Austerity

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The day the city of New York allowed the protestor to permanently stay inside Central Park was the day I moved my family out of the city. It was the day we lost. You could control and corral 10,000 or 100,000 protestors if you control the perimeter of any area. But Central Park?! You are looking at over 1/3 the surface area of Manhattan. Even if we took every NYPD and National Guard vehicle and surround the park, the people would be able to burrow in. They could start multiple cities within that park. Those 30,000 people became 100,000 people within a week. I remember when I saw all the “For Sale” signs around the co-ops around the park go up. Property prices started to collapse. When I saw millionaires simply abandoning their park view apartments, I knew it was all over.

The park organized with the kind of speed and efficiency that shocked all of us. Within five days being granted permanent residency, they had an extensive network of food, heating and medical supplies. The park’s population grow exponentially. It became harder and harder to gather intelligence because there was no central leadership. It was as though the protestors where like a human bee colony. Except there was no Queen. Nevertheless, the food and the supplies kept coming —even after the food riots broke out in other parts of the city. We don’t know how they did it at first. Hundreds of pounds of bread, sugar, even meat came in every day. Even back at the FBI office in Manhattan, the food rations where not as plentiful as what was available at the park. That was one of the major reasons we ultimately launch the operation to stop the food supply. It had nothing to do with safety. It was jealousy. They were getting fed well.

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