This is the first of a series of reports from my friend Steve, who has been participating in Occupy Wall Street since October 5th.

Hi everyone,

I arrived at Occupy Wall Street Wednesday morning. It was pure luck that I got there the day of the big march.

The feeling in the park was really nice from the moment I arrived (especially since I had to walk around Wall Street itself for a while before finding it). A lot of people under odd conditions, and doing so quite well.

Zuccotti Park is just a few blocks up Broadway from Wall Street. It’s one of the only, if not the only, parks in NYC that is privately owned. Because of the deal made with the city at the time of construction, the park is open 24 to the public 24 hours, while every other park in the city is closed at night. News report (NPR) says it was pure luck that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) people picked it to occupy!

Before I got there, I’d read about a system where people can call from anywhere in the country and order a pizza to be sent to the folks in the park. This is a little misleading. In fact, there’s a full-time kitchen crew that serves throughout the day. So it’s even more organized than I’d imagined, with donations coming in and being used effectively.

This is the latest report from Steve at Occupy Wall Street.

Hi everyone,

It’s been slow around here since my last post. Strange to say this, since up to recently things have been frantic.

We’re still hanging in, securing housing for ourselves and running meetings again. I went to a spokes council meeting the other night. It was kind of nice to see the process functioning. Spokes council is a cumbersome process, but it’s quite democratic. Of course, it’s a messy process, lots of arguments, and then the next day everyone else yells about the decisions made. Once you explain the reasons, they lower the volume of their yelling a bit. I suppose groups making decisions about how to conduct themselves is by nature complicated and controversial and always will be.

The past few days in particular have been difficult. A lot of people arguing, about all kinds of things. I think this is partly because we’re all stressed about not having a home, and partly because we’re confused about our mission at this point. With Thanksgiving coming up it’s unlikely much will be done about this in the next few days.

This is the latest report from Steve at Occupy Wall Street. It sounds like it is becoming an occupied territory, with the NYPD playing the role of the IDF and controlling movement of people and goods in and out.

Hi everyone,

It’s Saturday morning, things are actually quiet enough for me to sit and write. Here’s what happened since my last, kind of frantic, message early Thursday afternoon.

I walked over to City Hall where I heard a rally was supposed to be held to demand Bloomberg’s resignation. I just missed it, people had already left for Foley Square. On the way over I made another attempt to call someone here at the storage place, and by chance happened to catch him, and find out the space was open, so I turned around and came back here. Had I not reached him, I would have gone to Foley Square and then to the Brooklyn Bridge, and witnessed history, or gotten arrested, or beaten up.

You probably know better than me what happened there. I don’t have video capabilities on this old computer. In any case, there were many, many people in Foley Square, and even more at the bridge, 5,000, I heard? Lots of pushing and shoving, hundreds of arrests throughout the day, I think. I was here helping restore the medical supplies shelf when one of the medics got a call that trouble was about to start, and we helped pack up bandages, etc. We were out of Maalox, which is used as an antidote to pepper spray. The shelf has thinned out considerably this week, since the police took the medical tent and all the supplies they had there.

This is one of a number of reports from my friend Steve who has been a part of Occupy Wall Street since October 5th. I will try to post his earlier reports because they give good insight into what is happening at the heart of an emergent revolution.

Hi everyone,

First of all, I’m okay. I did get arrested but was released later that day, it wasn’t too bad.

So here’s my take on Monday night/Tuesday morning.

I was in my tent around midnight getting ready to go to sleep when I heard someone yelling. Someone’s always yelling there, but this was different, more frantic, and someone else yelled, “Get out of your tents.” I opened the flap and saw that the police across the street (the side street on the north side of the park) had set up a huge panel of lights and were flooding the park with them. Another similar panel was on the other side. There’d been a lot of strange police behavior since I got there, but never anything like this. I knew something was up, so I put my shes on and ran out.

For a while I milled around in the park, not sure what to do. I was thinking of leaving. I ran back and got my bag out of the tent. It was a chaotic scene. We all pretty much knew they were going to raid. People were yelling and screaming different things, some people were afraid, others defiant, others confused. I was pretty nervous, my hands were trembling a little, and I was confused. I talked with a few people, let someone write legal aid’s phone # on my arm with a sharpie, and discovered that a few level-headed people I knew were planning on staying and getting arrested, and I decided I would stay, too.