MB Civic

Debbie and I went downtown for the “First General Assembly” which organizers had planned to be at Chase Plaza at 3pm. When we got there around 2 we saw the location had been barricaded by police, so we headed downtown and found a group of about a thousand people at Bowling Green, near the bull statue, in front the the US Customs House. Besides the bull statue, which was barricaded and surrounded by police, we were free to assemble there. People were making speeches up on the steps and we were seeing a lot of Guy Fawkes masks. A decision had been made to gather the First Assembly at Zuccotti Park, which is bordered by Broadway, Liberty and Church Streets, adjacent to where the WTC Towers once stood. So the group of a thousand people or so walked uptown about 8 blocks along Broadway chanting “All Day, All Week, Occupy Wall Street”, being greeted by sympathetic car horn beeps, some nervous tourists walking in the opposite direction, and lots of thumbs up and peace signs from people on top of tour buses. We walked by Trinity Church. Across the street the police had the actual Wall St pretty much locked down. It looked like it was totally barricaded. I couldn’t see any pedestrians there at all. When we got to the park everyone settled down and started the “Assembly”, basically a bunch of separate groups where people took turns speaking about issues that mattered to them like corporate personhood and what to do about it. Aside from a few weird things like a group called the Primetime Brass Band showing up on the northwest corner of the park, surrounded by policemen, playing the US Air Force Theme very loudly and obnoxiously (at first we thought they were the Hungry March Band), things were mellow. We left as it began to get dark. The police said they would remove people at 10pm. They didn’t. About 500 people slept overnight, Occupying Wall Street (symbolically at least) for the first night. They’re still there now – mab
Here’s some links:
Video report from Waging Nonviolence [Recommended]
Occupy Wall St Twitter
Anonymous’ Twitter
Adbusters’ Live Video feed and Twitter action stream