From an anonymous Pi Zete... try to use context clues to figure out who it is... Yesterday being just the right temp, and my NYC subway card needing a swipe before it gets cancelled for non-use, I took the E train from the Port Authority down to the WTC stop and walked the two blocks to the Occupy Wall Street encampment. Zuccotti Park was formerly that open area on Liberty Street a couple of blocks east of the (former) WTC South Tower. It's been fixed up with flower beds, a forest of small trees, and granite picnic tables and seats planted firmly. Now it's full of sleeping bags, bikes, and hippies. Lots of weirds that remind me of 1968. A few hardhats were there not to protest as much as to wait to see if any of the girls gyrating furiously to the drumming would get hot enough to take off their tops. No such luck, but the morning was still cool. Very crowded with people climbing over the bags, blankets, and piles of slogan cardboards. But all told not that much of a throng. Maybe 1,000 people at most and all tightly behind police barricades.
I looked first for the free food. It being between mealtimes, all I managed to pick up -- free all right -- was ample French bread, a small bag of Lays chips, and a nice apple. Also available was free literature in the library section -- the seeming clutter is unusually well organized by function. I picked up "Lenin's Legacy Today" for later perusal.
Munching the French bread on the sidelines (cops keep the participants and the growing number of touristic observers -- including school kid classes from the more progressive NYC places -- off the street and on the sidewalk), I found myself next to a young man holding up a cardboard sign saying something like "Let's Share Love." He had some wild flowers tucked behind his ear and a bunch in his hand ready for any takers. But he had diverted himself to be berating a couple of stoically non-responding cops for working for the oppressor and how could they sleep at night for doing so, etc. When the cops moved off, I couldn't resist asking this flower child who was paying for his stay in the park. Indignantly he said he had a master's degree and worked for a non-profit in Albany and earned his way there. I inquired where the non-profit got its money. This led fairly quickly to the main thesis of the activity: the voters are too dumb to pick a government they really need. I said that that sounded a bit Leninist to me to which I got the rejoinder, "Are you afraid of that?" I got bored and walked off before I ventured to say how unseemly it was for a puffed up, over-educated snot to taunt working folks like low-ranking police officers.
All this was rather as expected. On the way back to the subway station, which is just opposite the WTC site, I was shocked to see four girls fully chadored from head to toe with only Middle Eastern faces and hands visible having their picture taken by a fifth against the rising WTC replacement buildings. Each of the four was holding up both hands with fingers in the V for victory gesture. Who says many people in the world aren't proud of what happened 9/11?