“You know, you’re sitting under the tree of life,” one protester said.
“Oh?” Trumka said, nodding slowly. They sat in silence for a moment.
Protesters launched an "occupation" of Freedom Plaza Thursday in the area’s first major demonstration against rising inequality since the Occupy Wall Street movement began last month in New York and spread around the country.
“Look, I know there’s some anxiety that we’re going to come in here and take this thing over,” Trumka said, finally. “We’re not going to do that. We just want to support you. We want to help Americans understand the greed on Wall Street.”
“But how can you help us without squashing it?” a protester asked.
“We can spread the word, give you access to spaces, find ways to work together, help you grow,” Trumka said. He stood up to leave. He had a meeting in California later that evening, but he planned to assign a full-time AFL-CIO organizer to work with the protesters.
“Where are jobs on your guys’ agenda right now?” another protester asked.
“First, second and third,” Trumka said. “That’s why we’re here.”
‘Something to believe in’
Buddy Bolton thought he might be able to network and find a job through Occupy Wall Street, so he brought along his laptop and some clips of his old television work just in case. Everything else that he owned went into storage except for a Coleman sleeping bag and two sets of clothes.
“I’ve got enough stuff to stay down here for a few weeks,” he said.
Bolton, 43, had been laid off two years earlier after his production company moved its operations to Canada, and he thinks he has sent out more than a thousand résumés in the years since. “Not one serious bite,” he said. In the meantime, he had spent his savings on elective shoulder surgery, lost his apartment in New York and moved in with his girlfriend. The night before, she had decided to kick him out.
“It was either come here or go live with my mom down in Florida,” he said. “Pretty great options, huh?”
He was not an anarchist, not a 9/11 denier, not a hippie, not a pacifist, not a poet of the revolution. He did not even consider himself to be an activist. But he was desperate and out of options.
“I need something to believe in,” he said. “It’s either that or just give up.”
He had told his mother that he wanted a few days to think over his options before he joined her in Florida.
Now, in Zuccotti Park, Bolton wandered over to a pile of signs and sifted through them.
“We Demand Sweeping, Unspecified Change!” one read. “Money Hungry Fascists Are Dead Inside!” read another. Bolton dug to the bottom of the stack and found the remains of a stained cardboard box that had been inscribed with black marker.
“We Are the 99 Percent,” it read.
He picked up the sign and carried it with his laptop to an empty patch of concrete on the north end of the park. To his right was a gathering table for union organizers. To his left was a retired lawyer from California.
Florida could wait, he decided.
“There might be something happening here that’s more than just wacky,” he said. He would stay a few days to see what it might become.
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