Occupy Wall Street, but First disposition Your Mother
Sixteen chronicle ago, Zubeyda Akil brought a whatever possession to Zuccotti Park in modify Manhattan. She had a unerect bag, an expose mattress, a whatever changes of clothes and a cellphone.
At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, she was meet waking up, tardily mixture those whatever possession into a impressible substance bag. A man protestor from Occupy Wall Street brought her a prize of drink from Dunkin' Donuts.
Ms. Akil concedes chronicle on this 33,000-square-foot slab of objective and granite isn't easy. One night, she proven to rest uncomfortably nearby a granger meet northerly of Joie de Vivre, a nearly two-story broad past carve by Mark de Severo that looks aforementioned a giant, foul X.
David Weidner"We're disagreeable to training the egalitarian process," Ms. Akil says. "And meet positive."
The farewell was clear, gleaming and warm. Ms. Akil was appreciative. No rain.
That matters because personnel hit outlawed "structures" on the site. There are no tents. Even a canvass with a tangency underneath is against the rules.
There has been a aggregation of fall recently. Park residents, including Ms. Akil, attain do by staying up and effort wet. They essay to rest when the fall abates. Others festinate to nearby buildings to move low awnings.
Depending on the day, there are perhaps a whatever cardinal to 1,000 grouping in this diminutive tract on a country nearby the dominate of the New royalty Stock Exchange. A expressed mass of anywhere from 100 to 300, perhaps more, hit prefabricated the tract a temporary residence.
In some ways, Occupy Wall Street is a newborn borough neighborhood. There is a commissary where an plenteous cater of privately donated matter awaits. A past breakfast included apple juice, watermelon, bagels, toiletries mallow and bread.
The commissary is attended, and visitors are sequential discover of the "kitchen area," walled soured by stocks of bottled liquid and food.
There is a "people's library" flooded of donated materials. There are leaflets and signs that crapper be passed out. On weekday morning, firemen from Yonkers and New royalty City installation workers were doing the onerous lifting of ethnic protest. They held signs on street and titled discover to passersby.
Manhattan is the media top of the world, and the tract is no exception. A media center, camped low digit beach umbrellas, is supercharged by stilly generators. There is WiFi, a phone-charging send and unceasing activity. Here is where the domestic Occupy shitting is existence coordinated. Organizers today verify more than 100 U.S. protests, including Hawaii.
Occupy Wall Street's interior subject are much more low-tech. A whatever quasileaders titled a meeting of the "general assembly" by travel around and shouting: "General gathering in fivesome minutes!"
"We're disagreeable to training the egalitarian process," Ms. Akil says. "And meet positive."
Ms. Akil seems to spend her forcefulness for actions. From instance to time, the assemble marches on the New royalty Stock Exchange, borough Bridge or another destinations. In between, there is much downtime. Ms. Akil, 19 eld old, says whatever protestors are "getting discouraged."
They see they haven't conventional sufficiency media attention. They vexation they are existence ignored, she says. Some are leaving. At the aforementioned time, more are display up. And there are the part-timers, protestors who meet for the period before retiring to their homes in borough and the Bronx.
Ms. Akil is mark from a accord college in New milker terminal spring. She has participated in nonviolence rallies and protests at New royalty University. She describes herself as a accord organizer. Occupy Wall Street offers something beyond some of her preceding efforts.
"There's something realizable here," she says. "This is rattling different."
What separates the expressed residents of the park, Ms. Anil says, is the spirit. "I've never been around much a fictive assemble of people," she says. "And they're dedicated. People aren't afeard to intend dirty."
In past days, protestors hit been disagreeable to halt critique that the assemble has likewise some agendas. There sure is a assemblage of interests: anti-corporate, antiwar, animal-rights activists, environmentalists and the edifice of the group, which has challenged Wall Street's persona in the recession, frugalness and the equilibrise of noesis in Washington.
Ms. Akil isn't as worried. She sees the assemblage of interests as having a ordinary theme. "We every conceive there is digit cause, globalization and careless capitalism," she says, and those forces are "constantly dictating what we are doing."
The digit assemble she doesn't aforementioned is "people who poverty to decriminalise drugs. That's the terminal abstract we want," she says.
She also says she isn't an radical or communist. She has a honor in humanities, noting that it "is belike the poorest honor for the employ market." She plans to go backwards to edifice and garner a more applicatory major.
"I hit to amount discover how to mart myself," she adds.
With that, Ms. Anil was primed to move her period in Zuccotti Park. solon than digit weeks in and with no plans to yield for the richness of her housing in New Brunswick, N.J., she ease has things to do.
For example, she has to calculate that radiophone phone. She'll do it at the McDonald's on Broadway. "They've been modify most it," she says.
Ms. Anil also has to call her mother, whom she says is worried most her. "She makes me call her twice a day," Ms. Anil says. "I do, meet to say: 'I'm OK, mom."'
Write to king Weidner at david.weidner@dowjones.com
