I don’t mind Occupy Wall Street. I don’t mind civil disobedience. I don’t even mind police officers trying to do their jobs.
Here’s what I do mind: People getting between me and taking that first look at my work email in the morning. I’m getting a little weary of OWS at this point. I’m not tired of their message, but the tactics have gotten a little odd. There are rumors today that they will attempt to occupy some subway stations. The purpose of this is entirely unclear to me. At best, it’ll cause a royal pain in the ass for people attempting to move about New York. At worst, someone is gonna get trampled to death.
To get to work, I take the 2/3 express downtown to the Wall Street stop. This stop has three entrances/exits, two of which I use regularly:
1. Pine Street: This is the one I use most often. It’s two very short blocks west of the New Voices office. Leaving the subway this way, after passing through the turnstile, you go down a short hallway and then up, either via a stairway that leads directly out onto Pine Street or up a stairway into a large indoor public-private space on the ground floor of an office building. (Like Zuccotti Park, this public-private space has been used as a meeting place for some of the OWS General Assembly’s various subcommittees.) On Tuesday, the day they cleared the occupiers from Zuccotti, the stairway up to the indoor space was blocked off by security guards and police. Yesterday, it was open, but there were new signs upstairs, saying that there was to be no sitting or lying on the ground and no signs or posters. Today, the entire Pine Street exit was closed off. Police, some in riot gear, were stopping people from using the turnstiles at all.
2. One Chase Manhattan Plaza: I use this exit whenever I need to do some New Voices business at the bank. Using this exit, you pass through a turnstile and then up into the lobby of One Chase Manhattan Plaza. It’s only a little further from the office than the Pine Street exit. Today there was a metal gate shutting off this exit.
3. The one I never use! I have actually never used this exit–not once. So naturally, this was the only one that was open. My guess is that it was open because it only leads to the street, rather into the interior of an office building. It turns out that this exit leads directly out onto Wall Street.
Upon emerging, there was only one way to go. If you turned right, there was a barricaded intersection. (It was either Wall Street and Hanover Street or Wall Street and William Street–I’m looking at Google Maps right now, trying to figure out how I got to work and it’s not clear to me exactly what path I took). At this intersection, they were checking work IDs, so that direction was no go. So I went left.
Now heading south on Wall Street, barricades and riot gear-encrusted police officers kept pedestrians from straying off of a narrow path down the sidewalk of one side of the street. Then I came to Pearl Street and Wall Street, the first of two intersections that featured a lot of people milling about and doing not much of anything. One corner of Pearl and Wall had some protesters with some signs.
I turned left onto Pearl and then had to get past some riot cops, standing shoulder-to-shoulder facing in the direction that I was headed, meaning I would approach them from behind. They were coming from my direction through without much trouble, but were harassing some protesters with signs heading toward them. Being the thorough NYPD officers that they are, they were also harassing an old lady–I overheard her say something about a dry cleaner.
Still heading east on, I came to Pearl and Pine Street, where absolutely no cops at all were completely failing to harass a much larger group of protesters than there were at the previous intersection. The protesters were discussing which way to go as I passed them. Unlike the police, they politely stepped out of my way so I could get through.
The notion that clearing Zuccotti Park would make life easier for those of us who work downtown doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. They said there would be fewer barricades in the neighborhood and that it would be simpler for commuters to move around the area.
On the contrary, I never had any trouble moving around before this morning.
