Sayonara Obama

by Ariel Dorfman
On Wednesday afternoon, we marched out of Zuccotti Park, where the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have bedded down for the duration.  Drums were pounding and shouts of “Who’s streets?  Our streets!” “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street,” and “This is what democracy looks like, that is what hypocrisy looks like!” rang out as we headed directly into New York City’s version of a police state.  The helicopters with the high-tech sensors and high-resolution cameras hovered in the distant sky, the security cams peered down from walls, the barriers the police had set up hemmed us in -- no street, just sidewalk for these demonstrators -- and the cops, scores of flexi-cuffs looped at their belts, were lined up all along the way, while empty buses wheeled past ready for future arrestees.  This was not exactly a shining Big Apple example of the “freedom” to demonstrate.  It was demonstration as imprisonment and at certain moments, at least for this 67-year-old, it was claustrophobic.  This is the way the state treats 15,000 terrorist suspects, not its own citizens.

Still, the energy and high spirits were staggering.  The unions were out -- nurses, teachers, construction workers -- the bands were lively (“… down by the riverside, ain’t gonna study war no more…”), and hand-made signs were everywhere and about everything under the sun: “Crime does pay in the USA -- on Wall Street,” “When did the common good become a bad idea,” “4 years in college, $100,000 in debt, for a hostess job,” “Eat the rich,” “Arab Spring to Wall Street Fall” (with the final “L” in “Fall” slipping off the sign), “We are the 99%,” “Legalize online poker, occupy Wall St.”

Amid the kaleidoscopic range of topics on those signs and in those chants and cries, one thing, one name, was largely missing: the president's.  In those hours marching and at Foley Square amid the din of so many thousands of massed people, I saw one sign that said “Obama = Bush” and another that went something like “The Barack Obama we elected would be out here with us.” That was it. Sayonara.