A quietly hilarious video from yesterday’s Community Board meeting at the New York State Assembly, in which a representative of the Occupy Wall Street movement explains the new “consensed” (which isn’t a word, however hard he tries to make it one) policy on drumming.
Firstly, the very fact that this meeting happened makes a mockery of the America Is A Fascist State meme, which runs through much of the Occupy Wall Street movement. As I noted in my piece this afternoon, these people have “been invited into a government building in order to be indulged by a sympathetic, democratically elected assembly, and [are] being afforded the opportunity to justify what is effectively trespassing on private property. [Not to] mention that the laws that govern New York City parks are being wantonly waived in their favor, [and] various city ordinances are all but being ignored.”
Secondly, I’m not sure I have ever heard a more self-indulgent statement made by someone who ostensibly sounds so earnest and reasonable. If you were to switch off the sound, you would be forgiven for thinking that they were talking about education, or taxes, or health care. Instead, they are talking about . . . drumming, and we get such choice phrases as “balance the concerns of the community with the desires of the drummers to have their voices heard through their drums, drumming down Wall Street,” mention of the “drummers working group,” and and contention over whether the drummers will be drumming for two or four hours each day. The looks on the faces of the people to my right at the end of the clip say it all.