A Scotch with the 1 percent
If you want to read interesting on-the-ground reporting on the Occupy movement, you could do a lot worse than following Ezra Silk. The young writer--son of academic and religion blogger extraordinaire Mark Silk--has been traveling around to different protests and covering them from within. He has good sources throughout the movement, and he's a good storyteller.
A post from yesterday is particularly interesting. A confrontation between an Occupy Philly gathering and a Mitt Romney event leads to Silk having an odd, extended conversation with a wealthy TV producer:
Somebody fetched me a Dewar’s, and we were leaning over the balcony
again. A huge black security guard approached us, giving Maturo a
meaningful glance. Maturo waved him off.
The assembled protesters continued to use the human microphone, taunting Romney.
“If I started yelling something right now, they’d parrot that,” Maturo told me.
Maturo resumed his bellowing.
“I’m a mindless idiot!” he shouted. “I’m a mindless idiot!”
Nobody repeated him.
A man with jet-black corporate hair and a nifty suit walked by below. “Get a job, right?” he said to us, smiling.
When he was yelling earlier, Maturo confided, one of the Philly cops had told him to shut it.
“The police officer, he looked up at me, and said, ‘Knock it off,’”
Maturo said. “He said, ‘Don’t.’ I’ll tell you something — here’s another
thing that bugged me. A couple days ago, these people were all marching
up Walnut Street, right? And you know what their chant was that day?
‘End police brutality.’ And here are all these cops out there protecting
them. And they’re chanting, ‘End police brutality,’ and the cops are
all around them protecting them.”
Maturo had had enough.
“You know what’s gonna kill this, is cold weather,” Maturo said,
chuckling. “I hope they all fucking freeze to death. I really do. Come
on in.”
