Thanks for the honest field report. Did you take those 12
pictures? What a crowd! I would expect the local business
are having a "run" on toilet paper, with that many people
there.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"RicodJour" wrote in message
...

Yep, as I expected the Laura Ingraham report is total
bull****. The
idea that people that value the environment would let the
filth
accumulate pegged the BS meter at 11. These are the people
that would
crap in a plastic bag and compost it, so I knew that we were
being fed
more disinformation. So I went, and here's what I saw.

Not much. There was no buildup of filth, there was no
disruption of
any kind. There was a bigger pile of trash outside a pizza
place a
few blocks away, and even that was neatly bagged and placed
at the
curb.

You can see that they've set up a recycling station, and the
young
woman in the photo was sorting and bundling. There's a
large
recycling container in the picture. She said that they've
organized a
private pickup of the refuse and recycling.

A lot of the cardboard was used for making signs by some of
the
people, and it looked like some of the more entrepreneurial
people in
the park appeared to be using the cardboard to make art for
sale.

The woman in the photo told me that they were using the
bathrooms in
the local places, and there had been talk about getting some
composting toilets, but there was also talk about raising
money to pay
some of those same local places for using their restrooms.

You can see in another photo that they have cleaning
supplies and a
sign that they were cleaning up Wall Street - the subway
station.

There were literally hundreds if not thousands of signs.
Some were
silly, "Glen Beck is a **** stain" and others were more on
target, as
seen in the photo of the Thomas Jefferson quote sign, and in
another
picture, "The first time I served my country I was a
paratrooper.
This time I am a revolutionary."

The people were of course well represented by the young, but
there
were quite a few middle aged people and some older people,
too. Photo
of the guy wearing the Vietnam Vet cap.

About a quarter of the people were spectators, but not idle
spectators. They were talking to the people in the park,
and going
around photographing them.

The cops were just standing there. I talked to a couple.
One about a
nifty elevated observation post that's on a trailer. A
cross between
a scissor lift and a cherry picker, with an enclosed ~6'
square room
that could get up about 30'. It had surveillance cameras on
all sides
and a weather station on top. I want one.

Your average NY parade is far rowdier than the crowd in that
park, and
there was nothing anywhere near the stuff that goes on at a
St.
Patrick's Day parade, Halloween parade or anything of that
sort. No
rowdiness, no raised voices, no sense of anything out of the
ordinary. It felt like a street fair. There was some
drumming going
on, but a cop said that the people in the park stopped
drumming at 11
PM.

There was a 'library' set up with a slew of books. I did
not get
close enough to see what the books were about. Most of the
people
holding signs were on the avenue, and those people were
holding signs
that had a wide variety of messages. It wasn't clear if
people were
taking turns holding signs, if those people were just trying
to get on
camera, or what.

The people in the center of the park had set up camp and had
the usual
camping stuff, but I did not see any tents. It just seemed
to be
sleeping bags and blue poly tarps. There was a 'kitchen'
set up in
the middle of the park, and a bunch of people eating off of
paper
plates. There were also a lot of stainless food carts along
the
southern street - everything from Smoothies to coffee to
felafels and
a bunch more I didn't see up close.

http://img189.imageshack.us/slidesho...mg4378copy.jpg

R