Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries
The Rise and Demise of the Zuccotti Park Commune
November 23, 2011, by El Marco
I recently traveled from Colorado to New York the weekend before the demise of the revolutionary social experiment in lower Manhattan known as Occupy Wall Street’s “Camp Anonymous.” I went intending to capture for posterity photographic images of the people and infrastructure that comprised that hopeful utopian “model community for a new world.”
A pamphlet entitled Mutual Responsibility OWS I picked up at one of the information desks stated:
The global reality is not the currency or market fluctuations, but rather a direct result of the new global, integral, and social restructuring taking place. Until now, we developed ourselves on a personal level. Now humanity is approaching a new phase, and the old world must make way for the new world. We are dealing with the natural law of development. Everything that we considered true up until yesterday no longer works …
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
Utopian futurist Buckminster Fuller, in the mid 1960s, popularized a “new model structure” for the way we would all live in the future. The geodesic dome hasn’t exactly transformed the global human condition as promised. Today, the Occupy Wall Street revolutionary utopians are offering a “new model social structure for the entire global community“. The OWS big thinkers created an entire revolutionary community in Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street. It thrived and grew for two months until the liberal billionaire mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, ordered police and sanitation workers to relegate it to the trash-heap of history.
This is the first in a series of photo-essays which will bring you into that model utopian community created by the anarchists and Marxists of the OWS revolutionary movement. These people are convinced, each in his or her own way, that this new movement will bring down the entire global free enterprise system, and replace it with their kinder, better, wiser, revolutionary … uh, you know … revolutionary thing.
These were the first Occupiers I encountered in Zuccotti Park. They are self-described anarchists. Above, the boy on the right wears a shirt with the motto of Anonymous, an international activist hacking group which set its sights on Wall Street earlier this year. On March 2, 2011, Anonymous issued a press release:
Attention Brothers: The opportunity to create financial chaos and public unrest and from that, there will be a previously unachieved amount of lulz to be had. Charge your lasers and aim them at the New York Stock Exchange.
We are not merely human. Anonymous is something much more for we possess neither fear nor mercy. It is time to show the world the true power and the true face of the faceless, the nameless and the ghosts of society.Like Icarus, the powers that be have flown too close to the sun and the time has come to set the wings of their empire ablaze and watch the system their power relies on come to a grinding halt and come crashing down around them. We must strike at the heart of their empire by once again throw a wrench into the machine, but this time we face a much bigger target; the global financial system. This time our target is the New York Stock Exchange.
This is a call to arms my brothers who for too long have stood for nothing but have criticized everything. Stand now, behind the banner of free men against the tyrannical matrix of institutions that oppose us. Ready your weapons and aim them at the New York Stock Exchange. This is the operation to end all others. Innocent people may stand to lose something from this but the powers that be stand to lose much more. Bring the rain brothers.
We are Anonymous
We are Legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Expect Us.
Internet activists have joined with international Marxist-Leninists, 1960s radicals, powerful labor unions, neo-flower children, and elements of the Democrat party to form what has become the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Colleen, age 20, from Johnston State College in Vermont.
Zuccotti Love
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This Floridian spent every day, all day, soliciting funds for the commune’s women’s group. Panhandling seemed to be the only productive activity I witnessed during my four days inside the Zuccotti Park commune. The woman above, and many like her, have to turn in the majority of their funds to the Central Committee, which in turn passes it on to the Finance Committee, some of whom were staying in $700 a night hotels nearby.
Most protesters still can’t define their goals beyond ending capitalism and making life more fair, which means they want other people’s money. Meanwhile, donations of goods and cash pile up, with a reported $500,000 on deposit. (now over 600,000 – El Marco)
The cash marks an embarrassment for a movement supposedly railing against capitalism and wealth, especially now that a radical group called the Alliance for Global Justice is legally sponsoring the protest. By lending its tax-exempt status — for a 7 percent cut! — the global-justice group allows donors to deduct their contributions from federal taxes and gives its own board control over the money.
The alliance, based in Washington, is a hotbed of far-left causes that range from backing hunger strikes in California prisons and supporting Hugo Chavez to denouncing the CIA and oil companies. Its Web site says the group sponsors operations in the Gaza Strip, with Hamas, and boasts of an alliance with Anarchists Against the Wall, which contests Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank. – NYPost
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Free Wi-Fi, yeaaaay! The masked man, above, is wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, named for a member of a 1605 plot to blow up the British House of Lords. The mask was designed for a comic book, V for Vendetta, which was made into a movie of the same name in 2006, and is popular with angry adolescent males. The movie’s hero never removes his mask as he kills policemen by the score, and detonates landmark buildings in a dystopian London of the future. Anonymous, Wikileaks, and anarchists around the world have adopted this mask as a symbol. Julian Assange, of Wikileaks, wore one of these masks at Occupy London Stock Exchange recently.
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This truck is owned by supporters of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. They were parked beside Zuccotti Park most of the time I was there. They sleep in the back, on sofas, and hand out Free Bradley Manning stickers. Manning is the U.S. soldier “whistleblower” accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of documents from the US Military and handing them over to Assange and his Wikileaks organization. Manning has become a total celebrity to the anti-American left, on the level of cop-killer Abu Mumia Jamal.
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When I queried this fellow about where one could find fascists in New York, his reply encompassed practically anyone who doesn’t support the Zuccotti Park commune, and especially “the bankers.”
The statement below was published by OWS Mutual Responsibility, in a flyer distributed at all information desks at the park.
“The free market, and its tycoons, will continue to thrive and be a central factor in this new stage of global development on condition that we learn together how to establish the relations between us and organize a social structure that truly benefits all. Economic prosperity cannot be achieved without considering universal social wellbeing.”
This sounds strangely like core fascist ideology of the twentieth century. This fellow might be surprised to know that Mussolini was hailed by Lenin as the most perfect socialist in the world.
Ludwig von Mises noted that the National Socialist slogan Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz – the commonweal ranks above private profit — “implies that profit-seeking business harms the vital interests of the immense majority and that it is the sacred duty of popular government to prevent the emergence of profits by public control of production and distribution.”
Doug Schoen, the longtime professional pollster and Democrat, an adviser to the Clintons, (polled) Occupy Wall Street camp in New York’s Zuccotti Park. Here’s his piece in the Wall Street Journal.
What did he find? “The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. “Then Schoen says:
Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.
Coming in at about the same time was a poll taken of one hundred of the Occupiers by New York Magazine which found an unnamed number wanted to “burn it [Wall Street] down” and that 34 percent believed the United States government was “no better than, say, Al Qaeda.” – American Spectator
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I ran into a lot of young kids from the ‘burbs, who skipped school to spend time in Zuccotti Park.
One 17 year old who was staying in the park told me that this was the moment he had been waiting for his whole life. “I always wished I was born in the 1950s, so I could be the exact right age to be there in the ’60s,” he said. The myth of the idyllic “Summer of Love” has been airbrushed, packaged, and sold to these kids, as a utopia lost in the psychedelic mists of time. The 1960s mythical utopia seems to be the main historical reference point for many of today’s youngsters.
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The legacy of harm done by the counter-culture movement of the 1960s was on display everywhere in Zuccotti Park. Damaged young people rubbed shoulders with broken-down old hippies. The smell of potent modern hybrid cannabis was constantly in the air. The young man, above, was in such a state that he stared at the sky for minutes on end before bending down to add another little squiggle to his poster-board. It appeared to me that he was so high he couldn’t speak, or even acknowledge the presence of people around him.
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David Everitt-Carlson, a homeless liberal blogger in New York City is seen begging, painting and pontificating at Camp Anonymous. After a few years in Asia, he hit bottom in Vietnam, and was recently repatriated by a US State Deparment program for indigent expats. The government picked him up at the airport and delivered him to a homeless shelter in midtown Manhattan. He has enjoyed becoming a bit of a cause célèbre for an eager press looking for a new “poster-child” to “put a different face on the issue” of homelessness. As the photo above illustrates, he is still a flaming liberal, but after living eight weeks among the crack-heads and murderers that inhabit his new “homeless” world, a few rays of reality have pierced the fuzziness of his artsy-lefty mind-box. From his blog:
The last few months have been fraught with soul searching. “How did I get here?” … And what I have come to realize is that once one succumbs to the psychological mind frame that allows a person to live as a “professional homeless,” the battle has been lost. You will have become what you fear most. And compromises must be made to live on a state owned bed and just $200 in food stamps and $45 cash a month that the government allows you. One of the men in my room at the shelter is a loan shark for crack heads. He loans them $20 and they give him back $40. [talk about greed!] Another can sell three packs of cigarettes a day at the shelter, one by one, and pocket maybe $20. And not a one of them is looking for a job – they already have jobs. In fact, in my entire time at the shelter I have not met one single person who mans the commercial job hunt and is really trying to work themselves out of the system – rather, they learn how to gig the system – how to get the most out of it that they can in legal or less than legal ways. It is not exactly a breeding ground for role models.
I love it when liberals are mugged by reality. Hopefully he keeps having epiphanies like this and develops into a mature conservative who can really do some good in the world by creating wealth and employment for himself and others. Good luck, and I hope you find your way out of your liberal box, sir!
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Help me paint peace – Day 51
On the weekend, the park was packed with people who didn’t necessarily support the “tear it all down” mindset of the Occupiers. The man above is from Shanghai, China, and is protesting China’s recent crackdown in Tibet. The day before I took this photo, a nun immolated herself, bringing the two week total of self-immolation to twelve. This man was surprised when I expressed sympathy for the death of the nun in my first sentence to him. He told me that the Occupiers were oblivious to China’s current crackdown in Tibet.
I didn’t speak with this young man, but I suspect that he is one of that very rare species of protester known as the conservative infiltrator. Such people regularly appeared at anti-war/kill George Bush rallies after 9/11.
Ady Lambert was one of the few bright spots that I encountered working around Zuccotti Park. She radiated calm sanity, in her red tartan scarf and headphones. Of course she’s not OWS just an observer like me. I include her as a sort of visual interlude. I’m sure she has a brilliant future in photography and in the fashion industry.
Raz Drastic, from New York’s lower east side, is a singer-guitar player in the retro-punk style. His top issues are: corporate greed, reforming the economy, and smaller government. What … smaller government? Raz, you rascally rebel! You should be with the Tea Party. Raz’s Facebook page says his favorite activities are drinking Jack Daniels, communicating with aliens, and just being retarded. That being said, he was one of my favorite people who I encountered in the park, with a calm, congenial, and lucid personality.
Stu McGowan from Burlington, Vermont.
Roll over, JFK.
Just passing through.
Occupy Wall Street baby, Khloe Smith, with her mother, panhandling. This woman and her red-bearded husband were a permanent feature on the corner of Liberty and Trinity, which is known around the world as Ground Zero. Directly across the intersection, the new World Trade Center Plaza is reaching skyward, while on this side, a neo-primitive community of panhandlers raises money for the global anti-capitalist revolution.
Baby Khloe, with daddy and mommy. Daddy is a homeless poet. I bought one of his poems. It is arrhythmic, and includes:
Why is it I hate my life and sometimes I wish I was a victim at Columbine?
Why did you give me two beautiful Daughters to be so proud of, Without a way to respectfully take care of them?
How is that people see me as less of a man asking for help?
Instead of a man with a plan with no alternative left?What is the difference between me and him?
And her? And them?
Why am I considered the least of the bunch?
Mommy and daddy entertain tourists, for cash, by simulating sexual positions with a bronze statue. Note the excited man with camera giving the thumbs up in the background.
This famous statue is of a business man, sitting in a park with briefcase open, head bowed as he works. It survived the collapse of the World Trade Center, at which time this area was covered in several feet of debris.
NEED donations to get a cage for my three pet rats … need $420 for cage and food.
“We are at the start of the Global Era. We have come to the conclusion of our natural development as individuals. In the new world, no individual will be able to enjoy while others are starving because everyone’s basic needs must be met. However, along with basic necessities, all people will receive a basic education about the process humanity is going through, which will expand our awareness beyond our personal concerns.” – Mutual Responsibility, OWS
Brings to mind Karl Marx’ maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” doesn’t it?
This mentally ill young man, Jeremy Clinch, told me that due to his bad behavior, the commune had prohibited him from receiving food, and evicted him from the Zuccotti Park. Now he sits on the sidewalk, begging for food. He asked me to go to MacDonalds and buy a meal for him. He told me he didn’t want to eat the communce food anyway, because the week before it had made everyone sick for two days.
Clinch made the front page of the NY Post, under the headline Occupy Wall Street Animals Go Wild ... ZOO-COTTI!. He was assaulted by a delusional Turk named Iskender, who took exception to the early morning tantrum Clinch was throwing. Though this young man struck no one, the Turkish thug who decked him was allowed full communal privileges while Clinch was exiled.
In a bizarre rant after the dust settled, Iskender told The Post that Clinch “is a police agent.”
“He is a Bloomberg agent, disturbing and disrupting the protest,” said Iskender, who after the fight donned a message board that read, “USA-Turk Army Ended My Diplomatic Career 6 Times,” and also charged that “AC Tropicana Casino Robbed My $30K Pay For My Driving Job.” NYPost
They cut off Jeremy’s food and exiled him! How inhumane. Too bad our government doesn’t have the power to exile Stalinists, like the Zuccotti park communards exile the mentally ill.
Yes, at the “leaderless” Zuccotti Park utopia, people can be banished for life, just as in many primitive societies. Even the mentally ill. Where’s the compassion?
This is the now infamous Jew-hater, Danny Cline. A full month after his anti-semitic rant shocked right-thinking America, he was still an honored and protected member of the commune. Here he stands, wearing stolen police netting, like some form of primitive war trophy.
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The day before, Cline was in full panhandling mode. With Sharpie in hand, he had just written on his abdomen $1 donations – U CAN TOUCH
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Cline was teamed up with one of the many official Occupy beggars who ringed the park day and night with white five gallon buckets. I didn’t observe this activity for more than two minutes, but during that time, I took a number of shots of offended New Yorkers, including a ten year old girl and her mother. I won’t publish that photo as the photos above suffice to illustrate why this commune was hated by local residents.
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The right to live ones’ life, in privacy and Freedom, in whatever way one wants, so long as others are not harmed, should be a sacred principal in a Democracy. – H. Zinn
Marxist-Leninist Howard Zinn’s toxic People’s History of the United States reads like 1940s Stalinist anti-American propaganda, and is widely revered by the left. Zinn’s quote on this sign sounds like the hippy credo of the 1960s. Who is it that determines in anarchy, what constitutes harm?
Ali is from Egypt, and he has been harmed by the Zuccotti Park commune’s very existence. He has an elaborate food cart at one end of Zuccotti Park. When I asked if the commune was giving him good business, he bitterly complained about his plight since the occupiers showed up. “They buy nothing! They all eat in the park. I had many good customers every day, but now they don’t come here.” I also spoke with the men at Charlie’s Pizza. They are also immigrants to America, and they were apoplectic when they described how Occupiers came in at all hours, stoned or drunk, demanding food for free, and even fighting with staff and customers. Other area businesses have had similar experiences.
At a lower Manhattan community board meeting in October, residents also talked about how fed up they were:
“They are defecating on our doorsteps,” fumed Catherine Hughes, a member of Community Board 1 and a stay at home mom who has the misfortune of living one block from the chaos. “A lot of people are very frustrated. A lot of people are concerned about the safety of our kids.”
Fed up homeowners said that they’ve been subjected to insults and harassment as they trek to their jobs each morning. “The protesters taunt people who are on their way to work,” said James Fernandez, 51, whose apartment overlooks the park. – NY Post
Peter Cushing Allan, second from left above, is an entertainment industry attorney and local resident. He went into the commune to share his feelings with Occupy organizers. I heard him say, in the most civil of terms and tone, that he thought that one month was long enough to make a political point by occupying the park, but now in the seventh week, they had gone too far. He said it was time for the Occupiers to leave the neighborhood. In the photo above, Allan reacts when three Occupiers (two were out of the frame, on right) shouted in unison, “No, you get out!”
What Mr. Allan doesn’t realize is that these anarchists and Marxist-Leninists are in it for the revolution that they believe will topple the world economic system for the greater good of the human race.
Like proto-occupier Ratso Rizzo in the movie Midnight Cowboy, this young Occupier just wants to go to where the sun keeps shinin’ thru the pouring rain. When I took this picture, the young person above was speaking to four camera crews, like he was some kind of star.
Everybody’s talking at me.
I don’t hear a word they’re saying
Only the echoes of my mind.
People stopping staring,
I can’t see their faces,
Only the shadows of their eyes.
Occupy Miami Beach – Please donate for needed supplies: sun-screen, beach towel, sunglasses, tiny umbrellas, boogie board, swimsuit. Thanks.
Why doesn’t the commune supply this Occupier’s NEEDS out of the $600,000 they have in the bank? The least they could do is buy him some tiny umbrellas and a bathing suit.
Here, a local resident tries to talk some sense into leftist numbskulls. These two have won life’s lottery by being born in the USA, and they don’t have a clue how lucky they are. Liberal indoctrination has completely debilitated them. I would love to send these two to a country with fewer opportunities than here for a few years to make a living. We could call it a re-education program. I can’t help but think of the book Hijack by Black Panther Tony Bryant, and his taste of life in Cuba, where he learned the hard way how good life is in the USA.
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Full-time commune resident
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I don’t recall the Tea Party ever needing legal fundraisers. In the background, one of many references to slavery. None of these references allude to the debt the politicians are running up for future generations to pay. One of the major concerns of the various Occupy movements in campuses around the country is student debt. Most in the Occupy movements everywhere want student debt forgiveness, i.e., that the productive tax-payers pay for everybody else’s higher educations.
The new concept of “wage slavery” is important to most of the protesters. This means that in a free market, workers are forced to “sell” or “rent” themselves into “wage slavery” under threat of starvation. Noam Chomsky wrote, “People should not be forced to rent themselves in order to survive.” You mean like prostitution, Gnome? That is what you lefties fully support as a respectable profession! Leftist lunacy shifts so fast. One day hookers are part of the noble working class, and the next day all wage earning work is dishonorable and equated to slavery. I have personal friends who are escaped slaves and they now work for wages here in the US. I will introduce them to this nutty concept and post their responses in the future.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the history of anti-semitism, “Debt is Slavery” is a Jew-hating concept that has led to many pogroms in Europe over the centuries. In our society, debt is a choice free people make. Slavery means the buying and selling of human beings who have lost their freedom, and who have no choices.
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This man is an example of New York’s permanent protester class. He has been seen at every leftist anti-American protest since the ’60s. At least fifty percent of the participants in Occupy marches in New York are recycled anti-war leftists who also participate in protests supporting Hisbollah, or welcoming Irans’ president Ajmadenijad when he comes to New York. When the common business man statue isn’t being sexually harassed, it has to put up with this kind of abuse. For some reason, this veteran lefty thought it appropriate to sit for hours in this position, without moving a muscle day after day.
This is Amaz,who told me that Barack Obama is the most perfect man in the universe. He also told me that the word caucasian means “dead Asian,” and that because white people are dead Asians, they can’t produce melanin to color their skin. He told me way too many other things also, as he is a self-regarding sage with his own complex, religio-racial world-view.
Anti-fracking hysteria is an issue about which the vast majority of protesters agree. Energy independence would provide many jobs and make staples more affordable for the “99%,” bringing us lower utility bills, lower prices for food and all other consumer goods. Remember the statement from Anonymous, at the top of this post:
Innocent people may stand to lose something from this but the powers that be stand to lose much more.
A popular sign at Occupy Wall Street is “Fracking makes 99% sick, and 1% rich.” This is pure myth. No one has ever been made sick by fracking, yet President Obama and the Democrat Party are so beholden to the radical environmentalist lobby that they are throwing all kinds of roadblocks up to thwart this ultra-safe technology.
Pieman, Aron Kay, is another professional protester, famous on the left since the days of Berkeley’s Free Speech movement. His role, as a Yippie in that movement, was to popularize throwing pies in the faces of speakers with whom the flower-power Marxists of that time disagreed. This human pig-man has done more to shut down free speech in this country than any one I know of.
Ben Cohen serves free Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream out of a freezer that was permanently situated on one side of the “kitchen” in the Zuccotti Park commune. The day I took this photo, he was digging ice cream for hours, which was quite impressive. When I asked him about the multi-city protests he spearheaded with his left-wing Democrat organization True Majority in September 2008, he stunned me by denying any memory of his activities.
On the first anniversary of the Tea Party movement, I wrote:
This phenomenon might instead have been dated to September 25, 2008, and the movement called the Ice Cream Party, had the November election turned out differently. Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, is the founder of the Soros funded radical leftist “grassroots group” True Majority. Cohen claims 700,000 members and says he organized over 251 events in 41 states to protest against a bill in the House which would eventually become Bush’s $700,000,000,000 TARP bailout of Wall Street. The protests also included a laundry list of unions and leftist groups including ACORN.
Mr. Cohen denied that he had been involved. I couldn’t believe that he would lie to me in front of all those children waiting for ice cream. Of course, left wing protests against big government bail-outs died out immediately once Obama won the election. When the Tea Party emerged in February, 2009, protesting against TARP and Obama’s $780 billion Porkulus bill, the left was at first silent, and then started screaming racism.
Now that Barack Obama has utterly disappointed true hardcore leftists like Ben Cohen, rather than direct their anger at the government and their own Democrat Party, which would be racist, they now channel their anger against “the capitalist system.” Shame on you, Ben Cohen, for not remaining true to your small government principals of the pre-Obama era. In retrospect, we can now see that Cohen’s “Ice Cream Party” had nothing to do with principals, but was just an anti-Bush movement. The proof is that you haven’t had a negative word to say about all of Obama’s massive spending and bailouts.
Another mega-bucks celebrity figure who frequented the Zuccotti Park commune was Russell Simmons. Known for being a recording and fashion industry entrepreneur and author, he also is the founder of a fee-based credit card company called UniRush Financial. I somehow doubt that he was trolling the Occupy crowd for new customers. Self-styled Hindu-Buddhist-vegan-yogi Simmons seemed to me to be uncomfortable greeting some of the anarchists within the Occupy Wall Street community. With a net worth of $350 million, Simmons is a “capitalist pig” who “hoards cash,” according to the rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street. “Capitalist pig” Ben Cohen sold his company to UniLever Corporation, one of the world’s largest conglomerates. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more hypocritical in the world than a “filthy rich” commie sympathizer.
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Dehumanization of the capitalist “pigs” is a staple of the Occupy movement.
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This is an anti-semitic poster from an OWS activist web site. Note that the occupiers are all holding giant pins, with which to destroy the hideous, stereotypical, Jewish tycoon which symbolizes capitalism. Karl Marx was born and baptized a Lutheran in Trier, Germany. His early writings for that city’s newspaper were pure anti-semitic diatribes, similar to those written by Martin Luther. Marx went on to become the leading anti-semite of the nineteenth century, according to James Carroll, in his seminal book, Constantine’s Sword, which is a chronicle of anti-semitism as the central tragedy of western civilization.
Ben Cohen and Russell Simmons, you are hanging out with anti-semites, who also happen to hate you because you’re part of the 1%.
A gay, Jewish civil servant, on left, reacts in horror to the comments of this sign-carrying radical Israel-hating non-Jewish Jew. The man with the sign supports Hamas and other Jewicidal groups, and I also photographed him surrounded by muslim men and women who were delighted by his anti-Israel exhortations.
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Anarchists had the largest and most centrally located propaganda operation of the Zuccotti Park commune. In the October 22, 2011, issue of the broadsheet published by the commune, The Occupied Wall Street Journal, in an article entitled Enacting the Impossible on Consensus Decision Making, David Graeber writes that at the very first meeting of their 12 person central planning committee anarchists dominated:
“The anarchists in the circle made what seemed at the time an insanely ambitious proposal. Why not let them operate exactly like this committee, by consensus.
It was, in the least, a wild gamble, because as far as any of us knew, no one had ever managed to pull off something like this before. Consensus process had been successfully used in spokes-councils — groups of activists organized into separate affinity groups, each represented by a single “spoke” — but never in mass assemblies like the one anticipated in New York City. Even the General Assemblies in Greece and Spain had not attempted it. But consensus was the approach that most accorded with our principles. So we took the leap.
The direct democratic process adopted by Occupy Wall Street has deep roots in American radical history. It was widely employed in the civil rights movement and by the Students for a Democratic Society. But its current form has developed from within movements like feminism and even spiritual traditions (both Quaker and Native American) as much as from within anarchism itself. The reason direct, consensus-based democracy has been so firmly embraced by and identified with anarchism is because it embodies what is perhaps anarchism’s most fundamental principle: that in the same way human beings treated like children will tend to act like children, the way to encourage human beings to act like mature and responsible adults is to treat them as if they already are.”
Thus the old guard Marxist/hippy radicals joined with younger anarchists who typify this movement.
Note the spelling of AmeriKKKa on the cardboard sign above. That’s how Obama’s pastor and mentor of 22 years, Reverend Wright spells it too. Wright and Obama have both embraced this movement, and even stroked it a little.
The man in the hardhat is Charles Helms, Communications Director, and Assistant to the President, of the Hudson County, NJ, AFL-CIO. He joins with Marxist-Leninists at the Zuccotti Park commune.
This woman sang revolutionary songs of a type that were so bizarre that I was flabbergasted. The one that I recall, the refrain was Plaster my legs, referring to broken legs. Very strange. Note that she is wearing a purple heart. I wonder if she got it stumbling on her hammer and sickle, drunk on Cuban rum …
All persons or entities that deliberately harm America financially or otherwise are nothing less than HOME GROWN TERRORIST.
THE RICH refusing to pay their fair share
THE BANKS with their mortgage and foreclosure schemes
THE CORPORATIONS exporting jobs out of the country
WALL STREET with its underhanded manipulation of the market
Name me one game in the world, played by humans of any age, that doesn’t breed dishonest men, or dishonest four year olds.
A large percentage of OWS participants are 9/11 truthers, or followers of Alex Jones, who on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 led a howling mob of thousands to Ground Zero to scream insults at the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks. I encountered a number of truthers who had come to New York on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 to demonstrate at Ground Zero, and stayed to join the Occupy Wall Street movement on September 17.
Another union man, peddling a communist newspaper.
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Stupid, stupid, stupid.
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Recent reports in the New York newspapers say that Outlaw Bobby Steele is one of the few protesters left in Zuccotti Park, after Mayor Bloomberg’s cops and Sanitation Department kicked OWS out of the park.
Steele was actually a very pleasant guy, who said that he had worked on Wall Street for a decade. I think it’s a safe assumption that was before he got his facial tattoos.
This is the delusional Turk who punched out Jeremy Clinch and enjoyed the full support of the central committee of the Zuccotti Park commune until the bitter end.
CAMP ANONYMOUS, Always Here, Always Watching
Well, they’re not always here; they’re gone now. The residents, business-owners, and workers (a.k.a. the 99%) in the area are breathing a collective sigh of relief. I’m glad I was there to document this leftist debacle for history. In Zuccotti Utopia part 2, I will chronicle the infrastructure and daily life of the revolutionary Occupiers of Zuccotti Park.
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We are Legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
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I watched Unmasking Occupy yesterday. It made me angry. These pictures make me angry. If it was more civilized and organized and less ruthless and destructive I would be happy. What has this movement done so far what has it changed?
The way I see it, for the change needed to better this country and mainly it’s PEOPLE. A civil war needs to happen. Organized inside and out. Not ppl in a public park shouting different things they want changed but only have a slight idea about, craping everywhere, drug use, rape. Etc this really does look like an excuse to relive the woodstock days. No change will come just more ignorance and annoyance.
“Ady Lambert was one of the few bright spots that I encountered working around Zuccotti Park. ”
What a coincidence. And she just happens to be Black, too? Did your White guilt not let you make your negative comments in THIS one case? Seems pretty obvious.
El Marco,
I just wanted to say that the content on this site regarding occupy is by far the most honest depiction I have seen on the internet. I was a conservative infiltrator in Philadelphia and witnessed facsimiles of each character, that you describe in stunning detail, first-hand. So, basically, I think this site is really good. That’s what I’m saying.
HOWEVER:
I think your assessment of fracking is wrong. I believe that water sources are getting poisoned by the chemicals used in the process. There seems to be enough evidence to support that claim, but it’s still emerging and even more so last year. Since you seem to have such a rational and well-read perspective on things, I’m really curious if your opinion on the matter has shifted at all since the time of authoring this piece. Honestly, it won’t effect my opinion of your work if you haven’t. I’m just curious.
Either way, great job on what you do here! Keep up the good work.
thee comment concerning THE LADY WITH THE “CHE ” sign, regarding ” PLASER MY LEGS” shows that person’s IGNORANCE…THAT IS FROM A VERY FAMOUS POEM BY ONE OF OUR GREATEST POETS ” ALAN GINSBERG ” regarding the vietnam war…I WILL ACQUAINT ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE WITH IT…ALSO, IT WAS LOW THE MENTION OF BEING DRUNK ON CUBAN RUM…UN-NECESSARY..THANK YOU…
AND AS FOR THE PURPLE HEART..MY FATHER SHED BLOOD FOR THIS COUNTRY..IT WAS HIS..
I was angered that bankers and wall streeters who were responsible for the melt down were rewarded for their irresponsible behavior. I wrote letters of condemnation to all my elected officials. In wanted them to know I was pissed that they ransomned my grankids earnings so they could give millions to undeserving execs who probably had millions of their own in safe investments.
But I don’t believe the OWS group knew what it was doing.
[…] Nationwide, well over 6,000 Occucommies have gotten themselves arrested. Think of the money we could save if we just officially declared them above the law and let them do whatever they want. Of course, they would need to be housed in a zoo first, for the protection of the public. Occucommies. If power washing were ever needed… Via Looking at the Left. […]
[…] Some of the input, the “Garbage In,” can be found in this photo-essay by Colorado blogger El Marco who went to Zuccotti Park in New York. […]
[…] Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries […]
[…] Network for Women of Color: Urbane Perspective Media + Lifestyle: Interactive LifestylePhoto Essay compares 25th Annual Muslim Day Parade with previous years & a look ahead…PJ MediaZuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries […]
Sorry….I have to agree with El Marco. OWS is/was a disaster….they are uninformmed and just looking for a hand out. Unfortunately we parents in the US created all these entitled lazy punks who have not lived in the real world. They were all told that they were special and everyone of them got the trophy for just being a participant. 99% of the 1% worked their a$$es off to get where they are today. Go get a job and work hard and make something of your self. We all have the same opportunity to be successful in this great country, but it’s not going to be handed to you on a “silver platter”! Move to Iran or Cuba and see how great it is there. Go look in the mirror and ask yourself if you have done everything possible to be what you want to be…..Geez!
[…] Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of the New Revolutionaries […]
[…] I recently traveled from Colorado to New York the weekend before the demise of the revolutionary social experiment in lower Manhattan known as Occupy Wall Street’s “Camp Anonymous.” I went intending to capture for posterity photographic images of the people […] Looking at the Left […]
Lots of funny masks, tattoos and piercings.
None of which I can afford.
Must be nice to have such disposable income.
“Note that she is wearing a purple heart. I wonder if she got it stumbling on her hammer and sickle, drunk on Cuban rum …”
Which war was the writer of the article injured in?
This reminds me of the people mocking John Kerry by putting a purple heart sticker on a band-aid at Bush campaign stops.
How dare people that serve in combat not be conservative!
I highly doubt the woman was ever in combat. She is a crank Stalinist and deserves no respect. Colonel David H. Hackworth said that 5% of military personnel are unhappy in the military from day one, and nothing but trouble. This idea that all military personnel are worthy of our respect just because they made the mistake of joining and burdened the military with their presence, I do not subscribe to. If you march around in public with a hammer and sickle or a swastika you are either an enemy of all free people or just barking mad. I got a close look and a long listen and she is a doozie. A female John Kerry type.
Lot’s of great true liberals served in the U. S. military like James Mitchener the author and journalist. Read his report on the Hungarian revolution, The Bridge at Andau and then you may begin to understand. Maybe. Don’t be so narrow minded. You sound bigoted against conservatives and yet defensive of Stalinists. The woman in the photo with the purple heart was carrying a sign from a communist org with a picture of Che. Che Guevara when he was director of La Cabana prison, signed his letters and execution warrants, of which he signed thousands, Stalin II. Get real.
PS: Colonel David Haskell Hackworth (November 11, 1930 – May 4, 2005) also known as “Hack”, was the most highly decorated soldier in United States military history having received 24 decorations for heroism in combat from the Distinguished Service Cross to the Army Commendation Medal.
I’m sure her “awards” are even less legitimate that Kerry’s.
[…] Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries […]
The Democrats should send somebody down there to look for some new candidates for Congress or even the Whiteouse.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but the majority of these comments, and even the article, are massively ad hominen, with nothing but insults directed toward them. Crackpots, commie sympathisers, disgusting, so on so forth… I mean, not one person has mentioned the problems they are protesting about and bringing attention to – this just seems an attempt to completely discredit them. Lets ignore the reasons that there are even protests going on.
I mean the American government has just made pizza a vegetable, something that has utterly laughable and the more sinister ‘inprison people without trial or charge’ law which seens to be on the verge of going through. It’s ludicrous, absolutely insane, and yet OWS are the crackpots?
What positive things could be said about a movement that is created and organized by communists and anarchists? This article is about the Zuccotti park commune which reminds me of nothing so much as a mini Paris commune of 1871 or worse yet Jonestown, led by Dem party darling, the Stalinist Rev. Jim Jones in the mid 70’s.
I will detail the inner working of the Zuccotti park commune in part II. That will clearly illustrate why these people are rightly viewed as a bunch of crackpots.
The reason these protests are going on is because they have been organized by the most radical elements of the 1960’s radical left. Are lots of nice people being sucked in? Yes, mostly narco-anarchist children and dingbat Democrats. The rest are Alex Jones Truthers, and hard core Anarchists and Marxists, many of whom are straight out of colleges.
When you say “the American government has just made pizza a vegetable, something that has utterly laughable and the more sinister ‘inprison people without trial or charge’ law” I have no idea what that has to do with burning down Wall Street and playing Marxist/Anarchist “Gilligans Island” in Lower Manhattan.
Peaceful protest of course it’s always welcome, but these people are not looking for or practicing that. Far from it.
Sorry, but there it is again. You have done nothing but insult these people – even the nice ones. As for what those two awful decisions have to do with the protests, that’s what they are about – lobbiests made the ridiculous backtrack on the pizza thing, which is at best an extremely cynical policy which doesn’t benefit children at all, and the other is the work of an utter lunatic – and these people are running the US government? Why the hell aren’t more people protesting?
Never heard a single person mention the Pizza law and the proposed bipartisan security law post-dates this movement. Even so it sounds to me the same as the law in FDR’s America during WWII. Go back and watch Vendetta again since that seems to be your main point of hysterical/historical reference.
Haven’t even mentioned V for Vendetta – not that I’m suprised that you are using Ad Hominen, again. As for that law, it being used during World War 2 – so what? People should care that such a law is being brought in, because it’s insane.
As for the pizza law it represents everything that’s wrong with US politics. The health reforms bought in to make children healthier, hijacked by food industrialists so they can keep selling cheap pizza to schools, without a single care for the children of the country. It was everything to do with the lack of care for the citizens of the US that such a law was implemented – and is just one problem of the wider problems that OSW is protesting against.
Rob, Sorry I got you mixed up with another OWS supporter. Go watch V again so you can understand the violent mental state of the mask wearers. You stand with them after all. Have you ever talked to one. I talk to as many as I can so I can understand OWS participants. Wearing these masks is indefensible in a sane society, but all the mode for OWS.
So you’re for banning pizza in schools? Why are schools feeding kids again? When I went to school in Canada in the 60s and 70s we had things called mothers and fathers who sent a little lunch bag or box to school with us. Never saw a public school that served kids lunch. That was just some private schools. Whose idea was it again to feed kids pizza in school? Your starting to sound like a Republican. Why aren’t you in the Tea Party? I detest mobs and mayhem and that’s all OWS is about and they demonstrate that clearly when they march. They constantly invoke Tahrir Square in Cairo as their inspiration. How’s that working out and where is the parallel to American politics? Doesn’t exist except in the most radical lunatic minds.
And BTW referring to OWS as lunatics is not ad-hominem, merely descriptive.
[…] comes courtesy of Looking at the Left where a real nice photo essay is on display. You should check it […]
“The masked man, above, is wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, named for a member of a 1605 plot to blow up the British House of Lords. The mask was designed for a comic book, V for Vendetta, which was made into a movie of the same name in 2006, and is popular with angry adolescent males. The movie’s hero never removes his mask as he kills policemen by the score, and detonates landmark buildings in a dystopian London of the future.”
You lost me there. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t know the history of Guy Fawkes, don’t make an ass out of yourself by commenting on it. The government is unequivocally the villain in V for Vendetta. They capture and torture ‘dissidents’, ‘undesirables’, and ‘social deviants’ to use them as guinea pigs for a chemical weapon. Hell I don’t know, maybe that’s exactly what you want to see happen to these people. After all that one guy, he has FACE TATTOOS! And the other has a LIP PIERCING! That guy has GREEN HAIR! I heard that one of them might even be a TURK!
Believe it or not the 1st amendment applies to people you don’t agree with just as much as it applies to your beloved Tea Party. Say what you will about the ‘liberal agenda’, but liberals never claimed that the Tea Party didn’t have the right to peaceably assemble. And no, bringing an AR-15 to a political rally is not ‘peaceably’.
Also, whats with conservative and name-calling via bad wordplay? Get a writer, guys.
Kevin, I have seen the movie, V for Vendetta, which I ordered from our local Library upon returning from NYC. It was made by the same people as the Matrix movie which I saw in a theater only because there was such a huge stink about it at the time. I sat thru half of what was the most mindless, violent, and foolish killing spree I have seen to date. Perfect for mindless adolescents who have grown up with a computer game and TV/Hollywood as their main link to the world around them. V for Vendetta was more of the same idiotic violence, aimed at the same audience.
You state: “The government is unequivocally the villain in V for Vendetta. They capture and torture ‘dissidents’, ‘undesirables’, and ‘social deviants’ to use them as guinea pigs for a chemical weapon. Hell I don’t know, maybe that’s exactly what you want to see happen to these people.”
Get a grip on yourself man! This is a fantasy movie intended to alienate young kids and freak them out about western democratic society. This is not what we are facing and never has been the case in England, Canada, or the U.S. If the movie was set in Putins’ Russia, or Vichy France, Saddams’ Iraq, Islamic Iran, Red China, N Korea or Castros’ Cuba et al, it would at least have given the poor little kids some historical perspective.
The intent of the movie was not to educate the kids but to alienate them and provide them with a hero who slashes to death countless British police officers. The moviemakers were apparently successful at that, and most of the people wearing the masks in NYC were young males, a very few 30ish males and not a single female. Although one female did slash a cops face and another cops hand was also slashed.
As for what you refer to as my “beloved Tea Party”, I have documented the Tea party movement just as I am documenting this OWS movement. I am not a Tea party member, an American, a Christian a Jew, or a Republican as a number of your lefty comrade commenters assume.
The first amendment does not sanction spitting on cops, blocking traffic on streets and bridges, or crapping on seized private property. I am fascinated by the Tea party precisely because they are so huge and entirely peaceful and threatening only to use their votes to get what they want. How refreshing in a world of civil wars and repression. This lack of violence is why the most precious things we possess are our democratic freedoms and process and the Tea party is an expression of that heritage. Protest against corruption and for reform using civilized democratic tools, not violence and mayhem as is the norm in this violent world, is so refreshing, don’t ya think?
[…] are from Looking at the Left, El Marco’s illuminating photo-essay: Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries… What a sad display of delusional misfits and malcontents. This entry was posted in […]
[…] Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries […]
Too bad it doesn’t matter what most of you people think.
People have the right to protest peacefully – and they are exercising that right.
We may disagree with their message, but I for one – believe the real crime is the intervention to end protest.
I will gladly support ANYONE’S right to non-violent protest, even neo-nazis and pedophiles because the right to peaceful assembly is something that makes America a fantastic place to live.
I was born in the USSR and have been living in Upstate New York most of my life.
The second we start removing people’s rights, we rename our nation the USSA.
Caleb, What these people do when they “march” is practice a highly orchestrated form of mayhem with communist lawyers along to “train” them and bring lawsuits at a later date. The cops only want to contain this mayhem in order to protect ordinary citizens from having their lives disrupted. These are communist organized affairs although many participants are unaware of this as the MSLM almost never reports what the background of the organizing groups is. DiscovertheNetworks.com is a valuable site that clearly documents all this.
Here is a list comparing violence and crimes committed at OWS protests with those not committed at Teaparty rallies which were mostly much larger gatherings
As far as Nazi’s and pedophiles you can have them, but I think that any advocacy for these causes should be strictly punished and marches prohibited. We should not encourage either.
Nobody has ended anyone’s right to protest, you simpleton. What they have ended is their occupation of someone else’s property, their unsanitary bowel movements on the city’s streets and their turning the neighborhood into a general toilet, none of which, as far as I know, are protected but he First Amendment. If they want to come back and walk around with a sign or bullhorn, nobody is interfering with that.
Why don’t these people just move to a non-capitalistic country….then they would see how their ideas really work….
Marco, when they are poor and begging for handouts, you deride them.
If they are rich like Russell Simmons and Ben Cohen, you deride them.
Please make up your mind!
You lament when your subjects say, “We do not forgive; We do not forget.”
You say “Never Forget; Never Give In.”
What is the difference?
Never Forget refers to 9/11 and Never Give In refers to one of Winston Churchill’s most famous speeches, given at Harrow School, October 29, 1941.
“Never Give In, — never, never, never, never. In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
This I cite on my masthead together with a photo of lower Manhattan I took in the mid 70’s as a reminder of just how fragile democracy, and western civilization itself, is, and what is required to defend it. The support of Sharia Law and a mosque at ground zero are just symptoms of the OWS madness. They are making common cause with the most extreme and violent anti-democratic forces in the world.
Please show where I have derided anyone based on their wealth. Your conclusion is odd. I tell the truth about them with photography and facts and you think it is derision. This is typical of a certain world-view and personality that can’t quite grok the world without applying materialist/class explanations.
PS, I have 3 mastheads which rotate so you only see one with each article. I also use Never Forget Never Give In on the masthead with my photographs of Michelangelos David which stands in an important piazza in Florence. David the statue, is a gentile David guarding and ready to fight against the return of theocratic dictatorship which had just been crushed by the people of Florence. This for me is the more important ” true statue of liberty” for the western world.
On the masthead I quote a shortened version of Michelangelo writing about his David. “A CIVIC HERO, HE WAS A WARNING … WHOEVER GOVERNED FLORENCE SHOULD GOVERN JUSTLY AND DEFEND IT BRAVELY. EYES WATCHFUL, HE STANDS POISED TO STRIKE.” – Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1504
Unbelievable…Seems we are going to hell in a handbasket, “IF” we believe what this group is spewing. What matters is working hard, saving, family, morality and faith. I’m happy, successful and blessed!! I’ll pray for those folks!
You’re on the wrong side of history, El Marco. The 1% has thoroughly destroyed the economy of this country, and YOUR dollar will be just as worthless as that of the next person who isn’t sitting on a mountain of gold or silver with a private army to guard it for them. Your vicious take on these protestors show you to be just what you are- an asshole.
El Marco,
Thanks for this report, it’s the kind of social report on the occupy movement we all need these day’s. Show who they are,what they stand for, there state of mind illussions…the goals they have….mental and moral disasters…all of them…
If I had a kid that had gone to college and showed up at a OWS event, my first call would be to that college and demand my money back. Maybe if a lot of parents would demand their money back it might make education realize how poor of a job they are doing. I actually feel sorry for the ones that thought that they could control this event and make a point. Too bad, it is nothing more than a cheap circus, filled with pitiful clowns in bad paint.
“Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence.”
Yeah, Tea Partiers are very for the redistribution of wealth, and they are definitely an unrepresentative segment of the electorate. That’s why they support lowering taxes on the wealthy, and they’ll use their “2nd Amendment Solutions”, or so I’ve been publicly told by major Tea Party candidates.
Speaking of the Tea Party… could they have done this? Could the Tea Party have gathered hundreds or thousands of people per demonstration, in dozens of cities nationwide, who would be willing and able to stay there for months on end?
No.
Of course, they didn’t have to. The right-wing and corporate media machines were a major force multiplier. People like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin shamelessly promoted Tea Party events for days or weeks beforehand, showed up themselves to the events, then jabbered endlessly about how powerful, relevant, populist, American, and important the Tea Party movement was for weeks afterwards.
A few hundred, maybe a couple of thousand, people show up at a location with teabags dangling from hats. They stay for a few hours, a couple of Congressmen and major media figures speak at the rally, and then they go home. The event is treated as something close to the second coming of Jesus by the corporate media (who uses the excuse of “we don’t want to be accused of being liberal” to support pro-corporate stories) and the right-wing media machine for weeks on end.
Tea Partiers don’t HAVE to act like OSW does. They just need a seed of activism so that is can be blown up half-a-dozen orders of magnitude larger than it actually was.
However, OWS is not afforded the same luxury. Nope. They’re all Marxist-Leninist communists who need a bath.
Right.
“Sean Hannity and Mark Levin shamelessly promoted Tea Party events for days or weeks beforehand, showed up themselves to the events”
What Teaparty protest did either man attend? I’m not aware of that happening.
Atlanta, Georgia, April 15th, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrC8SJOe2gw
Cool, I don’t own a TV so I didn’t follow all this. Love u-tube. So the Teaparty gets Hannity and the Fleaparty gets Castro’s friend Micheal Moore. Cool.
Also, Time Magazine never mentioned the tea party in their year in review edition…. but they mentioned Occupy?
OMG!!! And these creeps have the nerve to say WE tea party people ‘look funny and wear funny outfits and misspell signs’????
WOW
Outstanding job El Marco. Incredibly insightful.
“Who parented these people”? Reader Tom is spot on. Unbelievable.
Outstanding job El Marco. Incredibly insightful. Thank you for bringing the bums, the mentally challenged, and the anarchists out in the open. Light is truly the best disinfectant.
“Who parented these people?” Reader Tom is right. Unbelievable.
wasn’t sure if you just had seen only a certain side of the protest by chance 9 which is quite possible as it is a diverse group) then you wrote
“A popular sign at Occupy Wall Street is “Fracking makes 99% sick, and 1% rich.” This is pure myth. No one has ever been made sick by fracking, yet President Obama and the Democrat Party are so beholden to the radical environmentalist lobby that they are throwing all kinds of roadblocks up to thwart this ultra-safe technology.”
and you showed your hand as a person who has an agenda who shaped this piece with an ax to grid. You are wrong about fracking. It may or may not be worth the environmental cost, but when you call it “ultra safe” well you can lie to yourself, but don’t lie to me.
Plaase show to me who has been made “sick” by this new energy technology.
Can you show me a case of illness from fracking?
Fracking for natural gas recovery and similar technologies used for enhanced oil recovery for more than two decades has never contaminated any shallow water supply aquifer. I worked on a project using this tech in the late 80’s.
There is no credible evidence that fracking has ever harmed any drinking water supply. Even Obama’s own appointee to EPA Director Lisa Jackson had to admit thate is not even one proven case of water contamination from fracking.
shuman, Here is what I found along with hundreds of articles about her testimony. She let the cat out of the bag.
TIME Magazine has coverage of the Occupy movement. Oddly enough, none of their photos shows anything but peace and tranquility.
Great work! Are you and Zombie the only right-wing photojournalists who publish blogs of your works?
Are you familiar with the BAGNewsNotes, a leftist photojournalist blog run by Michael Shaw? Something like what he runs (“BagNews is a progressive site dedicated to visual politics and the analysis of news images”), only not so progressive, would be a welcome addition to ‘our side’ I’m thinking.
Cheers!
Anti-Turkish sentiments? What is the world coming to?
Anti-turkish only in your mind. Highlighting one crazy OWS Turk says nothing about Turkey or Turks, Radu.
El Marco let me say bravo. The photos were raw and to the point. What I liked best is it had a “little something for everyone”. By this I mean there’s plenty of the lost and outright decrepit among the unreconstructed 60’s era radicals and some folks who are just outright irritated at the “system”.
Do I think they’re all radicals (though I’d say they’re the majority)? Not really. However, what we’re witnessing is what happens when a self-styled “leadersless” moverment runs wild and free. That said, it’s no surprise they’ve tried and exhausted the well-meaning liberal patience of New York.
Yes you are right there are good people under this OWS umbrella. Some may be as civil as the Teaparty crowd and should really be a part of that movement.
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give it to those who would not”
Thomas Jefferson
Seems to me this leads to:
Ineptocracy (in-ep-tow-cra-si) a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services (for their votes?) paid for by the confiscated earnings and wealth of a diminishing number of producers.
Dear Blank – Love your comment, bravo! Love it!
“Ineptocracy (in-ep-tow-cra-si) a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services (for their votes?) paid for by the confiscated earnings and wealth of a diminishing number of producers.”
Charity should be reserved for the deserving and should start at home. That being said public support must go to the ailing, abused and infirm who have no other means. Tough love must be the bedrock policy of dealing with all others. Tough love is a natural and strong medicine that I and innumerable others have benefitted from.
You mean like the US welfare systems? lol
Won’t it be wonderful when these malcontents and defectives find their Pol Pot? It’s not too hard for some charismatic figure to harness the mob rule and force utopia on us.
How about reading OWS’s declaration, which they published in September? Then you can stop talking about how there is no message. Truth is, things are so fucked all over, where do we begin? There is not “one” message, but there is a new awareness of the plutocracy we are in, and finally, fingers pointing in the right direction.
You are an idiot. Who are you to interpret people’s motives? You think it’s cute? Smart?
Howard Zinn is a great American hero. He was a socialist, so what?
I can’t even begin to express my disgust.
OWS’s declaration spits out the same ignorant collectivist tripe displayed on the signs in the photos above. Vapid garbage. It’s impossible to not know what they want – they chant their idiotic mantras loudly and incessantly. These morons are the friggin’ BORG hive mind. And Howard Zinn was a stalinist poo carrier who wouldn’t recognize an American concept if beaten over the head with it.
Oh, yes. If you think your patronizing snarks are impressing someone, look in the nearest mirror to find an idiot.
Entitlement, that’s what it all comes down to. We have an occupest camp here in sunny Isla Vista, CA near UCSB & what cracks me up is the fact that these misled folks can’t see they support the very sytem they so hate.
They go to UCSB, 1 of the top 10 corporations in the world @ 1 time. Some of those on tap @ their slum are UCSB professors who @ $250,000/yr should be teaching, not preaching. They call for socialism, but won’t relinquish their huge salaries in the name of the cause. Now we go from entitlement to hypocrisy. The problem is that these occupests are getting their ideas (indoctrination) from the ivory tower academics & their mantra is simple: “Do as we say, not as we do.” Yeah, a real set of winners, the occupests. Good times! :) hank
Among the many blessings of this amazing global and peaceful uprising for equality and justice for all is that it is exposing all you small-minded, fearful, hateful and self-righteous teapots out there who aren’t intelligent (curious? thoughtful? conscious? compassionate?) enough to realize that:
1) As much as you clearly WISH it were true, you can’t possibly know what hundreds of thousands of people all around the country and the world are all about by singling out one or two dozen of them in one location and describing them so sneeringly and condescendingly; but you could, theoretically at least, easily understand what it IS all about by simply reading the first thing you see on the ows website: “we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy”. That’s not too difficult for you to comprehend, is it? Or do you like ourcorporate-owned democracy?
2) it’s not anti-capitalism or anti-corporation, it’s anti-capitalism-run-amok (leaving millions jobless, homeless and uninsured) and anti-corporations-owning-congress (leaving all of us unrepresented – do you know what that means?). Surely even you self-important and insular tea-folks can rub your only two brain cells together and understand this much! Or maybe not.
3) The rest of the civilized world provides universal free education to all it’s citizens because they are smart enough to know (being educated and all) that it serves their country extremely well to have an educated citizenry (you are living proof we don’t have that) that pays back into the system when they get out. We’re way too stupid here, full of people like you and most of the readers of this blog, and so we get what we got – an uneducated and debt ridden society full of lame-ass wanna-bes on the sidelines lobbing their unholy ignorance at the people actually doing something positive and acknowledged almost universally that, like OWS or hate ’em, they’re right about this! No one argues this. So nice work folks! Proud of your silly selves yet? You will forever wonder why you are ALWAYS on the wrong side of history.
4) lastly, this is not by any stretch of the imagination journalism, it is merely weakly done and blatant propaganda, and anyone who believes that this obviously uncritical and so pathetically agenda-driven slop could possibly describe actual reality deserves their self-made ignorance, and you deserve their ignorant “praise”. Eat it up “El Marco”! Pat yourself on the back for continuing to drag this country’s intellect the rest of the way into the dirt. You and Rush and Beck and O’Reilly and Coulter and Brietbart – god how do you live with yourselves? Anyone with any integrity, self-respect, conscience or intellect would have figured this out by now.
(btw – two hilariously sad news items last week: 1) Fox News won’t be allowed into Canada because in Canada it’s still illegal to LIE on the air (I’m sure the Fox lobbyists are up there right now trying to change all that) and 2) a recent study found that those who watch NO NEWS are better informed than those who watch Fox news. Seeing the pattern here Fox watchers? Maybe not, maybe it’s too late)
As a previous commenter said – thanks for staying the hell away and taking your cheap shots from the safety of your computer where you can’t possibly impede the obviously needed return to American roots values. Those who can’t actually contribute anything worthwhile, sit around and pretend they are important by criticizing those that can and are and will contribute until the job is done. Then even you will have a better world to live in, whether you want it or not – but don’t worry! I’m sure you’ll still be able to do your “job” of finding someone or something to photograph and denigrate.
And thanks for letting the rest of us know just how low the lowest common denominator actually is!! I think I’ll start my own silly, smug little blog (inspired by YOUR OWN silly, smug little blog) called “Laughing at the Right”. You conservative republican religious teapartiers are an international embarrasment and the laughing stock of the world. One day you and all your nonsense will be just bad memory. Can’t wait! Enjoy!
Send me a link when you launch the website. You can show the world how it is done.
Wow. That was vapid. But it was gassy!
Holy Sh*t….
People are bringing CHILDREN to this?? A self-avowed Anarchist protest?? Real classy sticking your FILTHY VAGINA on a statue while YOUR CHILD WATCHES!! YOU SKANK!!
I knew these people were off their rockers but these people are EVIL!! Psychotic comes to mind!
I USED to be a proud New Yorker now I can’t WAIT to retire and get the hell OUT of here! I am TRULY ashamed of how DEBASED New Yorkers have become.
I am no longer free to enjoy my own City. What was once a cultural Mecca has become Satan’s Den.
REPULSIVE!!
I am one of the 99% AND YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME!!!! I have a job I HATE but I DO NOT PANHANDLE LIKE A BUM!!
I wonder how many of these wastes of human flesh are OVER-CODDLED, UPPER MIDDLE-CLASS-RAISED TRASH!!
NewYawkahBroad, Howahya?
Hey back up a second girl. I love NewYawkahs and you do too. They are the greatest people but they lack conservative leadership and discipline. RUDY RUDY RUDY!
PS, Look what The Logan School are doing to kids in Denver: Occupy Denver adds a youthful twist – Denver Post
WOW i glad you said it and not me! You know i worked on Park Ave for 15 years, i enjoyed a better than average job / position and worked hard. God bless Rudy for being there, after several years of Bloomberg and typical NY liberalism creeping back into the city i had to leave. I quit my job and moved to the country down south, and my motto was “cant wait to move back to America” after being here for 8 years i must tell you its widespread! People here are clamoring to get there kids educated – P.S. all 3 of my children are successful and exceeding in every aspect,and when they fail they fail, no do over! and let me tell you its a shit load of work for all involved including mom and dad!!!
Well after growing up in single parent/freelove/anything goes/not my child/NIMBY type house holds, nanny states, indoctrination in the public school, getting their degrees in liberal arts in only 6 years? faces pierced and tattooed, failing drug test, dread-locked clove & Patchouli Oil stinking, dandelion eating, i phone, apple using wireless wedges on society they want a do over?
Why not they have been getting them all of there lives, and a pat on the back to boot! Its OK we will try again, this time we wont keep score, or we will just get a pass or a fail or a U or a S. Well these are all of the losers that cried and were given a trophy at the end of the session and moms argued with the teacher on there child’s merits to increase there grade, or did their science project for them. Then these kids are now in to the real world and they have no clue, hopefully they get the do over and learn something, But that’s not happening! Instead they get a tattoo on there face and sue you for discrimination because they are unemployable!
Then they become children for the latest / greatest Pied Piper. Its time to learn the most important lesson that can be received “note it cant be taught” FAILURE is truly the most motivational learning experience on can have. But you have to start young so that the failures are small and not a $150,000.00 liberal arts education! OH shit 6 years and i can be a cashier at CVS, but please remove some of the facial piercings.
It makes me wonder. Do all of the liberals who live in lower Manhattan who’ve had to experience this ‘protest’ on a personal level are so liberal now? This is what liberalism creates. It’s got to be hard to look into your bathroom mirror in the morning. Will you keep voting for liberals/democrats and justifying this in your own minds? Wake up because this is the society that you are creating for yourselves. The zombies are coming.
Many of these people look really goofy and harmless, but as a whole, they are not.
Wow. Lots of hate here. You must be Christian.
Anon, No not Christian … but not Christophobe either. I know the history of Christianity and the periods I am most interested in are the 4th century and Constantine and the 5th century with Justinian and the aftermath including the history of Monophysite refugees in Arabia. I like Christians, Trinitarian and Monophysite, and I love Christian countries like Italy and Canada and the U.S. and all of Latin America. Great people in my book. Got a problem with that? Sin verguenza!
Funny, only people like YOU are talking about hate. Most seem to be acknowledging that only LUNATICS would expect to be able to be so nasty and disruptive and still garner support. Plus it gets a little old, among the true “99%”, having to put up with this nonsense day in, day out, because the Democrats are willing to fund it and keep it alive as the one thing that might get them some votes next year, while the firmly left media celebrates this nonsense and tries to put a happy face on the filthy vermin taking part.
There’s no hate there, just facts, truth and reality. If you see it as hate that’s because the hate is within YOU. Let go of it and wake up.
[…] York during that he documented a final days of a Occupy Wall Street outpost in Zuccotti Park. His newly published collection of Zuccotti Park portraits contains many memorable images (one of that we already featured here), though one sold […]
Fine job
And the antagonistic duality continues unabated…
Why would anything meaningful get done when there’s so much hate to spew back and forth at your “enemy”?
Wake the fuck up please.
Captain Oblivious, You have named yourself well. What hate speech is being spewed here? Examples?
“small-minded, fearful, hateful and self-righteous teapots out there who aren’t intelligent (curious? thoughtful? conscious? compassionate?), you self-important and insular tea-folks can rub your only two brain cells together and understand this much! Or maybe not, We’re way too stupid here, full of people like you and most of the readers of this blog, and so we get what we got , I wonder how many of these wastes of human flesh are OVER-CODDLED, UPPER MIDDLE-CLASS-RAISED TRASH!!, Your vicious take on these protestors show you to be just what you are- an asshole.”
The above is just an example of some of the hate people are spewing at this site. Why all the name calling? Difference of opinion people…we still got that…right?
I would like to see some rational, criticism of my work from the left but the potty mouthed voices in their heads prevents that. The above essay only contains things I saw and facts I believe to be true. Why not rebut the content?
Remember that “Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.
Coming in at about the same time was a poll taken of one hundred of the Occupiers by New York Magazine which found an unnamed number wanted to “burn it [Wall Street] down” and that 34 percent believed the United States government was “no better than, say, Al Qaeda.”
This means that a lot of them are nuts and violent. Which is also known as “criminally insane”.
Why weren’t there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule? And under Stalin, no anti-communist demonstrations? And under Hitler, no anti-fascist demonstrations? In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?
Very good point. Capitalism is in fact the BEST system, as has been proven throughout history across the globe. Of course the left has been busy undermining capitalism then blaming the resulting problems, caused by their actions, on capitalism. That’s no surprise. What’s surprising is there are so many willing “useful idiots” ready to believe it.
Sometimes I wish, if they could get what they ask for without it affecting the rest of us, that they actually succeed and find themselves having to actually take responsibility for themselves once they do get what they want. Because then they will truly be alone and clueless. How long would this movement last without massive outside help from the very people they claim to despise?
[…] CETWhere Vinnie? I was wondering why he wanted that stack of one dollar bills…(Image from Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of the New Revolutionaries)Related Posts4 November 2011 – Bahrain » US Middle East Blogs » Payne & Holt Sign […]
Well done! Excellent pics and commentary. I look forward to your next.
[…] Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries « Looking at the Left. […]
Hmmm, very good photo documentation. “Useful idiots” is a term that comes to mind. Yep.
[…] which he documented the final days of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. His newly published collection of Zuccotti Park portraits contains many unforgettable images (one of which we already featured here), but one […]
[…] http://lookingattheleft.com/2011/11/zuccotti-utopia-portraits-of-revolutionaries/ […]
Can someone please explain to these liberal, Barack Obama supporters why they can not get a job! It is quite evident. With that said, they must like their “entitlements” while being a parasite off of society.
http://moonbattery.com/?p=4879
The so called 99% are a huge part of problem.
Start with the fact they’re really only about .00001% of the real population, the bottom of the barrel at that.
[…] Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries […]
Nice work, mate. 99% of the OWS signs present are disturbing. Where perhaps 1% of tea party signs were inappropriate. Irony.
I wonder what they would like to replace capitalism with? Socialism? Fascism? Communism? Anarchy? Do they even know what they want? I seriously doubt it. And isn’t it interesting that many of these bird brain protesters are using the very instruments that define capitalism such as laptop computers and cell phones. Not to mention items as the markers they use to write their idiotic slogans and even the silly masks they wear; all products of capitalism. Hypocritical and stupid is not the best way to go through life.
Kenny komodo, This great song lays all their hypocrisy to rest. It is truly brilliant and is done in a superb reto-60’s protest style. I’ve watched it many times and it ranks with Dylan’s best and the guy sounds at times like Neil Diamond. Oh yeah, and it’s HILARIOUS. H/T Zombie
What they don’t realize is that if they do succeed, those they put in power will realize the #1 threat to their continued power is the very people who were behind the revolution that put them where they are, so their first edict will be to have them all rounded up and “disappeared”.
Too bad we can’t just skip all the middle stuff and go right to that part, get it over with, and MOVE ON!
An incredible piece of work. Great photos. Great write-up.
I’l like back from Ushanka!
Karl
We need to support people like the guy with the “We need help” bucket. Admitting it is the first step.
Call it an occupational hazard, but I can’t look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, “Who parented these people?” As a culture columnist, I’ve commented on the social and political ramifications of the “movement” – now known as “OWS” – whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: “Everything for everybody.”
Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it’s clear there are people with serious designs on “transformational” change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.
Yet it’s not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I’m the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters’ moms clearly have not passed along. Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters’ mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn’t, so I will:
Life isn’t fair. The concept of justice – that everyone should be treated fairly – is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.” No matter how you try to “level the playing field,” some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they’re dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons . Is it fair? Stupid question.
Nothing is “free.” Protesting with signs that seek “free” college degrees and “free” health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don’t operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and “slow paths” to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical. While I’m pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.
Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don’t require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It’s a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for – literally.
A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn’t evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don’t dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don’t seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.
There are reasons you haven’t found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn’t a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It’s not them. It’s you.
Agreed and very well said. As a Mother, I can’t help but wonder who their parents are and what they must think.
And yes, where do they think these free things come from? Of course it’s being funded, probably by people with a fantastic portfolio on Wall Street and an agenda. And they know what types they can manipulate.
Your assessment of the 4% is probably closer to the mark. Again,well said
To the mom named Tom,
This video highlights the mentality bred by the self esteem movement in education. So many kids are studying in fields that are artsy culture related because they are the products of pop culture rather than a real culture which teaches true values. Thanks for excellent comment, I hope your kids are doing OK finding their way in this crazy new America.
You’re looking at a generation raised on the idea that we cannot have true competition because those who don’t do as well as everyone else might get their feelings hurt. We’re in the age where feelings matter more than anything. God forbid someone wind up feeling like someone else did better than they did! I had to put up with this nonsense all through my school years, even in College, believe it or not, because I was one of those who always “set the curve” and people really resented me for actually studying, learning what I was there to learn, and being able to apply it successfully. Looks like the occu-zombies are of the same mind as those who always demanded I not try so hard, not do so good.
Good luck with that strategy, I got better ideas.
Excellent photojournalism. I visited the Charlotte, NC and Asheville, NC camps and the overwhlming sense is one of futility.
[…] El Marco recently traveled from Colorado to New York the weekend before the demise of the revolutionary social experiment in lower Manhattan known as Occupy Wall Street’s Camp Anonymous. El Marco says he went intending to capture for posterity photographic images of the people and infrastructure that comprised that hopeful utopian “model community for a new world.” […]
…notice none of them are very keen to get to Occupy Pyongyang…
http://www.theagedp .com/?p=4204
[…] […]
Wow. Truly well done, brilliant work. Like someone else said, I knew the majority of these people were hate-filled lunatics but to see these photos made me realize how distrubing they really are. Certainly makes a case for home schooling, lol. Thank you!!
“Holy crap, what a retarded rant!
Enjoy your agonising death from cancer.
Peace and Light!
jdX”
Who’s the retard again?
Holy crap, what a retarded rant!
Full of non sequiturs, strawman fallacies and several passages of sheer made-up bullshit whimsy.
It’s kind of like satire, but not funny, and not incisive enough for even elementary school-level humour.
The photo gallery of all the amazingly beautiful unique individuals is wonderful, though, and the only reason I could force myself to scroll all the way to the bottom of the hate, rage, fear, and what was ultimately only a tragic attempt at propaganda. The only ‘people’ who would approve of this bile are all so equally full of hate, rage and fear as the author, and as such their opinions don’t matter for shit.
Must be so sad being you, so full of hate. At least this poxy blog keeps you busy and out of the way of the real world.
Enjoy your agonising death from cancer.
Peace and Light!
jdX
My, my. And yet rather ironically you seem so full of er, the “cancer” of “hate”. Good logical fallacy cognitive dissonant indoctrinated unread incurious leftist, then. And your blog, book and other linked brilliant material is where, again? Er, you employ how many people, create what goods or services and useful wealth that people actually want and need? Got it. Ya got nothing. Ah, the simple jealousy of the non-achieving mediocrity. Bwahahah! Colonel Neville.
Funny that the only people who bring up HATE are your ilk. And I suppose you think that saying ‘Peace and Light’ somehow makes up for the preceding line, which I have to say is perhaps the single most hate-filled sentence anywhere on this page, original article & comments included.
Forget your meds! oh i know you are out of public school so now you dont need ritalin!
WOW i glad you said it and not me! You know i worked on Park Ave for 15 years, i enjoyed a better than average job / position and worked hard. God bless Rudy for being there, after several years of Bloomberg and typical NY liberalism creeping back into the city i had to leave. I quit my job and moved to the country down south, and my motto was “cant wait to move back to America” after being here for 8 years i must tell you its widespread! People here are clamoring to get there kids educated – P.S. all 3 of my children are successful and exceeding in every aspect,and when they fail they fail, no do over! and let me tell you its a shit load of work for all involved including mom and dad!!!
Well after growing up in single parent/freelove/anything goes/not my child/NIMBY type house holds, nanny states, indoctrination in the public school, getting their degrees in liberal arts in only 6 years? faces pierced and tattooed, failing drug test, dread-locked clove & Patchouli Oil stinking, dandelion eating, i phone, apple using wireless wedges on society they want a do over?
Why not they have been getting them all of there lives, and a pat on the back to boot! Its OK we will try again, this time we wont keep score, or we will just get a pass or a fail or a U or a S. Well these are all of the losers that cried and were given a trophy at the end of the session and moms argued with the teacher on there child’s merits to increase there grade, or did their science project for them. Then these kids are now in to the real world and they have no clue, hopefully they get the do over and learn something, But that’s not happening!
Instead they get a tattoo on there face and sue you for discrimination because they are unemployable! Then they become children for the latest / greatest Pied Piper. Its time to learn the most important lesson that can be received “note it cant be taught” FAILURE is truly the most motivational learning experience on can have. But you have to start young so that the failures are small and not a $150,000.00 liberal arts education! OH shit 6 years and i can be a cashier at CVS, but please remove some of the facial piercings.
A fabulous photo essay. Gives both images and more important, insight, that are spiked by the mainstream press.
So anyone can take a few pictures and say it represents the REAL story. I submit a second set of pictures by a different artist. You may not agree with these people, but the photographer did not go out of her way to make them look like freaks. Unlike certain other photographers I could mention…
One photographer took impromptu, unposed photos, showing the real Flea Baggers. The other “artist” went out of her way to pose the Flea Baggers, devoid of signs that would make them look stupid, using black and white try to make it “art.” What a joke.
Chester my only disagreement with you is the second group didn’t need signs to make themselves look stupid. They achieved that by stating lofty feel good goals while sitting around taking handouts and personally doing nothing to gain those goals.
Annie substituted their props for respectful dialogue. What a shame as they were much better looking in their everyday garb.
Hey, marcos, NYC liberal called you an artist!
I know, that’s very disturbing. Just as the left dirtied the word liberal and made it into a thing of horror, they have also abused the definition of what an artist is and does.
Photography is at once the simplest of all art forms, just push the button and you capture light, and the most difficult of art forms. Some of the photographers that are considered great worked all year and considered themselves fortunate to produce one truly great image per year. And those were the greats like Cartier-Bresson. For us mere mortals it can take a lot longer than that to produce something worthwhile, if we work very hard.
“Liberals” have reduced the definition of who is an artist to include someone who sticks a finger in one of their orifices and smears the content on a surface. I usually cringe when someone introduces themselves as an artist.
I understand your revulsion…but by cringing you have become caught in their circle. “Liberals” did not do this to art. You did by playing the game. These artists put a worm on the hook and you not only bit into it, you took the line and sinker as well.
All the fame these artists have comes from grossed-out conservatives. Liberals mostly ignore them, or smile and nod as they move on to other galleries. Some of the more Evil Liberals realize that gross art distracts conservatives so much, that it keeps them away from education and other issues. The more you wig out about it the more you will see.
Evil NYC Liberal,
The only worms here are in that rusty tin can you think of as your mind. Save your wisdom for #OWS. Not impressed.
Nobody has to “go out of their way” to make an occu-zombie look like a freak, what with their smashing success at doing that without any help. The images on this page are simply candid shots, nothing posed, nothing planned, unlike YOUR examples, where the shots were carefully planned & posed. REALITY on this page, propaganda on your link. Be honest. Even you know that’s the facts, Jack!
As El Marco could explain better, every photo is an abstraction of reality. Both selected their subjects, and then selected which photos to include in their “shows”. If you can look at one and say “Truth” and look at the other and say “Lies” then you are deceiving yourself. Both are absolutely true but neither is very accurate.
Evil NYC Liberal, Photography is the least abstract of all art forms in the way I try to work with it. It is a mere record of light falling on an object in the real world not in your abstract imagination. I try to let my subjects speak and the magic happens when the subject appears to be relaxed and unaware of my camera and me. I photograph them in the surroundings I find them in. I strive to include in the scene as much information as I can fit and compose in a balanced way that is attractive to the human eye. If I can achieve this, I provide to the viewer an accurate and beautiful rendering of a moment and person in context for a fraction of a second in the history of mankind. Nothing remotely abstract about it.
Annie on the other hand tries to influence her subjects and they are generally reacting to photographer and camera and so are images in which the photographers presence is apparent. This is a very common academic photographic style with an attempt to glamorize and IMHO sterile and usually lacking in inspiration or charm.
Great practitioners of B+W portraiture were fellow Canadian Yousuf Karsh of Ottawa and George Hurrell of Hollywood.
Karshes photo of Castro is terrifying. Talk about capturing the essence of a mans soul.
By the way, your chosen name, EVIL NYC LIBERAL, sort of tells it all, doesn’t it?
Three concepts guaranteed to cause you disgust by their mere mention. Evil, NYC, and Liberal. Saves me a lot of typing. As you know, liberals are essentially lazy.
Irony: When the Anarchists have the most organization in your protest.
Colorful posters, hateful people, much screaming and much hate. So where is Reverend Fred Phelps?
Hey Georg, So what movement was Phelps a part of?
What a great photo-journalistic piece. This work is better than anything I have seen in the MSM. I knew the OWS folks were crackpots, but you don’t really get a feel for just how far out there these people are until you see it in pictures. The MSM is busy portraying these people as the the democrat tea party. I had no idea how twisted that portrayal really is. The shocking thing to me is how bad our media is. Our media are not professional journalists reporting unvarnished fact, they are professional advocates reporting carefully selected snippets of news to present a false reality consistent with their world view.
Great work.
Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA
Awesome job on this! Thank you. Seriously. You have done America a great service.
Henry Louis Gates at OWS? Whoa! Slumming!
Was he looking for what his country can do for him or police acting stupidly?
Beer Summit at Zucotti Park!
You just have to feel sorry for some of these people. And some of them, you just have to despise.
The “Roll over JFK” fellow has a question mark at the end of his text: “…ask what your country can do for YOU?” I wonder if he’s not mocking the self-centered nature of the protestors instead of just saying “Gimme!” He has a slight sly smile on his face that leads me to think his use of the question mark was pointed and intentional.
Yes, by all means, see only what you want to see, refuse to accept that there is any common ground between you and these fellow citizens of yours. Despise them in your superiority and cheer the police as they beat and pepper spray them.
Acting that way has worked out so well for you hasn’t it? You couldn’t stop Civil Rights or Women’s Lib or Gay Rights. Hell you all couldn’t even stop Rock and Roll.
This is your last stand, mofos. Your gonna let these kids win because you are just too pure, too superior, and too closed-minded to see them as anything else but the product of your nightmares.
I would pity you, but I am laughing too hard
Living in Obamavilles, in your own filth, moldy, piss and mildew-ridden,
regular cutting edge, aren’t you, Occupests?
Wave of the future, leaders of tomorrow, you make me sick.
Cool story bro.
Excuse me Mr. Evil, but I just happen to be old enough to have protested with some of these wack-a-doodles. Back in Golden Gate Park in 67, before most of you were born. They’re the same losers, with the same tired message, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie. Back then, (in 66-68) in Frisco, I thought how nice it would be to be able to sit around every day, get stoned, find some chick, well, you know. I was all of 19 when I got there and like most others at that age, I thought I had everything figured out, much like you do right now. Well, after it ended, (the 60’s), I went back to doing pretty much what I wanted. Then in 1979 something magic happened, I witnessed that first little head poking out, yelling her defiance at disturbing her peaceful world. At that moment, I suddenly woke up to the fact that little person that I helped to create would be totally dependent on me for everything. Because we were lucky enough to be born in America, I had the opportunity to provide for her. For the first time in my life, I was thrust into this responsibility to provide for MY family. I believe that many of the kids protesting will one day go back to their families homes, go back to school, and grow up. Sadly, some of them wont, and that’s the shame.
I do have one question for you. I’ll assume that you’re intelligent enough to defend your views, so here goes; The theme seems to be socialism vrs. capitalism so here is my question for you, Can you tell me when the ONLY time in history that socialism/communism worked?
Mr. Macwell, I understand your feelings but you did NOT protest with the #OWS. You protested in 1967. You have moved on, and so have they. To say they were not even born in 1967 does not give you the scale of the divide. They were not born until ten years after 1967. Go actually meet them, they are young, but you will not find that they are so horrible as you fear.
Socialism that worked?, well the U.S. Highway system is an example of socialism working, as is FDIC and the U.S. Military. But if you talked to the #OWSers you would find that what they really want is an end to the socialism that is American Corporate Culture these days. When executives can keep their winnings but socialize their losses. The socialism of an ever smaller oligarchy making more and more of the decisions.
Evil,
“The socialism of an ever smaller oligarchy making more and more of the decisions.”
Having participated in this hissy fit exercise, you now have the obligation to vote your decision. please do so and stop whining about those who have utilized motivation to better themselves and thus, society as a whole. The woe is me attitude is not an acceptable statement of your “condition”. It is in fact becoming more than a bit boring.
[…] Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries « Looking at the Left **MUST-READ/VIEW**: Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries http://t.co/2FQPPWWx #OWS #OccupyCLT #ThisIsOccupy #IamThe53… Source: http://www.lookingattheleft.com […]
[…] Pundit links to a photo journal made by a blogger who visited the OWS camp in New York. To say that nuking the place and cooking off the scum would […]
[…] which he documented the final days of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. His newly published collection of Zuccotti Park portraits contains many unforgettable images (one one which we already featured here), but one particular […]
As always, a superb and thoroughly insightful expose by El Marco. The bizarre, convoluted confusion that reigns in the besotted minds of these “useful idiots” of the Marxist masters is fully revealed. Thank You, Marco ;>)
[…] Marco has compiled what may be the definitive photographic record of the repugnant freak show that was allowed to fester for week after week in Zuccotti Park. Just a […]
[…] Colorado photojournalist, El Marco traveled to NYC before the demise of the revolutionary social experiment in lower Manhattan known as Occupy Wall Street’s “Camp Anonymous” to photograph its bizarre denizens. I went intending to capture for posterity photographic images of the people and infrastructure that comprised that hopeful utopian “model community for a new world.” […]
I see ‘This Ain’t Hell’ blog has for some reason mistakenly credited me for this photo-essay. I just emailed Jonn Lilyea asking him to correct the mistake.
You’ve outdone yourself! Great pictures, excellent commentary. I’ll do my best make sure this photo-essay gets widely circulated around the internet.
Thanks. Looking forward to pt2.
[…] Park Post-Mortem: 60 portraits of OWS protesters by El Marco.Zuccotti Park Post-Mortem: 60 portraits of OWS protesters by El Marco.Share this:FacebookTwitterLinkedIn […]
[…] Read and See More at lookingattheleft.com By El Marco, lookingattheleft.com Tweet Share:EmailPrintRedditDigg […]
[…] PHOTO ESSAY: The Human Debris In Zuccotti Park – LookingAtTheLeft.com GA_googleFillSlot("BelowPost_640x120"); /* […]
Great journalism.
But hanging around there must have hurt. The stupid, it burns even second-hand through the Internet.
I wonder if the idiots wearing the ancient Gas masks realize Blue Asbestos was used in the filters back then and now 40-50-60 years later it’s not the smartest thing in the world to wear them as the filters have deteriorated.
Great journalism, the kind the MSM quit doing years ago. Thanks. Very enlightening.
[…] kind of crazy in New York City last weekend. He shares it with us in his latest post “Zuccotti Utopia: Portraits of The New Revolutionaries“; I recently traveled from Colorado to New York the weekend before the demise of the […]
Great pictures and commentary. Excellent job! Thanks for enduring this environment for 4 days to get all of these great pictures and front-row view/perspective of OWS. Some of these photos made me chuckle, others made me feel nauseous. Don’t think I could have endured 5 minutes, never mind 4 days!
Wow. Just wow.