After last month’s People’s Climate March, in which 400,000 people marched for greater awareness of climate change, several thousand people descended on lower Manhattan for the event’s more radical cousin: Flood Wall Street.
The largely peaceful protest was meant to redirect the climate change conversation by pointing the finger of blame directly at those, the protestors argue, who have profited from the environmental destruction that is causing the problem: Wall Street, and the capitalist virtue of limitless growth.
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Of the thousands who flooded Wall Street, one hundred were arrested, a voluntary act that took place many hours into the action, when they refused to be budged from where they were sitting on Broadway and Wall St. They were charged with disorderly conduct, for blocking the street, and a refusal to disperse.
The scene at September’s “Flood Wall Street.” Video: Alex Pasternack
Of those one hundred who were arrested, twelve protesters decided to not take the plea that was offered to them. Instead, they are pleading not guilty, necessitating a trial that will be held on December 8th.
At a press conference on Tuesday, across the street for the Criminal Court on Centre Street, media spokesperson John Tarleton, who had himself been arrested, introduced the group by saying that they would be arguing what’s known as a “necessity defense.”
“The harm being caused by Wall Street is so much greater than any harm done when people were sitting down on Broadway and Wall St.,” he told a small crowd.
The defendants will all face up to fifteen days in jail, and up to a $500 fine.
The Lorax came too. Image: Lucy Teitler
“Four hundred thousand people were at the Global Climate March, but this is not the work of a single day,” he said. “Capitalism cannot solve the climate crisis. Business as usual is not acceptable. We have to challenge ourselves—a protest on a single day is not enough.”
One of his colleagues held a microphone, ineffective at some distance away from him, in what looked like a strange compromise of an Occupy Wall Street gathering, with a “people’s mic,” and a traditional press conference.
Four others who were also pleading not guilty spoke after Tarleton, echoing the imperative to keep up the momentum of September’s actions.
“It is socially irresponsible to arrest protesters when we really should arrest climate profiteers on Wall Street,” defendant Krystle Holmes said.
Their attorney, Martin Stolar, also represented Cecily McMillan, the activist who was at the center of a controversy regarding her arrest for assaulting a police officer during the 2011 Occupy protests (she and her supporters said that she was the one who was assaulted; she spent 58 days in jail). Stolar spoke last.
“Climate change and the responsibility for climate change belongs at the feet of the people who control capital in this country,” he said. “Ultimately [fixing the problem] is going to make them more money.”
In a poetic reminder that market abuses can be curtailed by direct action, at that moment a large union demonstration happened to be taking place directly across the street. Hundreds of court employees from ten unions were uniting for a lunchtime rally to oppose cutbacks and what they regarded as an inadequate contract offer, which offers no raises for three years.
Their crowd, anchored by the iconic inflatable rat of labor actions across the city, spilled out into the street. Union officers spoke in rich New York accents, echoing the protesters across the street as they described a sustained movement.
The court workers gathered across the street, with a giant rat. Image: Lucy Teitler
“Will we ever stop fighting?” yelled Joe Walsh, president of New York State Court Clerks Association, through a bullhorn to the large, energized crowd.
“No!”
“Will we always keep fighting?”
“Yes!”
It sounded almost like the calls and responses that could have been heard a few blocks away during the Flood Wall Street protests. The climate protesters had dispersed by then, with plans to return for their court date in a little over a month.
The union members—many dressed in court uniforms, others in suits—then marched en masse around the corner to another judicial building. Their lunch hour was almost over.
Joe Walsh and Brian DiGiovanna. Image: Lucy Teitler
“Will we ever surrender?” asked Brian DiGiovanna, president of the Association of Supreme Court Reporters Within the City of New York.
“No!”
“Today is a declaration of war!” said Pat Cullen, president of the New York State Supreme Court Officers Association. “You cannot win a war without an army. We’re motivating an army that will not lie down and die like we have in the past.”
