eric Walton, 2011

Further reading: Eyeing The Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist by Peter Fenton (Simon and Schuster, 2005)

Arthropods: Rulers of the World!
by Eric Walton

On a recent week-end in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which is, unsurprisingly, magnificent. The delights began even before I entered the first gallery: I was informed when purchasing my ticket that the price of admission, a paltry nine USD, included entry into the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. But the real joy was discovering that the HMNH is a veritable treasure trove of insects, spiders and crustaceans beautifully preserved in glass jars!

From a distance, the three modest cabinets that house these marvelous specimens are not as impressive as, say, the forty-two foot long Kronosaurus skeleton in the Zoological Gallery, or even the sixteen-hundred pound amethyst geode in the The Mineralogical and Geological Gallery, but to approach the cabinets and glance at the dozens of glass jars containing hundreds of motionless creatures suspended in a kind of biological purgatory, their inevitable decay and decompostion arrested for a brief moment in geological time through the glory of science, is to be drawn into a miniature palace of wonders, a tiny theater of strange and exotic life-forms that seem as alien, as beautiful and as rebarbative, as anything depicted in a science fiction movie.

I offer a few photographic samples for your delight and delectation. I took these over the course of about half an hour and the kind folks at the HMNH were gracious enough not only to tolerate my bothersome photo-taking, but also to grant me permission to publish the images here:

Text and images © Eric Walton 2011
© President & Fellows of Harvard College