Occupy Noir

“The idea that this could ever work is just another expression of American exceptionalism.”
“That what could ever work?”
“A non-violent protest movement willed into existence by a fragment of the middle class.”
“Occupy is about more than the middle class.”
“You don’t have to tell me that, but it’s the middle class that dominates it.”
“What would work, in your opinion?”
“Violence.”
“Do you really think that?”
He took a drag from his cigarette.
“What about the Weathermen?”
“They didn’t kill people.”
“The Panthers?”
“They only killed each other.”
“The Symbionese Liberation Army.”
“Now, that’s more like it.” A smile crept across his face like a crack in a mirror. He laughed. “No, it’s too late for violence now. Two years ago, maybe. Just imagine if people had started picking off executives in the year of the golden parachutes. That might have been something.”
“It’s against the Geneva Convention, you know.”
“What is?”
“Shooting paratroopers before they land.”
“How romantic.”
An obese man in a Guy Fawkes mask lumbered toward us and held out a supersized McDonalds cup. Combat boots, ankle-length trench coat, and overstuffed back pack. He looked like a trash heap, and smelled like one, too. Around his neck he wore a cardboard sign big enough for a girl to have carried in a march: YES, I AM A MEMBER OF ANONYMOUS, YES, ANONYMOUS IS REAL, AND, YES, I AM TAKING DONATIONS. He didn’t say a word. Just stared at us for a second from somewhere behind the mask, then shuffled off.
“I'll tell you this. When the cops finally decide to bust this place up, if no one dies, all of this will have been for nothing.”
- excerpt from The Devils of Trinity Church by Rep. Peter T. King