By CARA BUCKLEY
Published: October 5, 2011
Dan Aymar-Blair — age 36, suit wearer, resident of Crown Heights, Brooklyn — never expected to find himself at a protest. Neither did Sean Aiken, a 35-year-old D.J. from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, whose interest in politics had mostly involved grumbling with his friends. The last time Peter Linard, 71, a retired waiter who lives on the Upper East Side, went to a protest, he was living in Greece, where he marched for peace — in 1961.
Peter Gavaghen, a Brooklyn-born iron worker who lives in New Jersey, went to Zuccotti Park on Tuesday morning to support the protesters.
“We have to get together; what’s worse than what’s happening now?” Mr. Linard said. “The money flies too high, very fast, and for the low people, there’s nothing.”
The Occupy Wall Street gathering, now midway through its third week in a Lower Manhattan park, was hatched by a Canadian magazine, Adbusters, and is heavily populated by youthful out-of-towners. But it has also become a magnet for scores of New Yorkers who said they had rarely if ever attended a protest before.
Mr. Aiken, the D.J., said he joined up because he was frustrated over what he described as a lack of accountability from the big banks, and because he wanted to add to the protest’s breadth.
Mr. Aymar-Blair, who works for the city’s Department of Education, said: “In my opinion, corporate overreach is the source of our problems. I’m not sure how our democracy is going to work if our votes are drowned out by money.”
Several New Yorkers said they had not known about the protest until a handful of participants were pepper-sprayed by a high-ranking police official a week and a half ago. A video clip of the episode circulated widely on the Internet.
Others said they learned about it after roughly 700 marchers were arrested Saturday on the Brooklyn Bridge. Some indicated that they initially stayed away because they feared arrest, or were uncertain about the protest’s aims, or never considered themselves protesters. Some happened upon the gathering on their way to work and, first out of curiosity and then a sense of kinship, found themselves staying, and coming back.
“I love the grass-roots nature, the direct democracy,” said Gregory Schwedock, 23, a first-time protester who works as a software engineer on Wall Street near Zuccotti Park, the movement’s base.
Mr. Schwedock learned about the protest after his boss warned that he might have trouble getting to work. Mr. Schwedock read Occupy Wall Street’s Web site, was inspired, and has been going every day since. “The consensus process, the networking — these are all the issues I care about,” he said.
Peter Gavaghen, 50, a Brooklyn-born ironworker who lives in New Jersey, first went to the square with his 12-year-old daughter last week for her school project about current events. But Mr. Gavaghen, who is grizzled and lanky and working on 2 World Trade Center, found himself returning.
He said his own father had saved $250,000 to pay for college for Mr. Gavaghen’s three children, but he said the money was lost when Lehman Brothers collapsed. Mr. Gavaghen said the government bailout of banks still bothered him.
“I’ve never been a victim of anything, but I feel like a victim now,” Mr. Gavaghen said softly. “I feel connected to these people.”
Several New Yorkers said that they had not been to a protest since the Vietnam War, among them Roger Schwarz, 61, a criminal lawyer who spent part of Monday afternoon chatting with several young protesters.
Mr. Schwarz, who was carrying a Brooks Brothers bag, said that he was disappointed with the conversations, and that he and his contemporaries were more articulate in the 1960s and ’70s.
Still, several people said they believed that the movement in New York and elsewhere would congeal and grow. Richard Florentino, 62, a retired engineer from Staten Island, suggested that protesters might one day unite with the Democratic Party. Others said Occupy Wall Street might spawn a left-leaning equivalent of the Tea Party.
“It offers a glimmer of hope,” Mr. Schwarz said. “A spark that may ignite.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/nyregion/wall-st-protest-lures-many-new-to-this-sort-of-thing.html
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