As the Occupy Wall Street Day-of-Outrage protests gather steam this afternoon, those in the streets are taking the message underground. As the group’s website notes, Occupy Wall Street protestors will descend upon the subways at 3 p.m. this afternoon. Initial media reports claimed that the protestors were seeking to “disrupt” travel, but the message on the group’s website is less convincing.
According to the site, protestors will “gather at 16 central subway hubs and take our own stories to the trains.” So instead of disrupting travel, it appears as though the 99 percenters will instead be trying to convince fellow Straphangers to join their cause. For protestors, targeting the subways carries with it some risks as the so-called 99 percent use the subways to commute to and from work and travel throughout the city. Even if the subway-centric element of today’s day of action ends before a planned 5 p.m. rally in Foley Square, interfering with subway travel could do the movement more harm than good.
As a warning then, the transit hubs are as follows. Expect crowds; expect slower trains; expect lots of people, both cops and protestors. Bronx: Fordham Road, 3rd Ave./138th Street, 163rd St./Southern Boulevard, Yankee Stadium. Brooklyn: Broadway Junction, Borough Hall, 301 Grove St., St. Jose Patron Church in Bushwick. Queens: Roosevelt Ave./Jackson Heights, Jamaica Center/Parsons/Archer, 92-10 Roosevelt Heights. Manhattan: 125th St. (A/C/B/D), Union Square, 23rd St./8th Ave. Staten Island: SI Ferry Terminal, 479 Port Richmond Ave.
42 comments
jerks
These people are really starting to cheese me off.
So how close to martial law do you need to be before you realise you’re cheesed off at the wrong people?
Curfews will be next. Will that be enough for you?
The only people who are out after 10 are hipsters anyway.
I agree with the movement but this is a very bad idea. Whoever came up with this is just wrong. Subways are where the 99% are, not the 1%. This will do what the Anonymous protests at BART stations in the Bay Area did and annoy people and seriously sway public opinion against OWS. Very, very bad idea.
I don’t think the idea is to disrupt travel. It seems like the plan is to get their message to the rest of the 99% (such as subway riders) by spreading out across the city and standing around or in stations. Nothing wrong with that.
Even if they just stand around screaming their slogans, it will still piss a lot of people off. The subways are crowded and noisy as it is. Nobody wants a bunch of people standing in the station preventing people from walking freely screaming about 99%.
People exercising their freedom of speech isn’t always convenient for everyone.
But obviously there are limits to freedom of speech when they trample on other people’s freedoms… such as freedom of movement. The subways are too crowded to serve as a forum for political discussion. They’re a mode of transportation.
I’m not sure where “freedom of movement” is in the Bill of Rights. There are always people shouting about how we’re all sinners in the subway. How is this different? The only people talking about the intention to disrupt service is the press, not the OWS web site.
Actually, there is an implied freedom of movement that is regarded as one of the most fundamental rights in the constitution. Precisely, it’s the right to travel interstate, though I would guess it kind of implies the right not to be hindered on public highways whether they’re intrastate or not.
Maybe newly minted lawyer Ben could elaborate or correct me if I’m wrong. :-p
There is no talk of disrupting people’s freedom of movement, and I don’t see what OWS would get out of doing so.
Hypothetically, if the crowd is so big that it incidentally slows the system down, is there a rule about that? Certainly people incidentally ride to get to sporting events and parades, and that no doubt sometimes inconveniences someone. You have the same right to ride the system for no reason at all as you do to ride the system to get to work; riding for political reasons is obviously not going to be banned either. The “disruption” argument is just weak.
Including themselves. Sure they’re free to speak, but if it annoys people about their cause, maybe they’d have been better off finding another platform.
“another platform”
No pun intended! 🙂
Freedom of speech has nothing to do with the argument though. Freedom of speech means simply that government cannot imprision you for speaking against it or any other cause. Otherwise, it has consequences. So if Occupy Wall Street exercises their freedom of speech in the subways, expect many people not to be happy about them doing so and for these people to turn against the cause. That’s why it is a bad idea.
Even if they disagree, why would anyone even give a shit? This is New York, not the suburbs of Atlanta or Virginia. We don’t all have this reflexive desire to suppress every little thing we disagree with.
Ahh. Ahmen to that. Well said.
At 3:00 in mostly off-peak directions? Other than the noise, this is just more revenue for the MTA. The only reason to want to suppress it is…political. It even makes financial sense to let it go forward.
(I agree it’s a tactic of questionable utility for the movement, unless the aim really is recruitment. But it’s a harmless tactic of questionable utility.)
Lets hope for everyones sake that they do not disrupt travel.
I saw 3 or 4 of them yesterday in the paid portion of the concourse above the 4/5/6 lines at union square. There was zero disruption and impact was much akin to the more run-of-the-mill subway preachers typically seen at Times Sq.
This isn’t going to accomplish anything but piss off a lot of the commuters – who ironically are a part of the 99% – who depend on the Subway and rail services…
…like me!
Al Sharpton did it the same way many years ago. Disrupted the subways to screw the serfs, while the executive class and political class were free to ride home in their placard parked automobiles and on their commuter trains.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02.....ation.html
Sharpton was probably just being savvy about not fighting the powers that be, when fighting the powerless that be is more likely to succeed. I think OWS just doesn’t get it.
Occupying public spaces and rallying for the cause is the only way this movement can work. Straphangars, since as you say, are part of the 99 percent which gives them the duty to stop the rat race for a bit and seize the moment to DO something. Your recommendation to discourage protest in major subway hubs sounds a bit too redolent of a bourgeoisie class mentality.
Depends on what they do. Are they going to talk with people and hand out flyers? Or pull the cords to stop the trains, as in 1987? We’ll see.
“Stop the rat race”? You mean, like, be docked pay by my boss ’cause I can’t get to work on time?
So can anybody report what they are doing? Are they talking to people and handing out flyers, or pulling cords?
I want to know what to advise family members who will be taking the subway home. I’ll be on a bike.
From the photos I’ve seen posted to Twitter, they’re not doing anything more intrusive than the end-of-the-world folks who table and picket in the corridor along 41st St. between the IND and the rest of Times Square. Not too disruptive.
I was at Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenue a little while ago. The L Train was terminating there for midday work. There was a massive police presence.
There were some occupiers walking south from Union Square when I rode by my bicycle — accompanied by millions of dollars of pension-inflating overtime.
I was terrified — that two of the helicopters overhead would collide and rain metal debris down on me.
Well it was pretty quiet this afternoon and evening for me. More cops than usual but nothing excessive
I’m growing disenfranchised with the 99%… time to go occupy a job, guys
Any eyewitness reports of what they’re actually doing?
If recruitment or getting their message out is the goal, why not take up a post at Times Sq, GCT or Penn Sta?
I pity the fool that tries to get in anyone’s way getting to from the shuttle – that’s like a Beijing highway at rush hour!
I agree, those people should be occupying jobs. So, what have you done lately to support a second stimulus so that the unemployment rate would come down below 9%?
Support More Stimulus?? Are you crazy? Every stimulus dollar spent will take $10 in GDP to repay; they only way we’re going to get out of these debts is high inflation once we’re back on our feet
I am, however, spending more and saving less – which, if everyone did, is the healthiest way to fund economic growth. However, people are too scared to spend due to uncertainty
I also tip a little more generously. It’s a drop in the ocean, but hopefully a start
Eh, nothing happened with the subways. It all worked out. As for the “Get a job” comments…that’s kind of the point. Companies sitting on billions in cash and instead lay off more people and give the money to their CEOs as bonuses.
What economists are slowly realizing is there is a global crisis of demand. We have had an economy of paying people less and having them buy more, the difference covered by debt. That has collapsed.
Businesses are sitting on cash because if they hire people they expect not be to able to sell what they produce. With regard to my savings, I’m mostly sitting on cash too because I don’t trust the corporations and think stock and bonds are overpriced given the situation we are in.
Staten Island Ferry Terminal, 479 Port Richmond Ave? Somebody got their GPS all messed-up. Port Richmond is a good three miles west of the ferry terminal. Might as well say “The Empire State Building at 96th St and Fifth Ave.”
Those were two different locations at which Occupy protesters were urging people to protest on Staten Island…
479 Port Richmond Ave is an empty storefront on a desolate stretch of the avenue. If their expecting a big crowd there, they’ll be waiting a good, long time.
I have no idea what ended up happening, but the idea, according to SI Live, was for protestors to meet there, march a bit and take some buses to spread their message.
A young man died last night working on the East Side Access project. That poor guy did more for the city than all these OWS people put together.
Fail to see the connection between some poor kid getting killed in a construction accident and people protesting corporate greed. Are you saying he’s more important? Should everyone go home because of the accident? Can you elaborate a bit?
I’ll buy that he did more for Long Islanders…