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Occupy Trinity Wall Street: NYC’s Longest Occupation

By Mickey Z.

01 October, 2012
World News Trust

I never thought I’d be here, but now I cannot imagine myself anywhere else.” -- Occupier Ed Mortimer

I get it in e-mails, Facebook messages, and even in whispers at Occupy Wall Street (OWS) events and actions: “What’s that occupation all about? Why Trinity?”

While I’m not a direct member of the Occupy Trinity Wall Street (OTWS) group, I consider myself a fellow traveler of sorts -- often documenting via photography -- and have thus taken on the task of giving voice to New York City’s longest running occupation: 114 days and counting (as of this writing).

Why Trinity?

Occupier Brett Goldberg offers a succinct explanation: “This situation exemplifies how, in a system built on profit, everything ties back to the greed of Wall Street, even Trinity Church.”

For a longer version of this story, we’ll have to hark back -- all the way back -- to 1705.

Separation of Church and Real Estate

As explained in the Daily Kos, “Trinity Wall Street's history as an owner of commercial real estate dates to a 1705 land grant from England's Queen Ann.” While volumes could be written on how Queen Ann came to “own” such land, it should also be noted that a fair amount of controversy still exists as to whether or not such land was granted or leased to Trinity Church -- and by whom.

Regardless, as Daily Kos explains, Trinity still holds “approximately 6 million square feet of Manhattan real estate, managed since 2008 by former Bloomberg appointed New York City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd. Most of Trinity's holdings are centered in the area surrounding Canal Street and Sixth Avenue, which Trinity Real Estate has branded Hudson Square. Prior to the Great Depression, the buildings were a mix of commercial and residential properties.”

A few of those approximately 6 million square feet of Manhattan real estate are where the OWS/TWS rift truly commenced. Shortly after the Zuccotti Park/Liberty Square eviction in November 2011, as Nick Pinto explains in the Village Voice, “protesters asked the church for sanctuary in an unused church-owned plot in Duarte Square. The church refused, and on Dec. 17, the protesters, led by clergy including retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard, jumped the chain-link fence anyway, prompting dozens of arrests.”

“We asked Trinity Wall Street for sanctuary on one of their many properties -- a vacant lot known as Juan Pablo Duarte Square (not to be confused with Juan Pablo Duarte Park, which is not vacant),” explains OTWS medic, Ed Mortimer. “Trinity Wall Street Church, in the person of Rector/CEO James Cooper, refused our request, telling us there was no room in the inn and we could go home (if we had one) or to one of the city’s shelters. Rector/CEO Cooper could not offer Trinity Wall Street’s shelters because he had closed them long before.”

The term “Rector/CEO” is not hyperbole. It refers to Trinity's rector James Cooper who literally gave himself the supplementary title of CEO to go along with $1.3 million in compensation (in 2010) and a SoHo townhouse that cost $5.5 million in church money.

And, as Pinto documents, Rector’s “Scroogely actions extend well beyond stiff-arming Occupy Wall Street: he shuttered Trinity's homeless drop-in center in 2009, then announced plans to borrow church money to build luxury condos on top of a palatial renovation of the church's offices. Cooper's excesses were too much even for some of his high-flying vestry, and they asked him to resign. When he refused, many quit. They've since been replaced by members more aligned with Cooper's way of doing things.”

Why Trinity?

Mic Check: When a church situated on contested land directly at the head of Wall Street is one of the city’s largest landowners and operates in a manner not unlike the corporate criminals OWS was spawned to expose and challenge, the better question is: Why not Trinity?

#D17
The OWS action on Dec. 17 (D17) resulted in multiple arrests and landed an occupier named Mark Adams in prison for 45 days. As the trial approached, Jack Boyle -- one of Adams’ co-defendants -- went on a hunger strike while also refusing to take his HIV medication. Boyle’s next step was to call for the OTWS occupation.

“I started a ‘sleepful protest’ on the night of Friday, June 8 to protest, demanding James Cooper drop the charges,” says Boyle. “This was three nights prior to first day of the D17 trial. Friends and comrades joined me that night. They slept.”

As I type this, some of those same friends and comrades -- along with many newcomers -- are still there, literally occupying Wall Street.

“By mutual agreement reached by consensus in a General Assembly of those occupying the sidewalk we decided to occupy until James Cooper is fired or steps down,” says Mortimer. For legal clarification, the occupiers -- here and elsewhere -- point to a 2000 decision, Metropolitan Council Inc. v. Safir, which held "public sleeping as a means of symbolic expression" to be constitutionally-protected speech.

Meanwhile, “the commercial real estate division of Trinity Wall Street, the legal entity behind Trinity Church, has rented the (Duarte) lot in question to operators of artisinal food trucks revealing their true mission, landlord.”

In classic OWS style, the OTWS occupation has spun off into smaller satellites -- autonomous “sleep cells” -- in front of banks and other institutions in the general area.

Each cell is designed "to address issues of homelessness in this city and country and to highlight specific issues according to each occupation/cell, its cultured invisibility and dehumanization, and the bias associated with it. By day, the cells transform into staging areas for direct actions narrating the institutions' part in the fraud of Wall Street and corporations."

Not surprisingly, Mayor Bloomberg’s “private army” -- the NYPD -- has treated these sleeping occupiers much as they’ve treated anyone else even remotely connected to OWS.

“They try and keep us off balance by coming in and waking us at night, by leaving us with a lack of sleep,” says Occupier Mark Apollo. “When people have lack of sleep, they can make wrong and irrational decisions. Keeping us disoriented is part of the tactics that they use.”

Why Trinity? Why a “sleepful protest?"

I hope some of the above helps answer the first question and/or inspires you to visit the occupation and learn more. As for the second question, it’s crucial to remember that the United States is not yet Spain or Quebec or Mexico or any other nation with a highly motivated and quickly mobilized populace -- not even close. Thus, one year into the Occupy movement, tactics remain more humble but are very much evolving.

Why Occupy?

“Our occupations are lands freed from the rule of the 1%,” Mortimer concludes. “It is time we started actualizing our reality. We only have one Earth, and therefore we only have one chance. We must de-colonize and occupy. Another world is possible.”

Donations for OTWS are most welcome
Occupy Trinity on Facebook
Occupy Trinity blog

Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.

© WorldNewsTrust.com




 

 


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