My assignment last night was to cover Occupy Wall Street's attempt to re-enter Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan after the city temporarily evicted them in an attempt to clean and re-organize the park. It was said that the protesters would eventually be allowed back in the park but without any shelter or sleeping materials of any kind. There would be NO sleeping in the park. Of course, this would have ramifications for the Movement. I was there to document what they might be. I'll have my written account of the night's events in a later posting. For now, I present these photos that I made during my shift there (4pm-3am). They more or less present a time line of events from that night. Descriptions apply to the photo(s) below it.
all photo F. LoBuono
I made this photo of a young women with her dogs trying to stay warm on the steps of building on the outskirts of the park. She is pretty typical of many of the young people involved in OWS and who some seem to be petrified of. She was sweet and polite me.
The next is a series of signs that I made that reflected the mood of the people in and around the park.
The next photos are a series that I made over the course of the 11-12 hours that I was there.
When I first arrived (around 4 pm) NO ONE but police and sanitation workers where actually in the park. The protesters gathered en-mass around the park waiting for a judges decision on entering the park and what they would be allowed to bring with them.
This was made around 5:30pm. The NYPD in riot gear had surrounded the protesters who were surrounding the park. The mood was tense but, overall, orderly.
This is the mass of people waiting to re-enter the park. It was around 6pm.
Word was given that the judge ruled that the people could re-enter the park but could not bring any sleeping or camping materials with them. They would not be allowed to sleep in the park. Here the people are streaming towards the check points where they would be searched for tarps and other shelter materials before they would be allowed in.
The NYPD was ever watchful as the crowd began to swarm back into the park.
This was made a bit later in the evening (around 10 pm) that shows a greatly reduced crowd from the ones I had witnessed at the height of the occupation. It was raining lightly and the "no shelter" rule was having an effect. Some photos later in the series high light this.
However, before the crowd thinned there were thousands rallying in the park with this American flag being the rallying point.
At the height of the occupation, there would have been tents and tarps and virtually no free space in this shot. Early in the evening there was a large throng that was VERY vocal and cohesive. However, as the evening wore on, the crowd definitely thinned.
With no place to really sit and no shelter, the "die hards" hunkered together to stick out the long night. However, they pledged to do so and when I left at 2 a.m. they were still there.
The crowd seemed to thin to the point that there were more police than protesters!
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