When I first drafted this article, the Mean Young Liberal, age 4, was busy constructing “Occupy Wall Street” out of Lego figures. I guess he was impressed with the display of Occupy Lego Land. As I finished it two days later, the NYPD had evicted Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park and were, at that moment, apparently being directed to defy a court order that had permitted the Occupiers back into the park with their equipment.
This past Sunday, I brought the MYL (my nickname for my four-and-a-half year old son) to visit Occupy Wall Street. You see, my husband and I had decided to raise our son in the Religious Society of Friends. (“Hicksite” version). Due to some logistic oddities, we travel from Westchester County to the East Village to attend Meeting and First Day (what Quakers call Sunday) School. Typically, I try to make those days into adventures for the MYL and that Sunday would not be an exception, at least I hadn’t planned it to be. It turned out to be a fairly exceptional day indeed.
It’s fair to say that the beliefs of Quakers are pretty mystical. The MYL is too young to comprehend the “Light, which could be said to be the way Quakers conceive of God. He’s too young to conceive of a Spirit greater than himself, shared among all humankind. It will be some time before he understands just how the early Friends extracted the Testimonies of Peace, Simplicity, Truth, and Equality from the Biblical accounts of Jesus.
But he’s not too young to understand the value of action for one’s principles, which could easily describe Occupy Wall Street’s motives. I concluded that the best way to teach him the Testimonies would be to model them myself just as George Fox (often credited as the founder of the Society of Friends) said of Jesus (that he had come to “teach his people himself”). Today, we would visit some of the MYL’S favorite attractions, but only after we stopped by Zuccotti Park and offered to buy supplies for Occupy Wall Street.
We arrived at the Meeting House in just enough time for me to bring him to the nursery room and then find my seat in the main Meeting room. I’d considered mentioning my mission at the Social Hour that typically follows the Meeting for Worship. I decided against it, electing to not place the Meeting (congregation) in the position of rejecting my “concern” (mission for action). OWS’s reluctance to embrace a form of cohesive leadership had already been to some of its detriment. Some of the reported official practices in the General Assembly would not be acceptable to Friends as they would constitute an offense to Equality in the name of Equality. I had no idea if the Meeting was willing to be so publicly associated with the movement. I should know Quakers better by now. Two members mentioned Occupy Wall Street in their messages delivered that morning.
Breaking the silent waiting that characterizes an unprogrammed Meeting for Worship, one member was moved to tell the story of a comic entertainer he’d met who began his career as a clown while a young activist. This activist had been beaten repeatedly by the police for his peace witnessing, once so badly that he’d been placed in a full body cast. He reasoned that if he wore a clown suit to the next peaceful protest, the police would be reluctant to be seen beating him. It worked. The member telling us this backstory then asked us all to keep the participants of Occupy Wall Street in the Light, reminded as he was that they were all risking physical harm to witness for Equality and Peace, especially, he added, on this coming Thursday.
I imagined that George Fox himself would have understood OWS clearly. Afterall, the social inequity of his day outraged him as an offense to the God within all persons. He rejected dogma to such an extreme that he refused to lay out any rules for his new movement at all, being convinced that the Light would bring all Friends to similar conclusions eventually. That was until an early adherent was arrested for blasphemy over his staging a controversial demonstration at Bristol in 1656. As a result, Fox reluctantly agreed to call an assembly of elders. Even at this conference, the assembly was sure to state their distaste for written rules (Dearly Beloved Friends…).
Perhaps I shouldn’t have worried about the Quakers not agreeing with my plans.
The Meeting for Worship ended at noon and I made my way back to the nursery to go get the MYL. We traveled down to Rector Street on the 1 train, leaving us to walk north on Church Street towards Cedar Street, the south boundary of the park. We heard the drum circle before we even got there. “What’s that sound?” he asked me and I just smiled. “I’m pretty sure that’s the camp we’re going to,” I told him. He cheered. He’d had no idea that they’d be playing music. He danced while we crossed Church and Cedar Streets.
I’d had no idea just how crowded the sidewalks around the park would be. Two months in and they’re attracting more attention than ever. Hell, they’re even a tourist attraction by now. This was amazing stuff, indeed.
I knew what I’d come to do. I knew what the MYL had wanted to see. He’d seen photos of some Lego figures here and I promised him that we’d see them as soon as I talked to some people. I’d seen a photo of a sign saying that women’s supplies were desperately needed. I headed to the women’s tent and spoke to a woman there who told me that women’s underwear was really needed. I told her we’d make a trip to Century 21 and be back shortly.
If you’ve been to Zuccotti Park, you know just how tough it is to walk through the crowd. Now, imagine if you were only three-and-a-half feet tall and with only 3 years’ experience in walking. That’s what it was like for the MYL. He had listened intently to my conversations and understood where we were going. He never complained, even when I turned back because I remembered to ask the same woman what sizes were needed. In fact, while walking to the store, he looked up at the new Liberty Tower and sighed “I love New York City.”
He never complained while we walked all the way down to Exchange Place in search of a drug store. In fact, he pointed the store out. He did weasel new train out of it all – from the toy display in Duane Reade – but in my opinion, he’d earned it. He was happy to push the wheeled basket loaded up with cold medicine, pain relief pills, feminine hygiene products, toothbrushes and paste and, of course, his new locomotive to the cashier’s counter and help me unload it all.
When we returned to the park with our donations, it took a while to get it all to the right people. In the meantime, we watched a demonstration by physicians who had shown up to voice their support for universal healthcare. Many of them there were long past paying off their medical school loans. All of them wore their work badges to demonstrate that they were real physicians working in real area hospitals. These truly were people who were serious about preventative medicine and public health improvement. And, incidentially, who inadvertently slowed our donation up by offering free flu shots at the Medical Tent which happened to be right next to the Women’s Tent.
While we were waiting to get through the crowd, the MYL finally got to see the Lego figures.
For their part, the protestors were kind to this adult-of-the-future for whom they’re standing their ground so strongly. One occupier gave him a rainbow peace sign necklace which MYL quickly placed around his own neck and did that little cocky step he does when he feels he’s been included into a grown-up group. He was shown how to do crochet by hand by one of the knitters making hats and scarves for the Occupiers.
One occupier let him play with his pet rat, which he’d named “Roland” – despite being a female. Another gave him a sticker critical of Obama (from the left), but the MYL can’t read, so he was still thrilled to see President Obama’s image. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 70% of Occupiers identify as independent of a political party. Just over a quarter identify as Democrats.
For one last go around, I struggled through the crowd to the Meditation Center. I wanted the MYL to get a sense of reigning peace in the controlled chaos around us. It proved too difficult a path to negotiate and we turned around. At that, another occupier started a conversation with the MYL, telling him that he was the future and their whole reason for acting now. He then asked the MYL if he wanted a sign. Much to my surprise, MYL said “YEAH!” loudly. The occupier, whose name was Chris, took an oversized piece of cardboard and scrawled on it in green crayon: “People Before Profits”. The MYL took the sign that was larger than he was. When he held it out in front of him with both hands, he couldn’t see over it. I laughed. Chris laughed. Chris then took it back and began to cut out a rectangular shape in the upper middle of the sign. It was an eyehole for the MYL to use to see while he carried the sign. Chris took a photo and then, seemingly, Tweeted the image.
It would be a matter of seconds before others standing around spotted the MYL and his sign. Soon, he was holding up pedestrian traffic due to all of the people taking photos of him. I directed the MYL down Liberty Street to clear the bottleneck in the park and to take him where the ruckus would be least obstructive. Most of the snappers had personal cameras. Some had expensive looking cameras, with one man even taking the shot from several angles.
Shortly, the MYL was tired of holding his sign and gave it to me. With that, I told him that we could go to the Seaport if he wished – one of his favorite places in the world – and that we could ride the East River Ferry back uptown, just like we usually do after Meeting. I kept my word and he was thrilled.
Once back at Grand Central, we stopped for hot chocolate at one of the cafes in the lower level. While he sipped, I reviewed the photos I’d taken of the day. When I got to the photo of the sign that had made the MYL so photo popular, I paused. For a moment, I’d wondered about the appropriateness of it all. It’s not like MYL understood why all of these people were taking his picture of what the sign said. Then I wondered if, at any point in his adulthood that he would disagree with the sign’s message. Would he ever want to switch the arrangement of the words to “Profits Before People”?
My next feeling was of one intense sadness for the person who has ever truly felt that or even just claimed it in youthful bravado. That’s a deeply wounded person to be sure. It’s my job to make sure that the MYL doesn’t grow up feeling so insecure and afraid that he feels the need to surround himself with material wealth instead of friends.
By the time we got back home, he went right to sleep. He’d had a pretty busy day full of walking well out of the range of the average four year old’s day.
This morning, I told the MYL about the campers having been forced to move. I told him that the police may have thrown out their books and that we might have to buy them more to replace them. He was happy to hear it. He stood next to me as I watched livestreams of the protestors on their march back to Zuccotti to try to re-enter it.
“They’re trying to change the world”, the MYL commented.
Yeah, just like the Quakers, maybe I shouldn’t worry about the MYL either.
