PrintUptown, downtown occupiers
November 18, 2011
They may look filthy and sound incoherent to you but the less than one per cent of the population that is Occupy Wall Street is not monolithic. Now that Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park in New York is mostly an unpleasant memory whose bitter scent continues in different modes, analysts and pundits will discuss its implications for years.
But Wednesday night Samantha Bee, the The Daily Show's eminent regular sociologist captured the class differences of the occupiers, complete with different neighborhoods, goods and attitudes before the New York city police and sanitation departments plowed it under.
"Uptown" OWS's sunnier and much cleaner location complete with a people's (as opposed to say, dog's) library and meeting tents contrasted with the "downtown's" grubbier and chaotic atmosphere as its inhabitants banged drums while inarticulately expressing their occupying purpose along with contempt for the participating "college Brooklyn hipsters" several occupying tent uptown blocks away.
Interviewing an uptown iPad carrying occupier, Bee asked if he shared it with others who didn't have one, maybe because they couldn't afford it. Clutching his precious iPad closer to his chest, the uptown occupier quickly reassured her he believed in private property; occupying was about access so everyone could afford to buy an iPad he emphasized. How, he didn't explain.
A downtowner looked horrified when Bee asked about the ultimate four letter word: work. Did he do any for the OWS community? Of course, he just didn't know how many hours. Many as in maybe one. And why should he work; the uptowners planned without consulting him.
And oh, how the uptowners planned, all in the relative occupying comfort of the airy, light filled, atrium in the clean and warm office building of the...you knew it would happen...evil, bailed out Deutsche Bank.
Sociologist Bee summed up the dismantling of the Zuccotti Park site and its ultimate meaning for both classes.
"In any case, both the uptown elitists and the downtown poors agree--the occupation ended too early, they didn't even have time to create a middle class for this new society to crush."
March on occupiers, disrupt the productive. The 99 per centers, who work and take care of themselves, are really disgusted with you.
