Modern Feudalism

Late in the evening, the Lord High Mayor summoned the
Blue Knights of the Galahad squad to mobilize in Brooklyn.
Under the cover of darkness, without fanfare or notice,
scores of men in blue, boarded vans and trucks and at midnight,
the convoy swept across the bridge into lower Manhattan.

With stealth and military precision, they deployed, cordoned
off the area, shut down subway stations and closed off streets.
No TV news cameras and reporters or journalists and photographers
could witness, record or warn of the pending incursion and no
allies would be able to arrive and fortify resistance.

The police armored with helmets, shields and batons, encircled
the encampment, drums stopped beating and music stopped playing
as flood lights bathed the park with blinding light and sound trucks
barked orders to evacuate or face arrest and began to blare shrill high
pitched tones aimed at the people in the park.

The occupiers awakened, climbed out of their tents and shelters.
Many knew this moment would come, but thought it would be
a battle fought in the light of day in a court of justice, not
covertly under the cloak of darkness.

Some grabbed their possessions and began to leave peacefully,
while a hundred or so defiant holdouts fell back to the center
of the park to take a stand.  And then the blue shirt legion marched
into the park, tearing down tents, slashing tarps, ripping down signs
and rousting other dawdling dissenters in the crowd who tarried
while collecting their personal belongings.

With blitzkrieg speed the command center was demolished and
the library torn down leaving piles of laptop computers, books,
papers and generators indiscriminately tossed aside.
Sanitation crews with hungry garbage trucks arrived to devour
the stacks of tents and tarps, tables and chairs, drums and protest
signs, and other private property that had been left behind.

The Commissioner of Nottingham came to preside over
the proceeding. He stood on a ledge of a raised flowerbed
and seemed pleased to watch his police action unfold.

Within minutes the police surrounded the mess area in the center
of the park, an open air shelter covered by a canvas canopy held up
by white pvc pipe poles, where the last holdouts sat on the ground
or hunkered down. There was a moment of quiet stillness and then
the arrests began. Some surrendered peacefully, were handcuffed and
escorted away. Other went limp and were dragged away.

One man waved the American flag, as he was led away but it was
confiscated while being handcuffed.  The flag was then furled as
free speech and assembly had become conditional. Liberty Park
had fallen, changed back to Zuccotti Park, Corporate Camelot
had been restored. But you cannot evict the idea that was started here.

It is time to end plutocracy and restore democracy.