Its almost a return to medieval warfare, looking at the armored police with their clubs and shields, as well as the armored horses.

The role of the armor, besides the obvious, is to be so intimidating things get done without an actual fight. They want to do their job without getting hurt.
And, of course, no one wants the horses to get hurt.

You pictures reinforce my own post about the other occupation that was going on in DC. A city with a large black populace which didn't come out en masse to support this movement. It doesn't make sense if you look at unemployment and the cost of housing in that area. But it does in how they're concerns are greeted at the GAs. If this movement is going to succeed it will have to be inclusive of the people who are hardest hit by a lagging economy and a sky rocketing cost of living. Love the pics. I had called the Mayor's office to let him know I was watching the live stream in SC. I have to say the staff answering these calls was very polite and seemed understanding.

Police on horses--reminds me of wartime. Great work, as always. Rated.

Thank you for sharing these observations and images. Here in France, we hear so little about Occupy these days that I thought all of the sites had been cleared by the police. I'm glad to see that people are still holding strong - though it's not easy.

@Desnee Flakes
"A city with a large black populace which didn't come out en masse to support this movement."

Occupy may say they are the 99% but the demographics of the people I saw belie that claim.

@Erica
"Police on horses--reminds me of wartime."

Lots of polices and horses here in DC because of all the parks and the crowds. Horses manage crowds amazingly well.

@Alysa,
"Here in France, we hear so little about Occupy these days that I thought all of the sites had been cleared by the police. I'm glad to see that people are still holding strong - though it's not easy."

The fact that you hear little is indicative of the impact that Occupy has made on a day-to-day basis. The police generally ignore them unless the situation is just too provocative. IMO, the Occupy movements have squandered their chances and the lack of planning has betrayed a lot of people.

Thanks all for the comments.

Lew

"It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there..."
--You-Know-Who

rate

@Dr Lee,

I know that's a Bob Dylan line but, in this case, excessive subtlety has defeated itself and I have no idea what your comment meant.
But thanks for the R

Lew

"And, of course, no one wants the horses to get hurt."

~nod~ Hell no!!

Can replace both sides(the Occupiers and the Police) easily but horses, hard to find a really good one!

:D

Rated.

That makes for a good ans snarky comment but that isn't the reason. The entire purpose of having police on horses is crowd control - horses are big and impressive animals and don't have the built-in bad-rep of dogs. The police value their horses and want two things: that the horses don't get hurt and that the horses aren't easily spooked by being injured .
A spooked horse is uncontrollable in a crowd and people would get hurt and the entire issue of crowd control would be lost.
But thank you for your comment, being written I'm certain, on a wind-powered computer from your place in an Occupy site.

Lew

~grin~ Nah, it's powered by its own nuclear power plant somewhere in Maine!! ;)

But I do have a pedal bike with a little hamster peddling away when I'm out in the field, which is never, so...:D

(But seriously, yes, it's like Hannibal and the Elephants, if you seen these huge elephants marching towards you, you'd be frightened too!! The biggest part of war/intimidation is the theatrics, the club to shield, the noise, the flair, etc. etc. Shock and Awe for lack of a better term....better for a protestor to be shocked, then shot! ~nod~ And as you said, horses, well trained for such situations, are much better for crowd control than dogs(which have a tendency to bite which makes for bad public relations --- also another consideration! Sheesh, these protests, both sides, too much like acting classes!! And of course both sides have their loose cannons, for lack of a better term...so be careful out there!)

Lew, I think the photos are great. It shows both sides pretty well.

I have to ask, though, besides you feeling the Occupy folks have squandered their opportunity, where do you stand on the issues?

It seems from some of your responses that you are attempting to "stand to the side," neither actively for nor against. I'm not anything but curious in this regard.

Your photos are most excellent.

--r--

My own feeling is that someone would have to be heartless not to sympathize with those who have lost their way in the crisis and that the US needs to correct this imbalance.

My opinion of the Occupy Movement is that it completely lost its focus, they refused to understand that identifying a problem isn't enough, actual, workable solutions must be proposed to point to a direction.
Lastly the Movement let ego stand in the way of moving towards a solution.
Rather than dressing and acting like the vanguard of the 99% and showing an outward face that everyone could agree with, they dressed and acted like the counter-culture revolutionaries every conservative was anxious to paint them as.

OK, so everyone got to play a latter day Che and dress the part but the DC Occupy, which should have been the most powerful in the country, is an irritant and essentially not even irrelevant but unnoticed.
I remember hearing a speaker, talking to an audience of maybe fifteen people, telling the people listening that 'Washington is afraid of us.'
Afraid?
Not afraid.
Oblivious, maybe. But not afraid.

As transitions are made post-eviction, it forces us the movement to do community outreach in the neighborhoods and championing local 99% struggles and connecting them to the bigger picture, including housing for the homeless evicted from encampments.

Great photos. Every picture tells a story ...

I wonder what the story is of the man with gray hair, the red moustache and the blue eyes?

It's good to see that the protest is going on through the winter. Luckily we haven't had the winter they are having in the Ukraine with people on the street overnight freezing.
That was a neat trick for the slide show. R

@Scarlett Sumac

"Great photos. Every picture tells a story ... "

Thanks,

@Rodney Roe

"That was a neat trick for the slide show. "

No trick, just normal web site stuff - and thanks.

Lew

@Jonathan Cronin

"As transitions are made post-eviction, it forces us the movement to do community outreach in the neighborhoods and championing local 99% struggles and connecting them to the bigger picture, including housing for the homeless evicted from encampments."

So the 'Movement' has diverted from making a major change in the economic infrastructure of this country to finding housing for those homeless who were evicted from McPherson Square.

As I read about it, each 'Occupy', instead of being part of some grand national plan, now is focusing on a problem whose solutions they can see.
Can't you see how problems only get solved when there are solutions proposed and discussed and found?

And by not doing the hard work of finding and proposing some solution for the large problem that's damn easy to identify, Occupy just did the easy part and punked out on the heavy lifting.

In DC, those homeless have been housed many times and as many others just return to the streets for whatever unfathomable reason.

Occupy DC isn't really doing anything, they're just doing busy work to make themselves feel good.

Lew

VZN made a very long comment which was entirely quotes and wasn't either original or on the topic.
I am quite sensitive to the censorship issue but, on the other hand, I don't like threads being hijacked.

He closed with a link to an article he wrote, which seems to be about fixing the Republicans.

Here is the link.

http://open.salon.com/blog/vzn/2012/01/23/gamechanger--_occupying_republicans

Thanks for being there. faved and rated

Your responses to comments are just as educating as the stories told by your excellent photos. Thank you for your sharing.
♥

@oldnewlefty,
It was interesting to be there. I talked at some length to several of the residents (sic?) and developed an interesting, to me at least, theory about the different categories of people there.

Lew

@Fusun (one of my favorite people)

Thanks for that comment. I try to be thankful and cordial without sacrificing my firmly held points of view.

Lew

Powerful is an overused word as is moving. So.
The photo with the masked horse and rider; arresting, the thought of the training it takes to get that even on a horse brings me to the photos of the brigade down the street; stirring. The photos of the occupiers themselves, sad, broken. Us. Relatable to all of us.
Congrats on the cover and EP beautiful depiction of all sides of our human condition.

@the traveler

"Occupy DC isn't really doing anything, they're just doing busy work to make themselves feel good."
Why would you expect them to be any different than anyone else in the US. I am not sure I can even name one person who that doesn't describe.

More and more it all just makes me sadder.

Great photos.

I think the policeman on the horse is my favourite. Thanks!

Actually the Congress down the street is creating the most disruption and annoyance. OccupyDC has its problems, but they do keep reminding us of the savage inequalities that exist in our society. We can't have that can we? It's too upsetting. Tsk..tsk...

traveller,
I'm sure glad some people are listening to you.

No one paid much attention to me when I said, back at the beginning of OWS, that pointing up the problem is only of value if a solution to that problem is offered as well. Hell, all of us can find problems by the truck-full with the way things are. We can easily point fingers and screech like fish-wives at those we deem 'guilty' of some error or stupidity - and there are plenty of those! We can revile those who are doing the very same thing we are - trying to make a bigger buck and to hold onto it all we want but that doesn't change one little thing.

The trick is to devise and share with everyone, SOLUTIONS to the problems. I respect those here on OS who have put forward their ideas and proposed some interesting solutions. I think most of them are little more than band-aid solutions and too many of them are of the "let's turn the clock back" sort, but bless their active little minds for at least giving it a shot. And for having the guts to put them out in public.

Occupy was a great summer party that let lots of people feel they were "doing something". Lots of hugs and pats on the back and "isn't this GREATs", but no real solid thinking behind it. Hell, for the most part, even the cops didn't get too fired up.
.

I respectfully disagree that Occupy protesters did the 'easy' thing. I would think going out in the elements and making a decision to live what you feel is a huge thing. It has had an impact and made a voice where there was none. We castigated the current generation for tuning out, I am glad to see the voicing of what I feel. Pissed off. I am surprised at the vitriol leveled at the folks on the street.

What Rwoo5g says but this is excellent to see esp in DC.



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Hi. The quality of these pictures is superb, as I have found your other photos to be. What's more, this series tells the story that is perhaps indicative of our times; i.e., in spite of people's best intentions, nothing is really happening. It seems OWS attracted a lot of attention initially, but when will that 1% have to pay, anything?

p.s. I viewed the slideshow on the website and the additional pictures are worth looking at.

First much thanks to rita shibr, nerd cred, Barbara Joanne, Algis Kemezys and ManhattanWhiteGirl for their various expressions expressions of approval about the pictures (my pictures).

Photography is an incredibly powerful tool and I think it strikes deeper and harder and faster than words because it stirs up and links with our own old memories and the images cannot be easily expunged.

But of course they can lie equally easily because they catch a chosen moment in time and space - moment chosen by the photographer to make his or her own point.

Second to Anthony Duval, Rita Shibr and Bob Simpson who disagree with me in part that 1) Occupy DC is doing things just like everyone else does 2) Occupy DC is actually doing something and 3) Occupy is reminding us of the annoyances and Congress should act.

Let me, pretty much in concert with skypixie, say that Occupy is doing something, it's just not doing what it could have and should have. It is not this great uniting force that leads the country to change - that it could have been and that the spokespeople originally claimed it would be but who have since become rather silent.

Rather than write something, let me just quote a plangent section of text from skypixie with which I agree wholeheartedly:

“pointing up the problem is only of value if a solution to that problem is offered as well. Hell, all of us can find problems by the truck-full with the way things are. We can easily point fingers and screech like fish-wives at those we deem 'guilty' of some error or stupidity - and there are plenty of those! We can revile those who are doing the very same thing we are - trying to make a bigger buck and to hold onto it all we want but that doesn't change one little thing.”

The goals of Occupy DC and all the others have devolved into just survival and morale boosting. The encampments are left in place only if and until they aren't a sufficient annoyance to justify removing them.

I was amazed at Occupy Wall Street's reaction to being messed around by the 'authorities.' Their very actions are designed to provoke but they counted on those being provoked to react according to some set of rules – amazing. Buddhist monks self-immolate; US protesters get upset at relatively minor tussles.

An appropriate quote from Jimmy Dugan, as played by Tom Hanks, "There ain't no crying in baseball."

The Occupy Movement is the Children's Crusade of our time.

hows the officer who got smashed in the face with a brick doing? is he going to be okay?

Don't be naive!! Those "bad apples" were probably FBI or police informants "planted" there to stir up trouble so as to justify raids. This is how the CIA and FBI always behave. Where have you been?!! What Americans don't know about their own government, and the heinous crimes committed in your name and mine, is appalling! Americans live in a Fascist nation. But the joke's on us!! We ALWAYS lived in a Fascist state, except that the middle class was allowed to be mortgage slaves, etc. as long as it was profitable for the wealthy. Now, the Right Wing Wealthy Ruling Class has other plans for us! I sure do hope that the Transformation occurs later this year, and the evil RWWRC controlling the world, for whom 99% isn't enough and who are now going to take OUR 1%, will be eliminated somehow!!

@Baltimore Aureole

The brick throwing happened after I left, later in the day. I had been told by one of the residents that a new contingent of 'anarchists' had moved in recently. Where bricks came on the spur of the moment is up for speculation.
I heard the 4 men (about 5th from the bottom) discussin how they participated in the aborted attempt to grab the barricade. They moved when they saw me eavesdropping.

@ SBA

or perhaps Israeli provocateurs?
Why can't things actually be as they seem and not the fruit of a large conspiracy by your favorite betes noirs?
My guess is that the a planned provocation would have been greater and more extensive to provide the excuse for more of a crackdown.
As it was, according to all reports, the regulations on sleeping are being enforced and nothing more.

Let me say in advance of anything happening that diverse points of view are welcome as long as they are civil and not abusive either of me or others who make comments.

Actually the Occupy Movement has put forth all kinds of solutions ranging from support of specific legislation to massive societal changes that will takes years to accomplish. It has generated discussions about societal inequalities that would have been unthinkable just a year ago.

But of course one would actually have to read about those solutions and action plans and participate in those discussions.

And that is just soooooooo...much work and soooooooo...time consuming. Besides, American Idol is on.

Great posts and photos. I don't see much about Occupy anymore. It's too bad; not long ago when they had the politicians fighting each other it looked like it could be a force. It just never seemed to come together, and any real power got lost in the mess.
r./

The only Occupy movements I know anything about are local. I'm not involved in the Ottawa Occupy, but some people I know are and so info pops up in my FB page. They are having meetings and drawing up committees and planning actions evidently (I got an invitation to show up on Parliament Hill on a certain date this summer). Closer to home, there's an Occupy in our rural community, and they're busy actually Doing Stuff, survival community sorta stuff. I saw some photos posted on FB of a slow-food demo, and it looked like a fair turn-out...and most of they grey-heads (as opposed to youthful hotheads). I personally know some of these people, and they maintain a low-level community sorta thing all the time - old hippies and back-to-the-landers, artists, 'alternative' people, etc., now with some political people.

How significant this is I don't know. But it may well be that things are going on now sub rosa. It's not that the 1% has other plans for us, as Amy said - it's that they no longer have any use for us, and we will have to get together and find ways to live independent of TPTB. The old hippies and back-to-the-landers have some experience in this.

Aside from the great photos, I find the commentary here, including yours, very interesting.

I tend to agree with you - the the OWS movement is losing its pulse. Old guy that I am, and as a student of history, there are lots of examples in our past where these kinds of intentionally formless movements - religious, social, and political, just kind of flame out precisely because there is no leadership.

Anarchists, ancient or modern, just don't get that groups tend to really behind a leader. Until OWS morphs into a true movement of people who are interested in taking back the country from the 1%, and is led by a new version of Dr. King (as an example), I'd bet this thing will just fizzle out.

The authorities know this, and except for places like Oakland, which has a long history of police riots, leaving them alone to wither on the vine is probably the best option.

@ Bob Simpson

“Actually the Occupy Movement has put forth all kinds of solutions ranging from support of specific legislation to massive societal changes that will takes years to accomplish. It has generated discussions about societal inequalities that would have been unthinkable just a year ago.
But of course one would actually have to read about those solutions and action plans and participate in those discussions.
And that is just soooooooo...much work and soooooooo...time consuming. Besides, American Idol is on.”

Bob, I'm not certain if your last line was meant to imply that I should be reading these proposals or not. I subscribe to as many email lists as I can and I don't get policy documents. If policy documents don't get pushed out to interested people, that's the movement's failure. If they want people to read them, they need to be out.

I did get this on Nov 24, 2011

“In a recent CNN interview, Van Jones said: “Phase two, you move from anger to answers. You move from pointing out the problem to pointing out the solutions,” Jones said. “What you’re going to see now is you have the Occupy movement at the center, that’s the beating heart.”

Wait a second. Slow down.
I thought that the occupy movement came about because our system is broken way beyond any remedy that can come at the ballot box. I asked one Occupier, who had just marched 240 miles from NYC to Washington, DC if she thought that the Occupy Movement should be an electoral force (i.e.- reform) or if it is a revolutionary force- and where VAN JONES fits in that equation.
Watch this video 
Watch this video

http://acronymtv.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/is-van-jones-trying-to-co-opt-occupy/

So this email from Dennis Trainer says that the issue is beyond the ballot box!
--- and into what? Rebellion?

So this Movement, by virtue of its non-leadership style, has spokesperson who are encouraging methods more radical than the ballot box - and how is this encouragement to revolution supposed to appeal to the public?

Lew

Lew

“ I don't see much about Occupy anymore.It just never seemed to come together, and any real power got lost in the mess.”


@ onislandtime

Thank you, there's not much I can say except to excerpt you comment for emphasis

@ Myriad

“But it may well be that things are going on now sub rosa. It's not that the 1% has other plans for us, as Amy said - it's that they no longer have any use for us, and we will have to get together and find ways to live independent of TPTB. ”

I think that there is a 1% that is the Movement and it is their responsibility to make whatever percentage that is uncommitted in the center believe that getting behind this is important and that their methods are workable.

Lew

@Flylooper

“Anarchists, ancient or modern, just don't get that groups tend to rally (edit) behind a leader.
Until OWS morphs into a true movement of people who are interested in taking back the country from the 1%, and is led by a new version of Dr. King (as an example), I'd bet this thing will just fizzle out.”

Unfortunately, yes

It's been said that police wear shades to conceal their eyes and make themselves look more menacing. I noticed that by and large, the police have much sturdier well-fed bodies than the protesters and they are cleaner shaven, with uniforms. The protesters look disheveled, disorganized, cold, and unkempt. Has it ever occurred to protest movements that if they were to keep their public hygiene and appearance up to or surpassing the level of the police, they would win more respect from both the police themselves (who admire a clean cut individual) as well as the public who is viewing the photos. I realize having no distinct "target" is a popular anarchist tactic, but I still can't help but think that if they became more monk like in their appearance they would get better results. The sleeping under the bridge look is getting tired. Spend some time on your appearance and you'll get further in this world.

@Aristoxenus

Clearly, you've never been camping.
It is difficult enough to keep clean in an ad hoc environment, let alone, actually look well-groomed. Once the choice of action, the occupation, was made, the 'look' was inevitable.
You are drawing some silly conclusions or at least implying them; dress does not identify an anarchist. When I camp I look equally as scruffy as anyone there.

Lew

a salamagundi of sensibilities
sad misfits
the chronically unemployed
the disenfranchised
the do gooders
the freeloaders
grifters communicationsexpert/master acting guru/award winning international playwright DR LARRY MYERS visited the site


he penned
"President William Henry Harrison at Occupy DC"

he s worked with post Katrina folks post Gulf Oil leak folks Venice car sleepers teen runaways

rwm playwrights lab

a folorn ever changing bunch of idealists & some deeply disturbed guys & gals

Myers a Tennessee williams protege weavesa atle of hope and concurrently Progressive politics gone bad and hopeless ness

his group's mission: service

FASCINATING conversationalists & cultish zombiefied CONFUSED souls....sadly many here have nowehere else to go
no home no food no support system fell through cracks of system
Its Maxim Gorky's "Lower Depths" meets Tennesee Williams' "Small Craft Warnings"
Dr Larry Myers' cycle of post cyber 2012 morality mystery plays called "Occupation Preoccupation" a prequel to his book

EDWARD ALBEE: Occupy theater

dr myers worked with STRAsBERG
GROTOWSKI

THIS IS AN INFORMED ENLIGHTENED voice about this EVeR CHAnGING EVER EVOLVING PHENOMENA
DR MARIA PISCATOR

@theaterguru

I'm not certain how to respond to this last comment, mostly because I have no idea what point you are making. Perhaps it is my failure but I think that more people can understand a comment written in simple English rather than one that is more of a linguistic experience.

Thanks in any case for reading and taking the time to comment.

Lew

A couple of comments 1) People fear dogs they revere horses, part 2) That is because people don't know that when a horse looks at you they see you 3x larger than you are. 3) We have a bounty of movies and books in popular culture that demands we love them. 4)Name an instance where a horse was cast as the bad guy in a movie or book. Can't say the same thing about dogs though.

The Occupy movement is intentionally leaderless, I believe because of our knowledge of the COINTEL program that basically killed off the leadership of social movements in the 60s. You can't chop the head of the snake off if you don't know what end of the larger body it occupies.

And one final observation about your pictures I found the juxtaposition of the majority of blacks in the pictures being part of the part police rather than the occupiers disturbing, telling, confusing, all of the above.

@ Desnee Flakes

“The Occupy movement is intentionally leaderless, I believe because of our knowledge of the COINTEL program that basically killed off the leadership of social movements in the 60s. You can't chop the head of the snake off if you don't know what end of the larger body it occupies.”

That seems to me an odd and paranoia-induced rationalization. This movement sprang up quickly with many different sponsoring organizations; are you implying that there is some infiltration in all of those organizations?

This rationalization seems even more far fetched particularly when you specifically look at the makeup of those sponsoring organizations; they all have leaders.

During one of the public meetings someone said that 'We are a movement of leaders.' My guess, having some experience in group activities, is that, in a group that espoused equality of peers as a core value, that no one wanted to thrust themselves forward as a leader and, if anyone had done that, the rest of the group who wanted to be the leader, would have decried the self-promotion.

In any case, what is left is a Movement without a leader that has turned into a directionless blob. What more could infiltrators done? Are you saying that for fear of something that happened 50 years ago, this movement spontaneously adopted a strategy that led to failure?

“And one final observation about your pictures I found the juxtaposition of the majority of blacks in the pictures being part of the park police rather than the occupiers disturbing, telling, confusing, all of the above.”

I have no idea what you mean there.
Amongst the Occupiers, the younger strata seemed to have a racisl distribution one would expect, although I don't remember seeing many Asians.
Black people were slightly over-represented in the middle aged group; in my estimation some significant part of this group were homeless men from the DC area.

In regards to African Americans amongst the police, African Americans make up a good part of all police forces in this area. Some of the various police organizations require local residency for employment and this area is heavily African American.

Park Police, as a federal agency, probably don't have this restriction and their membership would draw from the entire commuting area and thus the racial demographic is different.

If you are implying that I am making some statement about blacks in my photography, the answer is that I am not.

And I have no idea what that statement might be.

Lew

Lew it would appear you are far more paranoid than I, I was simply making an observation based on your pictures which were near exclusively populated with white occupiers vs a far greater representation of blacks within the park police. If you go back to my original post I did recognize that DC has a very large black population (I did live there). Look again and tell me that isn't what one sees. I also traveled from my home in SC to offer my support to the movement at Freedom Plaza, so I also saw the extremely lopsided representation there. There were 4 black people at that encampment the 2 days I was there. And 2 were myself and my traveling companion. We were there the day Dr. West addressed the crowd then marched off to the Supreme Court to get arrested. There as well he and Kevin Zeese stressed that we are all leaders and again it is my impression that is meant to do several things. Give all participants ownership of the movement and to protect those who may be identified as leaders of the movement. Surely in your world view there is room for someone to come away from the same/similar event as you with a totally different take on it. After all we went to these events having traveled very different roads, with totally different life experiences, so the idea that we would see the same things either through your camera lens or those experiences is not likely. And frankly any student of social movements would be wise to know the history of how governments respond, then take a different tact. Particularly when the killings of opposition leaders is very very well documented. Do the names Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton ring any bells?

@Deneese Flakes

I wasn't being paranoid merely trying to respond to whatever your point was.
Whatever your point is, you certainly have the right to make it.
Whether it is valid in this context can safely be left to others to decide.

These are so raw, and moving. They remind me of some of the scenes of the gay pride parade I went to in Belgrade, Serbia last year - a first ever pride parade there. The police were out in force. Wish you could have photographed that!

Really sir, you believe that my own observations need someone else's agreement to make them valid? Yeah that would explain a lot.

@ Regina Landor

Thank you for looking and commenting

Lew

@ Desnee Flakes

"Really sir, you believe that my own observations need someone else's agreement to make them valid? Yeah that would explain a lot."

You seem to be wanting to make a point about me and I don't know what that is. Why not just say it straight out rather than insinuation?

You quote the names of three fallen men and expect that this justifies paranoia and hiding from leadership. I would respond with these names - John Lewis, Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama - and say that
leaders take the lead and movements follow them.

@ Regina Landor

Actually I did photograph the DC Pride parade and the photos are at http://lewlortonphoto.com/p974322500

Lew, thanks for the pictures. They honestly transcend the politics.

That part about the horses? The cops can see a lot farther from up there, too. We've had them in Times Square for I don't know how long.