Brooklyn Bridge

“I want you guys to know . . . I totally know where you’re coming from. My family was fucked over by foreclosures and predatory loans and the banking industry being twisted . . . but I can’t be with you guys because of this badge”

—Police officer arresting protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge

On October 1, 2011, more than 1,000 gathered at Zuccotti Park to protest the incident, one week prior, in which NYPD deputy inspector Anthony Bologna pepper sprayed three young female protesters in the face while they were corralled behind orange mesh fencing during a march near Union Square. The attack was captured on video and made the rounds on YouTube, prompting outrage among New Yorkers and galvanizing OWS supporters across the country. In response, a march was planned to target one of New York City’s most iconic landmarks—the Brooklyn Bridge.

Around 3 p.m. that Saturday, behind a banner reading “We The People,” the march stepped off from Zuccotti, heading north on Broadway. Stretching for blocks, marchers carried signs reading, “Let’s Get Free,” “The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be,” “Corruption & Greed Are NOT American” and “You Are Loved,” and chanted slogans like, “How do we end this deficit? Stop the war! Tax the rich!” and its sardonic counterpart, “Start the war! Eat the rich!” After about a half hour, the marchers began to approach the bridge, where confusion quickly set in. The march fractured, creating a bottle-neck at the bridge’s entrance, with some choosing the pre-approved pedestrian walkway, and others boldly striking out for the bridge’s motorway entrance. Those who chose the roadway quickly came upon a handful of police, mostly senior officers in their white shirts with a megaphone and only a few zip-ties between them, standing in the march’s path. One of the officers attempted to issue a warning over his megaphone, but chants of “Take the bridge! Take the bridge!” drowned him out. Sensing an opportunity, those on the march’s front line soon locked arms and, assured by the mass of people chanting behind them, began a slow, purposeful advance on the police and onto the bridge’s roadway. Severely outnumbered, the handful of police on the bridge turned and walked toward Brooklyn, all the while shouting on their radios. As the march took the roadway, several protesters who had taken the pedestrian walk hopped the railing to join the occupation of the bridge.

But as marchers swarmed the roadway chanting, “We are the 99 percent!” “Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!” and “Whose bridge? Our bridge!” the police quickly regrouped and established a barricade using the increasingly ubiquitous orange mesh fence, which was unfurled mid-span to stop them. Those near the front of the march, halted in their tracks, could not see the back of the march from the bridge’s center, but whispers began to circulate that the police had completely enclosed them. Although the protesters who remained on the pedestrian walkway were allowed to continue moving, those who had spilled onto the roadway below were kettled in the net. The orange netting, which in the preceding weeks had become synonymous with arrest, surprised many protesters, who figured that their peaceful protest was not violating the law and who had not heard police warnings not to enter the roadway. “One of the things that you always know is that if the cops don’t want you to go somewhere, you don’t. They block it. It doesn’t happen,” said a People’s Librarian who was arrested on the bridge but wished to remain anonymous. “So for all intents and purposes, it looked like the cops were just leading the march on the bridge. That’s where we went and that’s when they kettled us.”

Others like Mandy, a People’s Librarian who had traveled with her husband from their home in Indiana to attend the march, figured those on the roadway were volunteering for arrest. “They’re not going to let us shut down the Brooklyn Bridge. Everyone on the bridge is going to jail,” Mandy recalled thinking. “We assumed that everybody on the bridge knew they were going to jail; we were surprised later to find out that some people didn’t know that.” Initially, Mandy and her husband had walked onto the roadway—but when they saw the police beginning to kettle they thought of their two young children and made quick use of their Midwestern charm. “We just walked to the police line looking all upper-middle-classy, white and said, ‘Oh dear, we need to get through, officers.’” The ploy worked and the two were allowed off the bridge. Amy Roberts, a cofounder of the OWS archive working group, also found a way past the orange net. “They let a few women go,” she said. Amy said a man who claimed to be with the American Civil Liberties Union asked her and a few others whether they had been asked to disperse. When they replied that they had been given no such order, the man spoke to the police, who let them go. “It was clear to me that he wasn’t from the ACLU, but I was glad to be let go,” Amy said. “I was worried about losing my job. And I was like, I don’t know if I want to lose my job just for this. It was all these things that were going through my head.”

For those 700-or-so marchers who could not pass as tourists or who otherwise did not manage to escape the orange net, they soon found themselves trapped on the Brooklyn Bridge, facing certain arrest. Some, especially near the front line, attempted to resist, but were quickly pressed to the asphalt by officers. “One by one the police snatch the protesters, and it dawns on everyone that they have enough zip-tie cuffs for all of us,” recalled one marcher who was arrested that afternoon. “That they probably have one for each person in the city.” As the mass-arrest began, protesters were lined up on either side of the street facing the middle. Those tied let out cheers and whistles for the new arrestees, many of whom in turn smiled and strutted as though they were on a catwalk. Spirits remained high among many, who recognized that in being arrested they were halting bridge traffic— they were occupying the bridge even as they were arrested for doing so. Soon large prison buses and police wagons pulled up to collect the hundreds who stood cuffed and waiting.

One of those waiting to be taken to police processing shortly after 4 p.m. was Keith, a 24-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who had been carrying a sign reading “Fire Your Boss!” While Keith had never considered himself an activist, he said he had been paying more attention to current events of late and felt drawn to OWS because he was fed up with the influence of money and the banks on politics. “If there’s one thing that the military should and does teach an individual it’s to step up and sort of take charge and responsibility and accountability of your actions and to be a leader,” Keith said. While Keith had originally taken the pedestrian walkway, looking down on those in the roadway inspired him and he could not stand to be contained. “I urged the people I was walking with to hop the railing and get on the road and take the bridge,” Keith recalled. “At the time we didn’t think about how the bridge was being taken. So we just went and until we were stopped, and then essentially kettled, and then everybody was detained.” He described his arrest as both “casual” and confusing. “I was very compliant, I didn’t resist,” Keith said. “But when the officer put the cuffs on me, I turned around and started talking to him.” The officer was unmoved by Keith’s veteran status, and he was loaded into a police wagon with nine others. As his van drove off hundreds of others remained handcuffed on the bridge, and others chanted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “You belong with us! We’re fighting for your pensions!” at the police from the pedestrian walkway.

Of the prisoner transport wagon, one arrestee recalled, “As soon as the officers shut the heavy metal doors, it gets incredibly hot.” The sweat induced by the heat enabled some of the 10 or 12 arrestees in one wagon to slip out of their plastic ties (later slipped back on before the officers could protest) and pour bottled water into the mouths of those who remained cuffed. That van was driven around for about an hour, before parking—the arrestees were then forced to sit in the tight, hot space for hours awaiting processing. They took turns sitting on the cooler floor and did their best to conserve water. “But it isn’t all bad,” recalled the same anonymous arrestee, “A college student named Amanda pulls out her phone and plays the classic Against Me! sing-along, ‘Baby I’m An Anarchist.’” Discussions in the wagons also turned to socializing and some small talk about tactics and the future of OWS. Some of the connections made in prisoner vans and holding cells would stick once protesters returned to Zuccotti. “That was one of the things that had kind of always been my problem when I was coming down before [the arrest] . . . I’d always be like, hanging around, doing odds and ends but I didn’t feel like I really knew people,” recalled one People’s Librarian who was arrested on the bridge. “But now, after that point, it was like ‘Hey!’ ‘You been keeping out of trouble!?’ ‘Keep your nose clean!’”

Once arrested marchers were released from vans and buses, they were photographed and their bags and possessions confiscated. Recalled one arrestee, “Processing is a slow shuffle from space to space, and the station is packed. We’re drenched with sweat and enjoying the relatively open air.” A hand-written sign hanging in the jail told officers to write “4:20 p.m.” as the time of arrest for all of the 700-plus protesters. They were charged with disorderly conduct and violating roadway laws through obstruction—a charge that irked many, seeing as the marchers were moving in the direction of traffic and it was the police who stopped and then contained them, thus causing the obstruction. “To me that feels like entrapment,” Keith, the Navy vet, said.

Keith’s group was the first to be dropped off for processing at One Police Plaza, a short drive from the Bridge. While waiting to be emptied out of the wagon back at the precinct, a police officer came into the truck. “He looked each of us in the eye,” Keith reported, “and he said, ‘Listen to me, your protest is over. Your day is over. You have made your point. We hear you.’” The officer then paused, and added something Keith said he never expected to hear. “I want you guys to know,” the officer continued, “I’m right there with you. I totally know where you’re coming from. My family was fucked over by foreclosures and predatory loans and the banking industry being twisted. I’m with you guys but I can’t be with you guys because of this badge. But you should know I feel the same way.” Leading them off the wagon, he then added, “So cut the shit, be compliant, and do what you need to do to get out of here as soon as you can and go home.”

As more groups of the arrested protesters began arriving at the police precincts, cries of solidarity and cheers went up as new people were loaded into the holding cells. Those arrested included students, a structural architect in his mid-20s, a jocular finance student from Ontario visiting New York for the first time. By one count, there were 117 men in one of the holding cells over the course of three hours, and another 40 or 50 women in another cell. But despite the crowding, according to several of the arrested protesters the mood in the cells was, at times, buoyant. “Throughout the night it was weird, because you think that people would be really sad, but for the 117 of us in that cell, it was the best situation any of us could be in because we had solidarity. What possible response do you think you could get from these people other than us wanting to go back and activate ourselves even more? If you arrest one of us, two more will show up.” Other cells were smaller—8' x 10' with a non-functional sink, a bench with a pad and a plain toilet bowl. The food offered to protesters as they awaited processing included peanut butter or cheese sandwiches and a carton of milk apiece. “From a cell over we hear laughing suggestions that we should reject the 1 percent milk in solidarity with the 99 percent,” recalled one arrestee.

Like many of his fellow detainees, Keith was eventually released at 3:30 a.m. on October 2—nearly 12 hours after his arrest. He said he then went home and went to sleep. But first thing the next morning Keith headed right back down to Zuccotti. “I went to the information center and said, ‘What can I do?’”