Healthcare activists — including doctors — marched through Washington Square Wednesday night
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

NEW YORK — October 26, 2011. On Wednesday a large group of doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, and Occupy Wall Street protesters marched from Zuccotti Park to the offices of insurance giant Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, past Medicaid managed care provider WellCare, and on to the site of St. Vincents Hospital which closed its doors last April — leaving Manhattan’s West Side with no hospital below 57th Street.

A prescription for progress?
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Carrying signs demanding “Healthcare for the 99%,” “Get Wall Street Out Of Our Healthcare,” “Medicare For All,” “Single Payer Now,” and “Heal America: Tax Wall Street,” a procession that included people in wheelchairs as well as lab coats, wound its way up Broadway, through a darkened Washington Square, across 12th Street and onto Seventh Avenue — where a rally was held outside the shuttered St. Vincents.

The healthcare march started at Zuccotti Park
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Demands for a hospital and accountability from local politicians reverberated in the West Village on Wednesday night, given voice by community organizer Yetta Kurland and repeated by a “mic check” composed of physicians, nurses and community members.

Katie Robbins of Healthcare-Now, one of the march organizers
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Their message: healthcare is a human right, and if we can build a hospital in Iraq, why not in New York?

“Healthcare for the 99%” was the rallying cry of the protesters
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

A doc from Physicians For A National Health Program (lab coat) marched in the lead element
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Bernadette Evangelist and Bruce Rosen of Democracy For NYC
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

View Photos/Videos From The Event…

“Health Care Is A Human Right” the protesters argued
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

A guitarist plies his trade in Zuccotti Park
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

“Sunday Morning” is probably my favorite Lou Reed song — I play it, you guessed it, every Sunday morning. I suppose it’s a combination of the lush production and the starkly beautiful voice of Nico (she sings the harmony) that does it for me. I’ve always admired Nico and had the good fortune to see her perform in the Lower East Side in the early Eighties.

Relaxing with some music on a Sunday
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

“Sunday Morning” was written quickly, in an effort to produce a hit. There’s a lot to be said for fast takes and songs written straight from the heart.

“Sunday morning, praise the dawning — It’s just a restless feeling, by my side…”

Drummers can be found along Church Street — dancers too
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

***

World War One, the so-called Great War, was not only an exercise in futility but a good example of the all-too-human capacity for brutality. It was the first war where the machine gun was widely used — with predictable results.

In the first year of the war, after peppering one another with a hail of bullets for four months, German and British troops observed a Christmas truce. Soldiers crossed no-man’s land and visited their opposite numbers, bringing gifts and staying for dinner. Many of the Germans who broke bread with the British in the Ypres sector were Bavarian. One of their number, a corporal named Adolf Hitler, thought the truce was terrible — as did the generals on both sides.

The Christmas Truce stands as a bright spot in a four year stretch of carnage and destruction that destroyed an entire generation.

***

On Sundays it is usually possible to talk with protesters
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

On Saturdays the Occupy Wall Street protesters march. The police follow. And too often the police treat the protesters as if they were the enemy - battering, bruising, and arresting the unarmed and unresisting. It’s tough to guess why the policing has been so aggressive. Perhaps the goal is to provoke the protesters for political purposes. To their credit the protesters have demonstrated a degree of professionalism that so far has largely eluded the police department.

Reading the Journal — The Occupied Wall Street Journal
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

On Sundays the police presence at Zuccotti Park is muted. There is little of the aggressive behavior usually visited on the plaza by police at other times: officers telling pedestrians they have to keep moving, as if the public sidewalks and streets belong to someone other than the people. As if talking to the protesters is something to be avoided.

There are a lot of students in the park on Sunday
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

On Sundays the protesters seem to want to recharge batteries and the atmosphere is calm, soothing, family friendly.

***

I enjoy black-and-white film photography and shoot as many frames as time allows - developing the film at home and printing in a public darkroom.

Every photog and journo I’ve spoken with described the protesters as “welcoming”
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Although I often carry my battered Nikon film cameras with me, I use digital SLRs and shoot color — usually in burst mode — when doing photojournalism. Doing “PJ”, as photogs call it, does not always allow for art. It is possible to craft an interesting shot, it is possible to get a sharp image, but the goal is to “get the shot” and all other considerations are secondary.

On Sunday cops and journos have some downtime
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

And so I shoot digital as I have to — but I prefer film.

Film forces artistry and craft to the foreground. Especially black-and-white film. With monochrome images composition and contrast are key and film can be unforgiving. For those of us who love nothing more than watching a print develop, it’s a labor of love. And when I can’t shoot film but find an opportunity to do something arty, I set my digital cameras to emulate Kodak Tri-X film: I set the ISO (speed or light sensitivity) to 400, and set the “color” to monochrome. Often I use both types of cameras — film and monochromatic digital — in one shoot. The digital camera can be used to set up shots in tricky lighting.

An activist does a bit of stenciling for someone visiting the encampment
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Zuccotti Park is a tough shoot. It’s very dark in the interior and very bright and glary on the periphery. I like to shoot there on Sundays when there is no pressure to “get the shot.” It’s nice to have time to talk with people, hear their stories, and try to do a portrait or two. As I told one woman, Sunday is about the people. Even the police seem to understand that Sunday is a good time to observe a truce. Maybe one day that truce will be formalized into an armistice and the false binary that is the Police Department vs. Participatory Democracy will be ended.

There’s always hope. Especially on Sunday Morning.

Praise the dawning.

(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Click HERE to see more Sunday Morning shots

Labor in the house
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The NYPD now routinely guards the famous Bull — and Wall Street itself
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

NEW YORK — October 15, 2011. When you combine the energy and attitude of youth with the experience and resources of organized labor you get a Movement — and Occupy Wall Street is such an entity, a people-powered phenomenon that is on the move.

On Saturday OWS protesters and Labor marched through the financial district
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The Occupy Wall Street protest is a pastiche of protesters and police — including reprehensible acts of brutality. It is a sea of faces, human faces. Beyond the wide angle stippling that is the impressionistic view of Occupy Wall Street conveyed by the corporate media, beyond the “organizers” that the media (and the police) desperately seek, are the people powering the Movement — and those opposing them.

The UAW showed up in force on Saturday
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

On Saturday a people-powered procession, over a thousand strong, moved out of Zuccotti Park and visited several Chase Manhattan Bank locations before venturing on to Washington Square — and later, Times Square. It was an energetic, fearless, heroic, jubilant and unified march — flanked by the now infamous scooter cops. Solidarity and diversity as reality — a crowd that refused to be cowed or controlled by any purveyors of gratuitous violence. It was an array of activists — young and old, student and worker. And the focus, the Cause, was crystal clear — the march was part of a “global day of action” that produced protests in London, Tokyo, Sydney, Toronto, and many other locales.

The second stop on the protesters’ Chase itinerary
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

To the protesters Chase Manhattan is a symbol of the problem confronting working people everywhere - predatory and duplicitous banks. Chase took bailout funds, fired workers, and gave its executives bonuses. SEIU has a page detailing the bailout bonus scenario — the numbers defy belief. Here are just a few: Federal taxpayer bailout received: $94.7 billion, profits for 1998-2008: $97.6 billion, change in bank account fees (2003-08): up 249.5 percent, Chase bank teller wages: $22,006 annually, and CEO Jamie Dimon’s paycheck: $19.7 million (893 times median teller wage).

Michael Belt and Rose Bookbinder outside Chase
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

“Which is the greater crime — to rob a bank or to own one,” playwright Bertolt Brecht famously asked.

The protesters know.

And so does the mayor.

Does Mayor Bloomberg suffer from fear of Democracy, is he anxious about a crumbling autocracy?
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

While Bloomberg tells the press that he supports the protesters’ First Amendment rights, his police harass them at every turn: pepper-spraying defenseless women already in police custody, beating journalists — including Fox News — and driving into, and in one case over, protesters with scooters.

The cop from the First Precinct who drove his scooter into Ari Douglas, a National Lawyers Guild legal observer, is only the most egregious example of this brutal approach to policing protesters — it has been in place at least as far back as the 2004 Republican National Convention. In fact, The NYPD’s pepper-spraying inspector known as “Tony Baloney” has litigation pending — he is accused of civil rights violations that occurred around the time of the RNC.

Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins…and angers protesters
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

How has it come to pass that driving a motor vehicle into nonviolent protesters is an acceptable tactic for crowd control?

Does the First Precinct, infamous for the use of scooters as a weapon, and Anthony “Tony Baloney” Bologna’s former command, serve a special purpose for the NYPD and the mayor?

Should scooter cop units be disbanded?
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Although the public statements of NYPD spokesman Paul Brown are often unintentionally humorous, albeit in a perverse way, it is a simple matter to discern when he is massaging the truth. As the old joke about politicians goes, whenever the man opens his mouth we can be assured it is to utter something that appears patently absurd.

Bloomberg: man of the people?
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

One thing is clear: Mike Bloomberg is not a man of the people. The billionaire mayor is on the record as not wanting to “scare” the rich by taxing them. After all, he’d have to pay some taxes himself.

Police guarding the R train — outside City Hall — during Saturday’s march
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Prior to the Occupy Wall Street protest becoming a truly historic event, Bloomberg predicted riots — a self fulfilling prophecy? Who has declared class war on whom? And who is rioting?

An organizer from Toledo (with UAW sign) marching with Occupy Wall Street
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

And when citizen journalists — those who escape the mace, the truncheon and the flexcuffs — document misconduct by police, commissioner Ray Kelly is quick to offer some implausible mystification slash justification. This is not a new phenomenon, the NYPD too often serves the same purpose the Pinkertons once provided. It is a stain on the honor of those cops who try to do a good job.

Kelly often talks about the need to enforce the law when explaining away some act of brutality. One has to wonder when he plans to start.

What are Bloomberg and Kelly really afraid of?

Famous New Yorker Peter Parker (aka Spiderman) at Saturday’s march
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

One protester expressed it very well. As she marched along West Broadway, heading towards Washington Square, she carred a sign that said simply, “You have a right to be happy.”

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It was a radical idea when first formulated — it still is.

“America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath — America will be,” said the poet Langston Hughes.

“You have the right to be happy”
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

All of the pepper-spray, the false arrests — from University Place to Times Square — the acts of brutality, the lacking response of Internal Affairs, the mystification and doublespeak offered by the Mayor, cannot derail the one thing driving the Movement.

Hope.

View Photos/Videos From The Event…

Perhaps the one newspaper in America with an increasing circulation:
The Occupied Wall Street Journal
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

NEW YORK — October 8, 2011. Saturday in the park, Zuccotti Park, was a busy, vibrant scene — but Washington Square was also home to several hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters.

A public school teacher from Chicago protests at Zuccotti Park
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest at Zuccotti Park / Liberty Square continues to grow. On Saturday, protesters lined the eastern edge of the park, along busy Broadway, holding up signs and talking with people passing by. On the street side of the throng, cops scolded pedestrians — telling any and all onlookers to “keep moving.” The occasional tour bus stopped briefly on its journey down Broadway — as tourists waved, flashed peace signs, and took pictures from atop their double-decker vehicle.

Wading through the crowd of protesters, police, and passersby, hawkers sold “99%” t-shirts — it was inevitable - as the park pulsated from drum beats emanating from the Church Street side. In between Broadway and Church, in the park itself, hundreds of people chatted, painted signs, slept, ate, and enjoyed an unusually warm and sunny Fall day.

The drumming at Zuccotti adds a festive quality to the protest
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

At 3 p.m. several hundred people poured into Washington Square for a General Assembly. A group of doctors stood near the Washington Square Arch holding signs that read, “This doctor cares about the 99 percent.” Veterans For Peace stalwart Bill Steyert stood on a bench, holding vigil, waving his VFP flag. Nearby, a woman distributed copies of The Occupied Wall Street Journal.

The assembly was peaceful, welcoming — and joyous.

A doctor who cares…
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Later, a large procession made its way from Zuccotti Park to the Square — and back again. Despite a large police presence there were no incidents.

Bill Steyert holds vigil at Washington Square
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The feel of the protest on Saturday was that of a festival — a celebration of life in all its diversity. A wide variety of people sharing a common space — and a common dream.

The dream: peace and prosperity for all
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

***

At one point in the day, as I left Zuccotti Park to head up to Washington Square, I stood next to a traffic cop. We glanced at one another as we waited for the light to change on Broadway.

I said to the woman, “Hey you know if the P.D. wanted to be useful it would provide the protesters with porta-potties rather than all these uniforms.”

The cop looked at me and laughed, nodding…

A legal observer keeps watch at Washington Square
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

View Photos/Videos From The Event…

The reality of modern war — brain injuries and amputations
(Photo: Ed Hedemann / NLN)

NEW YORK — October 7, 2011. Marking a decade of destruction, the War Resisters League (WRL) and Peace Action (PASI) held protests in Manhattan and Staten Island, respectively, on Friday — the tenth anniversary of the Afghanistan War.

Well known pacifist — and photographer — David McReynolds
(Photo: Ed Hedemann / NLN)

In Manhattan protesters gathered in Times Square where David McReynolds, the elder statesman of the pacifist movement, called for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. Also on hand to demand an end to America’s longest war were Congressman Charles Rangel and civil rights attorney Norman Siegel.

Norm Siegel and Charles Rangel at Time Square
(Photo: Ed Hedemann / NLN)

***

Rich Greve asks Rep. Michael Grimm: “Mike, can you hear me now?”
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

On Staten Island two dozen protesters — members of Peace Action, the UAW and other groups — rallied outside the office of Rep. Michael Grimm.

Two dozen of Grimm’s constituents held a rally on busy New Dorp Lane on Friday
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Grimm, a Republican, rode to power on the coattails of the Tea Party in 2010. Once elected he opted not to join the Tea Party caucus, preferring to join the Republican Main Street Partnership. Despite joining the more moderate group, Grimm remains a hawk and an uncritical supporter of Israel.

Protesters rallying outside Grimm’s office
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The protesters called on Grimm to end the Afghan War now and use tax dollars to rebuild an America the group feels is “Sliding into depression with 20 million Americans out of work.”

Activist Bill Johnsen outside Rep. Mike Grimm’s office
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us almost one-and-a-half trillion dollars since 2001, money that could have been used to solve urgent problems at home. The bloated Pentagon budget gets 60 cents of every tax dollar in the federal discretionary budget while public schools get just 4 cents,” Peace Action Staten Island said in a prepared statement.

View Photos/Videos From The Event…

The Return Of Hope
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

NEW YORK — October 5, 2011. The corporate press ignored it, the police pepper-sprayed and arrested it, but it keeps getting bigger.

A protester “speaks” to corporate media
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The Occupy Wall Street protest is growing larger every day.

Why all the white shirts?
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

NYPD spokesman Paul Brown can offer non-sequiturs — trying in vain to justify harassment — and Ray Kelly can put every white shirt in the department on the streets but the ranks of the protesters are getting larger and larger. And they will have a voice, a say.

Culture clash?
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Who are these people?

Radicalism?
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

It isn’t just students. It isn’t just socialists. It is also: working stiffs, the foreclosed, the uninsured, the unemployed, the homeless, the disenfranchised, the stopped-and-frisked — all of the people who stopped believing for a time but have since been born again — as Americans in pursuit of a Dream. They describe themselves as the “99 percent” — contrasting themselves with the richest 1 percent of Americans.

The “99 percent” are taking to the streets
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

And they are taking it to the streets.

Sisterhood is powerful — as is the backing of labor
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

An event billed as a “Labor and Community March” — in support of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest — was planned for Wednesday with several labor unions signing on. Foley Square was designated the meetup point and the march was scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m.

UAW organizer Rose Bookbinder at Foley Square
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

At 3 p.m. a massive march streamed out of Zuccotti Park, heading north. Corporate media was in a feeding frenzy, tripping over themselves and anyone in their way, and Broadway was a sea of chanting protesters. New Yorkers watched from the east side of the avenue, video-and-digicams in hand. NYPD traffic cops struggled to keep buses and other vehicles moving, with limited success. The gigantic column wound its way towards Foley Square, apparently looking to join up with the union marchers who were already pouring into the square.

A member of the UAW family
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

By 4:30 there were thousands of protesters in Foley Square, including a large continent from the United Auto Workers — and their family members.

Labor turned out in large numbers for Wednesday’s march
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

At 5 p.m. the UAW contingent, including this reporter, headed towards Zuccotti Park, by way of City Hall. It was a slow process, the police restricted the marchers to the sidewalk — a strategy guaranteed to create bottlenecks — and the contingent was but one of many labor unions and other groups participating. Eventually the National Writers Union made its way into the park — the first UAW local to do so.

Novelist Timothy Sheard, a member of the National Writers Union
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

As evening fell on Zuccotti Park a small number of protesters and police clashed nearby. White shirted police used nightsticks on unarmed protesters, hitting Fox reporter Dick Brennan in the process. Fox News photographer Roy Isen was pepper-sprayed as well. Both men continued covering the protest. Fox later aired video footage that showed a police supervisor repeatedly striking protesters with his baton.

The NYPD’s orange netting is becoming ubiquitous
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The fact that the NYPD is deploying so many officers of supervisory rank (white shirts are lieutenants and above) to engage protestors with weapons normally carried by rank-and-file cops may be significant. Is there some concern about the rank-and-file being hesitant to engage in acts of violence against peaceful protesters?

A column of cops marching past Foley Square
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

In any case the Occupy Wall Street protest has not diminished because of police activity — it is clearly gaining momentum. The protesters will not be disuaded by police violence and this must be a source of anxiety for whomever is ordering the police department brass to attack nonviolent protesters.

As the occupation grows so does labor support. Unions are pledging to provide a variety of support, including food, clothing, and medical care and training.

The occupation has become a Movement
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The occupation that started less than a month ago has become a Movement — and is spreading across the nation.

The Daily Kos is reporting that over 200 solidarity occupations are underway. The list describes Occupy Wall Street as the “New York City mothership.”

View Photos/Videos From The Event…

The National Writers Union is Local 1981 of the UAW
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

[ NOTE: since this story was filed the NWU has changed the meetup location.

From Larry Goldbetter:

“The NWU/UAW and other unions will be assembling in Foley Square before marching to Wall St. Our delegation will meet at the corner of Lafayette and Worth Streets at 4:30 PM. Look for UAW flags and logos and the NWU banner. See you there.” ]

NEW YORK — National Writers Union president Larry Goldbetter is calling all writers to put down their pens and their ipads — and march with the NWU’s parent union, the UAW, in support of the Occupy Wall Street protest.

Goldbetter and his fellow scribes will be assembling at 250 Broadway — outside City Hall — tomorrow, October 5, at 4:30 p.m. The NWU and other UAW locals will be marching down Broadway to Zuccotti Park to stand with the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

“By now, everyone is probably aware of the protest that has been going on in the Wall Street area. Thousands of demonstrators have been on the street in Zuccotti Park protesting runaway corporate power and the growing wealth inequality in our country. While the top one percent of the country enjoy fabulous riches — and pay little in taxes — unemployment, foreclosures and poverty are increasing for the rest of us,” Goldbetter said.

“Under the banner, ‘We are the 99%,’ the Wall Street protests are raising important issues for working people and inspiring similar actions around the country,” he said.

Supporters of the UAW and the NWU are encouraged to march with the union.

“Our parent union, the UAW, along with other unions and community groups is supporting the protest. Please join the UAW contingent this Wednesday, October 5 at 4:30 pm at City Hall, 250 Broadway for a massive Labor/Community march to Wall Street. The short march to Zuccotti Park will probably begin around 5 p.m. and we will walk down Broadway together to join the protestors. Invite friends and family to march with us. Look for the UAW signs or the NWU banner,” Goldbetter said.

A message to the working class — and the NYPD
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

NEW YORK — September 30, 2011. The U.S. Left has long dreamt of a student-worker alliance, something that has proved elusive, but today it happened — on Wall Street.

Labor weighs in
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

“Tony Baloney” — the YouTube antihero, the pepper-spraying NYPD inspector with a sociopathic glint in his eye, deserves a lot of credit for his role in uniting the youth led “Occupy Wall Street” protest and organized labor.

Perhaps it was inevitable — given the meltdown that is the U.S. economy — that Wall Street corruption and government complicity would provoke a popular uprising. The devastation visited on the downwardly mobile American middle class stands in stark contrast to the record profits and bonuses the Wall Streeters are pocketing. Nonetheless, Anthony V. Bologna‘s wild, woolly and wanton act of brutality sped things up.

“Tony Baloney’s” memorable monicker and cinematic debut have made the man a star — and helped the protesters he brutalized.

An appeal to end brutality
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The NYPD tried to do damage control but the public proclamations — that the use of pepper-spray on defenseless women, already in police custody, was “appropriate” — just didn’t wash. And “Machine Gun” Kelly’s announcement on 60 Minutes that the NYPD has anti-aircraft capabilities could not overshadow the vivid images of a white shirted Kojak going ballistic on prone protesters. And then bravely running away, leaving rank-and-file cops to clean up his mess and take the heat.

Support for Occupy Wall Street is increasing
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Not surprisingly, after the pepper-spraying incident the Occupy Wall Street protest finally attracted the attention of the corporate media.

As one Daily News reporter put it, “We’ve followed the protest every day but we didn’t put it in the paper until after the pepper-spraying incident because it wasn’t a story.”

And with the press attention came the celebrities. And more importantly, organized labor.

A postal worker standing with the protesters
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Late last week the executive board of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) voted to endorse the action. And on Friday night the union backed up the vote by sending a boistrous contingent to the anti-brutality march organized by Occupy Wall Street and their supporters.

The march originated at Zuccotti Park, recently reborn as Liberty Square. By 4 p.m. the square was crowded and encircled. Collar devices on white shirted NYPD bosses told the story — a number of deputy inspectors and several grades of chief stood along Broadway surveying the scene as the Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) taped protesters, citing “imminent arrest” as the rationale. No one was arrested, however.

Searching for the American Dream
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

As people approached Zuccotti Park the police yelled, “Keep moving, keep the sidewalk clear.” And for the most part protesters complied.

TWU Local 100 enters Liberty Square
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Around five o’clock, applause, whistling and cheering started - the TWU contingent had entered the park. What an entrance it was. Local 100 got a hero’s reception from the occupiers. The cavalry had arrived.

Half an hour after Local 100’s arrival it was time to march to police headquarters.

A UAW member in Liberty Square
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

The march up Broadway was flanked by scooter cops from the First Precinct, community affairs cops in pale blue shirts, and a white-shirted lieutenant with a bullhorn who urged people to keep moving and stay out of the street.

Occupy Wall Street marches to 1 Police Plaza
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Entering the archway that leads into 1 Police Plaza (1PP), the marchers cheered and clapped — the mood was festive, the energy palpable.

UAW intern Michael Belt videotapes the multitude at 1 Police Plaza
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

Ringed by cops and media, the protesters found themselves next to a sizable contingent of United Auto Workers — UAW Region 9a members, carrying flags and banners, had marched to 1PP from Foley Square.

The scene outside 1PP
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

As cops lined up in front of 1PP the protesters filled the interior courtyard. There were signs and raised fists as far as the eye could see. Thousands of protesters cheered as night fell.

One long time protester, an old friend and seasoned activist, asked if we could stop for a moment on our way out.

“You don’t see this very often,” he said.

View Photos/Videos From The Event…

[ At press time reports are coming in that “dozens” of Occupy Wall Street protesters have been arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. ]