Report from Wall Street: Since I couldn't get to my workplace today, I schlepped back home and watched some TV

A preview for this past week's episode of How to Make It in America, which imparted the timeless wisdom: "Don't you think that comes at a price?"

by Ken

I couldn't get to work this morning, because of the attempt by the OccupyWallStreet demonstrators to actually occupy Wall Street. (See "Nearly 200 OWS Protesters Arrested in Clashes with Police.") As I've mentioned, the company I work for, although having nothing to do with the financial-services industry, has for several years now been housed in the epicenter of Manhattan's Financial District, in the building that adjoins (and is part of the same security zone as) the New York Stock Exchange on the block of Broad Street between Wall Street and Exchange Place.

Yesterday our office manager passed on a memo from the building management warning about problematic access this morning but assuring us that efforts would be made to ensure that, however cumbersomely, access would be possible for workers in those buildings from both the Wall Street and the Exchange Place sides. (Even in "normal" times -- which is to say "normal" post-9/11 times -- we have to pass through one of those check points to get into the buildings, where we go through airport-style security every time we enter.) We were warned that we might have to show our IDs extra times, and advised to allow extra time, and I did that, and I still couldn't figure out how to get anywhere near the Exchange Place checkpoint.

I thought I was being smart taking the "southerly" route, even though it meant taking the longer subway route via the no. 1 train. I had allowed enough extra time that it was still 10 or 15 minutes before nine when I got off the train, but approaching Broadway I saw that large crowds had already gathered. I couldn't see any possible access to Exchange Place from the Broadway side, so (and this apparently was my mistake) I headed south -- the enormous block to Beaver Street -- and then headed over to Broad, but it was clearly no go from there, and I couldn't even get access to anybody official-looking to ask how the daredevil feat I wanted to attempt might be accomplished.

So I continued along the "southern perimeter" of the occupying police forces' blockade, and managed to get as far north as Exchange Place on William Street, but still I saw no access or anyone to ask. So I headed another block east to Hanover Street, where at least (at last!) I found 10 or 12 cops not doing anything that I could see, and I asked if they could confirm that there was no way to gain entry, which they quite jovially confirmed. I guess they thought it was a game. One cop said, "Call in sick." I was kind of steamed but know better than to try to mix it up with New York's Formerly Finest, and just shot back, "I'm not sick."

I thought maybe I had overthunk the situation by trying to approach from the south side; maybe the access was only being provided from the Wall Street side, but I've had enough experience of that approach during the OWS era to doubt that I could have gotten anywhere near Wall Street, even if I could have figured out how to circle around to the northern approach from where I was. So I headed back toward the subway -- at this point my only practical transit option, and by this time (9:15 or so) found it an accomplishment just to retrace the ground I'd covered 20-25 minutes earlier.

The total round trip took about 2½ hours, and I can't say it was a total waste. I got some reading done in my current New Yorker and New York Review of Books issues -- notably Calvin Trillin's characteristically delightful "My Repertoire" in the Food Issue of The New Yorker and a really informative NYRB piece about Qatar (lots of stuff about which I had no idea). Also, I ate the peanut-butter sandwich that I had packed for my lunch.

The other day in my "quick note on the Zuccotti Park blitzkrieg" I mentioned that Digby seemed to me to have already written the story before it happened, in her Aljazeera.com column "Militarising the police from Oakland to NYC." Here's the start of that piece:

What happens when a government builds a massive, unaccountable police apparatus to thwart infiltration by a foreign menace, only to see the society it's supposed to protect take to the streets for entirely different reasons?

It looks as though we may be about to find out. The Occupy protests have been mostly peaceful, with a few fairly dramatic exceptions. But the sight of a huge police presence in riot gear is always startling, and tactics that have been honed in Europe (such as "kettling") against anarchist actions have not been as common in the United States as elsewhere. More standard forms of crowd control, such as the aggressive use of pepper spray and "rubber" bullets have so far been the outer limits of the police use of force. But it is hardly the outer limits of the possibilities.

The US has actually been militarising much of its police agencies for the better part of three decades, mostly in the name of the drug war. But 9/11 put that programme on steroids.

And here's the conclusion:

The United States has never had fully militarised police before, armed with the kind of high-tech surveillance and weaponry that would never be allowed if the National Guard were called up in an emergency. And neither have we ever had such a malleable definition of what constitutes an emergency. At a time of increasing citizen unrest, it's a volatile combination.

Certainly the government seems to have been preparing for such confrontations for some time now.

Whether the people will accept high-tech "pain compliance" to "modify" dissent remains to be seen. If the attitude towards Tasers is any guide, many won't have a problem with it and "enhanced interrogation" of terrorist suspects has become, at best, a moral grey area for many in the US.

We have essentially normalised torture and created a high-tech police apparatus with more capability than any military in history. Human nature suggests that if you build it, they will use it.

(The part in between is terrific and important too, but I'll leave it to you to check that out onsite.)

It's still difficult and painful for me to try to write about the whole matter of OWS. I really liked Ian Welsh's description of OWS as "necessary but insufficient," and this crucial analysis, in "Revolution Basics #1: Who cares what you think?":

Bloomberg and Wall Street may not like Occupy Wall Street, but they aren’t going to negotiate in any meaningful sense.

Why should they?

What are the consequences, for them, of not cooperating? They have to see some noisy people. Does it appreciably reduce their income? No. The men or women they get to sleep with? No. The amount of power they have over DC? No. Their actual physical safety, or the safety of those they care about? No.

For Occupy to be successful, on its own terms, will require shutting down Wall Street and probably all of NYC. There must be so many people on the street that it is impossible to arrest them all or to get rid of them without resorting to a lot more than a whiff of grapeshot. The elites must be be faced with a decision tree “negotiate or lose a ton of money and be massively inconvenienced or shoot hundreds of thousands of people and build mass detention camps.” That will require two or three million people occupying New York City.

Remember, modern elites are trained to think in terms of cost-benefit analyses. If the cost to them of not giving in is less than the cost of not giving in, they won’t give in. It took trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street. They take home billions of dollars in personal bonuses. You must cost them, personally, more than that, for them to want to give in. . . .

Maybe my reluctance to write more about the OWS phenomenon-movement is my deep-seated conviction that it's necessary but hopeless. I really don't want to minimize its importance, but as Ian notes in the above extract, the overwhelming likelihood is that for the ruling elite its passing is just a blip in time. Are we really ready to make a revolution?

Back home this morning, I e-mailed a colleague, so that someone in the office would know where I was, assuming there was anyone in the office. She e-mailed me back that she had trudged in via Exchange Place with all the other working stiffs heading toward the blockaded buildings. So I guess the experience will cost me not just the lost 2½ hours but a PTO day. Oh well. At least I had a chance to catch up on some some stored-up TV via the DVR, including this week's episode of HBO's How to Make It in America. (You can watch it here.)

Plotwise, what you need to know for the following exchange is that no-longer-so-young Ben (Bryan Greenberg) and his friend Cam (Victor Rasuk) have been trying to carve out a chunk of reality for themselves with a line of clothing aimed at hip young folk, and they've succeeded in generating enough buzz for Crisp to wangle a legit order, but for a quantity of hoodies vastly beyond their capacity to produce. Their supposed rep Nancy (played by that terrific actress Gina Gershon) with a deep-pocketed entrepreneur-hustler, who just happens to be her husband. Yosi (Nick Chinlund) not only can get the job done for them but has plans for making Crisp a big-time operation.

Now the guys have learned that there's a catch. Yosi intends to call the line "Crisp by Yosi." Ben thinks Nancy will make it all right, no doubt deluded by her having let him fuck her. When he confronts her, they reach this exchange:

Yosi (right) shows Ben and Cam his sky's-the-limit plans for the guys' cherished Crisp line -- oops, make that "Crisp by Yosi."

NANCY: You want my two cents, for whatever it's worth? License Crisp to Yosi.
BEN: Do you have our back?
NANCY: Listen, I know this feels really weird right now.
BEN: Yeah.
NANCY: But as soon as those checks start coming in, you're gonna feel a lot differently. Trust me.
BEN: It's not about the money.
NANCY: Yeah? Well, it should be. This is a business. Ben, do you know how many new brands I see crash and burn every day? You are being handed the keys to the kingdom. [Long beat.] Don't you think that comes at a price? [Emphasis added.]

This is another of those things that may not resonate for everyone. But man, I can't get that line out of my head:

Don't you think that comes at a price?

Doesn't everything? Come at a price, I mean. I suppose this is true even for billionaire plutocrats, for the Kochs, say, and for Mayor Mike. One important difference is that they can afford to pay prices that for them are mere pocket change. Ironically, the plutocrats tend to be rich and powerful enough to have the clout to redirect sizable chunks of the tab to us the people they're screwing. Just consider, for example, the way costs are absorbed for the Official Paramilitary Enforcement Network Services (OPENS) rendered by all levels of government to banksters and the rest of the 1%.


UPDATE: SO THE RULE OF LAW ISN'T ENTIRELY
DEAD -- SOME WELCOME NEWS FROM ARIZONA

I just noticed Howie's tweet linking to David Nir's DailyKos report: "Arizona Supreme Court overturns Colleen Mathis' ouster from redistricting commission." Ah, some good news on a day that could stand some. Looks like another case of sociopathic-wingnut overreach.

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