By Katarina Hybenova
On Friday afternoon, when I get off the J train at Fulton Street, the clouds are heavy. The chance of rain is almost 60%. I am passing by the 9/11 Memorial, the tourist-beloved department store Century 21, and crowds of people. I am headed to Liberty Plaza with many others who came to express their dissatisfaction with the development of the political and economical situation of the past years. Despite expensive education, many of us are underemployed, job market isn’t getting any better. There doesn’t seem to be the light at the end of the debt crisis tunnel. That’s the most common theme for twenty-something people holding painted cardboards at Liberty Plaza.
The cops are guarding the crowd at Liberty Plaza; you can feel the invisible tension between the protesters and them. The tension keeps growing in the upcoming days with arriving news: 700 people arrested at the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon. The protesters, who were part of the permitted march on the Bridge, say that they were tricked by the cops, and subsequently arrested. The cops on the other hand say that they were arresting people who were obstructing traffic and marched outside of the pedestrian part of the Bridge. When it comes to mainstream media, I have a good and a bad news. The good news is that they finally noticed, and the story about mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge made it to the front online page. The bad news is that New York Times can’t seem to be able to decide whom to blame. Website Addictinginfo.org pointed out how New York Times edited the article 20 minutes after it was released shifting the blame from one side to another:
Image from addictinginfo.org
From NakedCapitalism. com we learn that that JP Morgan Chase informs on their website that they recently donated $4.6 million dollars to New York City Police Foundation. Buying a protection there?
Besides that the blogosphere keeps talking about censorship on Twitter, Google and Yahoo who are allegedly blocking the news about #OccupyWallStreet. According to website Bloomberg.com, whose mission is bringing transparency to capital markets through access to information, JP Morgan Chase has invested in a fund that has bought about $400 million in Twitter Inc. shares, valuing the blogging service at as much as $4.5 billion.
Could it be that that’s why the hashtag #OccupyWallStreet hasn’t been trending on Twitter?
Image from blog.alexanderhiggins.com
Not even during the increased online activity during the unrest on Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon when about 20,000 people were watching the live streaming from the Bridge on Global Revolution?
Instead of that we have trending hashtags like #YouNeedToRealizeThat or #YouCan’tBeMyBooIf trending all the time. Is this what the conversation is about these days?
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Friday afternoon at Liberty Plaza.
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About Katarina Hybenova
Founder of Bushwick Daily. She writes, takes photos, and sometimes video. Born and raised in Slovakia, she has studied in Prague, Leuven and New York, traveled the world only to find home in Bushwick or should we say Ridgewood :) She is interested in yoga, running, human & cat friends.
I visually compared some trending topics to the #occupywallstreet hashtag on Tweet Deck. Tweet Deck lets you see the tweets appear in real time. #Occupywallstreet tweets were appearing so quickly that it was impossible to read them. Several of the trending topics, on the other hand, were moving at a slower speed.
Brooklyn Bridge was trending when the march was happening though. They missed that one.