In No Mood
New Yorkers have no patience for anti-globalization protesters bent on destruction.

January 31, 2002 8:45 a.m.

alking through midtown Manhattan last night was like stepping back four months. An army of policemen had taken up positions surrounding the Waldorf-Astoria, where the World Economic Forum would begin in hours. Streets were barricaded, ambulances and fire trucks stood by, and there was a feeling of growing menace in the air.

There's one difference, though: Four months ago, NYPD officers were guarding government facilities. Now, cops are stationed in pairs outside Starbucks, McDonald's, and the Gap. If Genoa, Seattle, and Melbourne are any guide, urban terrorists gathering in New York this week are going to burn khakis, upend four-dollar frappucinos, and assassinate Mayor McCheese.

Though their philosophical aims are asinine and their targets foolish, the damage these people can do is no laughing matter. By the time the smoke cleared in Genoa last year, the anarchists had caused $45 million in damage.

It is hard to express how little patience New Yorkers have for this. Jim Knipfel, a columnist for New York Press, got the man-on-the-street sentiment right when he wrote: "If you skinny little white-bread college kids, with your 'coalitions' for this and your 'actions' against that, think you're going to come into our town and mess things up again just for kicks — right when we were getting it cleaned up, too! — I think you're going to be in for a rude awakening. We're feeling a little cranky, and are in no mood for your shenanigans right now."

"Rude awakening" might be putting it mildly. Judging from my entirely unscientific sampling, there's a real "Go ahead punk, make our day" sensibility floating around. New Yorkers are worn out and ticked off, and have had no catharsis releasing the accumulated rage over 9/11 mass murder. The violent protesters coming this way to do harm could serve as scapegoats for the terrorists that got away.

Fortunately for them, the World Economic Forum events will take place several miles north of Ground Zero. The trustafarian punks out to trash the city would not want to run into construction worker Joseph Pagan and his crew.

"We've got enough problems as it is without these people coming here," says burly Pagan, headed back to the site after his lunch break. "My wife is a police officer, and I can guarantee you first-hand that the cops are ready, that they're not going to take anything [from protesters], and that the citizens of New York will back whatever the NYPD does. We're tired of being tired of this stuff."

"Why don't they come down here to try to help out instead of protesting?" says Hector Ramos, Pagan's colleague. "You know, come down and do your bit? We got too much bull***t to deal with down here to have to put up with their crap."

Ground Zero engineer Vincent Suarino puts it like this: "This is terrible that they gotta come here to New York. We should be left alone to fix things and get our lives back together. This is our city, and we're here to rebuild it. We don't want any more problems. We've had enough."

These men have been working at Ground Zero since Sept. 12. They have picked up the pieces left behind by the worst act of political violence in American history. If the NYPD has to bust heads to protect the city this week, they say, so be it.

"I don't think there's any citizen, whatever their race, creed or color, who's going to care, not after what we've all been through," said Pagan. "Down here in the pit, guys like us are picking up body parts every day. The last thing we want is to have any kind of violence. Instead of protesting, they should be brought down here to see the remnants of what used to be people."

This, on the other hand, is the kind of sentiment rejected by protest organizers, who held a press conference on Tuesday. "It's a way of trying to manipulate the grief and the mourning that we all feel," said David Graeber, who represents a group called Anti-Capitalist Convergence.

Students for Global Justice member Yvonne Liu told New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser that she's "personally not sure" if she will break something as an act of political rage over the coming days. Said Liu, "People have different ways of expressing their outrage against global and economic injustice."

Activists accused police of depicting them as "terrorists" — a description the people of cities left devastated by anti-capitalist riots probably wouldn't argue with. A witch who calls herself Starhawk said people in the anti-globalization movement "are angry, and have a right to be, because the level of injustice in this world is so great."

The only injustice most New Yorkers are interested in right now has to do with thousands of innocent people dying so a cabal of demented Muslims could make a point. Anger? Sabrina, Samantha, Starhawk, whatever she calls herself — she has no idea. But she soon may.

It's hard to know who these protesters are trying to win to their side. New York City has lost over 100,000 jobs since Sept. 11. Many small businesses are on the line. The convergence of thousands of people to join demonstrations that turn intensely violent will all but shut down business in Midtown between today and Sunday, when the World Economic Forum meeting is scheduled to end.

The megarich summiteers will be dining at four-star restaurants. Protesters won't hurt business at Ducasse and Le Cirque 2000, but the immigrant who runs a Midtown deli will be hard hit — even if anarchists leave their storefronts untouched. Though police will be out in force, fear of anarchist violence will likely keep tourists and residents off the streets. Mike Ahmed, who manages an Italian restaurant in the heart of Little Italy, a heavily touristed neighborhood that has been hurting for business since 9/11, cannot figure out why the protesters want to cause so much misery.

"The city is working hard to bring back what we lost," Ahmed said. "If these people destroy things, they're only going to make it worse. They're not bringing unity or love. Where are they from? They cannot be New Yorkers."

Dutch tourist Alexander van Akkooi went to Ground Zero on Wednesday morning to "pay my respects." A resident of Rotterdam, which was mostly leveled by Nazi bombardment, van Akkooi said, "Rotterdammers know what it's like to have your city's heart ripped out. It's not right for these people to come here when New York City's heart has been ripped out."

But as one sees so often with the Left, passion for abstract causes trumps caring about individual people. In the lobby of St. Mark's Books, a leftist bookstore on the Lower East Side, is a stack of flyers advertising a "Self Defense for Activists" class at the Brecht Forum, a Marxist cultural center here. From the class description: "While going about the business of demonstrating, picketing, while confronting klansmen [sic], gusanos and other enemies of the people, this course will equip the student to stay physically safe and strong."

A few doors down from the bookstore, police officers are standing outside a McDonald's, whose restaurants have been violently attacked elsewhere as symbols of globalization. Down the street, two cops are standing guard outside Starbucks, another target of the anti-latte loonies. It's the same all over town.

Inside the coffee shop, gusanos — Spanish for "worm," and the term Cuban communists use for anyone who dissents from Castroite orthodoxy — are doing what gusanos do in Starbucks all over the city: sitting quietly reading, or talking, and drinking coffee. The enemy of the people who takes my order is a stout black woman who's no doubt not making a lot more than minimum wage. I ask her what she plans to do if anarchists storm this Starbucks.

"I don't know," she says quietly. "I hope I'm not here when it happens."

If it happens, it's likely to go down on Saturday afternoon, when the anarchist leaders promise "large scale direct action" after the peaceful march. On Sunday, they threaten a "direct-action treasure hunt," whatever that is. It sounds like a code word for looting. We shall see.

Moving away from the Waldorf on my walk last night, I made my way to a large Gap store on Fifth Avenue. Three NYPD officers stood outside, guarding the door. On Thursday afternoon, there is to be a large, peaceful demonstration for "global justice" or somesuch thing, on the street outside this Gap. I went inside last night to do my bit for capitalism, and buy some jeans. At the checkout, I try to ask the young woman ringing me up a few questions about what employees plan to do if anarchists attack the store. "I don't know anything about it," she says, five different ways.

Then it occurred to me: She's been told not to say anything about it. The anarchists have become so good at infiltrating their targets that no employee can afford to talk about contingency plans with strangers, even sympathetic ones. I felt bad for putting her on the spot. I felt bad that an employee of a clothing chain that's suffering under a recession should have to worry for her safety because of these out-of-town jerks.

You might ask: Why have the World Economic Forum in New York at all, if it's going to be such a pain? The security measures alone will cost the city $11 million, and this at a time when we face a $4 billion deficit owing to the lost tax revenues from the Twin Towers. New York doesn't need this headache. So why?

One answer: Because we have the right to. Free men have the right to gather peaceably in a democracy, whether they're inside the Waldorf or out on the street. New Yorkers have gone to great lengths not to be bowed or broken by the Sept. 11 massacre. Terrorists don't own this city, New Yorkers do. If this is something the anarchists have to learn at the end of a police nightstick, just as their Islamic brethren are learning via "daisy cutter" half a world away, fine. The thin blue NYPD line has 8 million citizens right behind it.