Jeff Occupies Wall Street!

I had an opportunity to go down to NYC this week.  My friend is interning with a federal district court judge, and that judge was going to be sitting on the Second Circuit Court of Appeal to hear arguments this week.  It was perfect day to take a field trip!

We took the train down, and got to the court house.





The court room was  really cool and ornate, and it was great to see some arguments.  A third year student from NYU was probably the best orator we saw, he was really impressive.

Arguments ended around 4pm, and it just so happened that the Occupy Wall Streeters were planning to meet for their march across the brooklyn bridge at 5pm, right in front of the court house.  With an hour to kill, however we decided to walk down to Zuccotti Park to where all the "occupiers" were hanging out.

The place is surrounded by police barricades, and it looked a lot like a petting zoo.  The sheep inside the gates, bleating on and on about who knows what and people gathered around them, taking pictures, but taking care not to get too close to the wild animals.  Hats off to the NYC Public Works department, as they cleaned up the place really well, and I couldnt smell any of the human feces and rat droppings that had apparantly been littering the park a few days before.  I got some video of some of the people at the park.

These people were just standing around this tree, humming. They kept doing this for the whole time we were there (around 30 mins) and im sure they had been doing it a long time before and long time after we left.



This guy was just rambling on and on about who knows what!  at one point he said that JFK had called for the assassination of MLK... odd.  **warning: watching this video will make you dumber**



There were police all around the occupation, and i spoke with a few of them.  They mostly just laughed at the "protesters." I asked them if they were getting overtime, and every officer i spoke to said "yes" with a big smile.  It seems to me that the protesters actions are doing more to waste money than the big business they are protesting are. 

We made our way back to the courthouse to see the rally there.  As we made our way back, I was handed several signs and posters.  i was wondering where on earth these homeless people got the money for such nice posters, but upon further inspection i found that they were provided by the AFL-CIO.  not surprising.  here is me, doing my best to look like a 99%er.

You can see behind me, where all the people were gathering getting ready to march across the brooklyn bridge.  Around this time, the police started shutting down the sidewalks, so it was around this time that my buddy and I got the heck out of there.  I hand off my sign to some students, that were very into the cause.

We decided to walk up to little italy to get some dinner before taking the train back to Albany, but as we passed through Chinatown, we got caught up in a heavy stream of occupiers.  It was pretty exciting.



You can see i was doing my best to fit in with the rabble rousers.

Finally they all disappeared and we ate dinner, went to penn station, waited for our train, got on the train and headed back to law school, where we are preparing to become part of the 1%.  And we managed to do that without a single instance of civil disobedience!