Forum Post: Violation of the law

Violation of the Law

 It was a wonderful evening on October 15th in the heart of Manhattan on Times Square. It was packed with people. To be more precise, WE the people were penned, herded together in the middle of very well displayed barriers thanks to the art of the New York Police Department. As the protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement entered Times Square they had to follow the orders of the now infamous White Shirts to go in one of the designed enclosures, a clear statement of what Democracy looks like according to the Bloomberg’s NYPD. More obviously a way to avoid the scene of a fully submerged Times Square.

  Occupy Wall Street movement is a non violent movement and consequently everything went smoothly, visibly at the distress of the all to the top well geared White Shirts; they will have to wait for a lesser crowd and some back alleys to use their batons and made their quota of arrests later in the day.

 Anyway, i stood their in one of the enclosures, leaning on a barrier, and doing what protesters do: looking around and engaging conversations with fellow protesters. I was then in a very interesting conversation with Noel, a photographer from Brooklyn. We exchanged comments about the events, comments about what was going around us. I had the surprise to see a friend coming to me in the middle of such a crowd, the poet William Leo Coakely doing what poets do in such occasion, smiling and enjoying his time. William went away, plunging into the crowd, when all of a sudden Noel and I heard a voice coming from behind: “It is a violation  of the law to stand on the sidewalk”... We could not stop bursting out laughing. Here was a Blue Shirt member of the NYDP harassing  passers-by on the sidewalk. Blue shirts members of the NYDP are juniors members of the police forces, so juniors that they are not very well trusted by the command and have to act only by a very scripted way. The term “Violation of the law” is the mantra to allow arrests in such manifestation. Here was the Blue Shirt, so confused that he could not find other thing to say that what he had been told to memorize: “Violation of the Law”. We just have to laugh because asking the question “ which violation of the law” would have been understood by the Junior as a “violation of the law”!

 Yes indeed it was a beautiful picture of Law and Order yesterday on Times Square. The police strolling around on the empty streets, the sidewalks kept free as an eventual possibility of arrests for “Violation of the Law” and protesters enclosed with barriers, chanting: “Whose streets, Our streets” and “ What Democracy looks like.”