Notes from Zuccotti Park # 2

Day 2 at Zucotti Park for me … and 30 days for Occupy Wall Street. Very strange that this protest exists at all. The City has swept much bigger actions away with ease … and the ideas and actions swirling around are hardly conventional, hardly accessible to the average Joe. I’m surprised at all of it.

Anyway, saw all kinds of things yesterday, here’s just one observation ….  

Rock – there’s this one fellow, hangs around the kitchen. He’s big, thick, not young. His jaw is square, his shoulders are square, he looks like nothing so much as a big, immovable rock. Nice enough fellow, but he speaks slowly, in a deep drawl, is kind of boring and tonight is taking up a lot of room in a found chair in the kitchen area.

Fair enough, I work around him, silently nick-naming him “The Rock”. The evening goes on – then suddenly, as these things do, there’s yelling and running and general rushing about – the police have advanced on the medical tent, apparently intending to dismantle it. I work my way to where I can see – there is a tense line of police, staring down a line of protestors. And there, between the protestors and the police, is “The Rock”. Just standing there, like a giant Buddha, with his hands open, saying “No Violence …. No Violence … No Violence” over and over, apparently calming the lines.

That’s the important part of the story, but it got completely surreal after that, so I’ll continue … out of nowhere appears … Jesse Jackson !?!?! (for real, I couldn’t make this stuff up). The police are clutching their nightsticks, the crowd is chanting and Reverend Jesse Jackson appears between them, next to Rock. What’s this ?! A Halloween ghost of the activist past ? Some bizarre liberal cavalry from the 60’s ?  No, it was really him, Jesse Jackson. He just stood there, staring at the officers one by one (hypnotizing them, one guy said later). Soon enough he cooled the beef and everybody backed down.     

Now, it was cool to be 18 feet from Jesse Jackson, but the confrontation, the drama of it, I find pretty trivial as far as understanding this experience. What really caught my attention was Rock. He ain’t pretty – not an intellect, not charismatic, not hip – and nobody is going to shake his hand, the way they shook Jesse Jackson’s. I’ve gotta say, I probably wouldn’t strike up a conversation with him, probably wouldn’t listen much if he spoke … I don’t even remember his name. So I’m wondering, does his voice get heard ? Do institutions hear him when he speaks ? Do we ? Bet not … but at a crucial moment, he made his voice heard, with courage and calm and grace. Is that what this whole thing is about ?

                                                                      

I don’t know, but it’s something to think about, surely.