After encampment ends, NYC Occupiers become nomads

Donna Marinelli, of New Britain, Conn., fore­ground, and her cousin David Monarca, use their phones as they spend the night in a church space being funded by Occupy Wall Street for Occupy Wall Street pro­tes­tors at the West Park Pres­by­ter­ian Church in New York, Wednes­day. The refugees from Manhattan’s Zuc­cotti Park had found their way to the cav­ernous Pres­by­ter­ian church, hop­ing to stay for a few nights, maybe longer. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Tina Fineberg)

MEGHAN BARR

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — It was only a few nights after the Occupy pro­test­ers began sleep­ing in his church sanc­tu­ary when the Rev. Bob Bras­hear real­ized that his lap­top com­puter was missing.

The refugees from Manhattan’s Zuc­cotti Park, where the Occupy move­ment first erupted, had found their way to his cav­ernous Pres­by­ter­ian church on a cold win­ter evening, hop­ing to stay for a few nights, maybe longer. It was the lat­est stopover for the nomadic group, which has been liv­ing in a rotat­ing series of churches since the city shut down its camp in November.

“There was a sense of shock and sad­ness that it had hap­pened,” said Bras­hear, whose lap­top will soon be replaced by Occupy orga­niz­ers. “And there’s a com­mon under­stand­ing that if there’s one more theft in the church, that’s it.”

This is what the Occupy encamp­ment has become: a band of home­less pro­test­ers with no place to go. Amid accu­sa­tions of drug use and spo­radic theft, they’ve been sleep­ing on church pews for weeks, con­sum­ing at least $20,000 of the dona­tions that Occupy Wall Street still has in its cof­fers. Their exis­tence is being hotly debated at Occupy meet­ings: Are these peo­ple truly “Occu­piers” who deserve free food and a roof over their heads?

“We don’t do this out of char­ity,” said 34-year-old Ravi Ahmad, who works for Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity and vol­un­teers with Occupy in her spare time. “We do this so that who­ever wants to work in the move­ment can work in the move­ment. This is a meritocracy.”

But money is drain­ing rapidly from Occupy’s var­i­ous bank accounts, which amount to about $344,000. Includ­ing church main­te­nance costs and meals, liv­ing expenses are more than $2,000 per week.

“We are all aware that the NYPD destroyed the tent homes of many Occu­piers in just one night,” some­one recently wrote on www.nycga.net, Occupy’s Gen­eral Assem­bly web­site for New York City. “How­ever, where were they liv­ing before Zuc­cotti Park? Are we pay­ing for hous­ing for home­less peo­ple who may be relo­cated to City shelters?”

The move­ment, which denounces cor­po­rate excess and eco­nomic inequal­ity, has been fight­ing to stay afloat in the city where it began. Media atten­tion and dona­tions have dropped off. And although pro­test­ers reg­u­larly meet to plan demon­stra­tions, recent marches have had none of the spec­ta­cle that cap­ti­vated New York­ers and watch­ers worldwide.

On Mon­day, the metal bar­ri­cades sur­round­ing Zuc­cotti Park were removed for the first time since the Novem­ber raid. But pro­test­ers still can’t set up tents to camp overnight — and they don’t have a long-term solu­tion to the hous­ing problem.

Their cur­rent home is Brashear’s West-Park Pres­by­ter­ian Church, a stately 100-year-old house of wor­ship on the Upper West Side that badly needs ren­o­va­tion. Occupy orga­niz­ers see the cracks in the ceil­ing as an oppor­tu­nity to repay the favor by help­ing to fix the place up.

There are about 70 Occu­piers stay­ing there and another 30 or so at Park Slope United Methodist Church in Brooklyn.

“Every­body tries to get along, make things work,” said Donna Marinelli, 52, of Con­necti­cut, who was sit­ting on the floor in a sleep­ing bag along­side her cousin, David Monarca. “We were in the park in tents until they raided us. We wanted to stay for the move­ment. We didn’t want to leave when we just got here.”

Dur­ing the day­light hours, Marinelli attends Occupy events and vol­un­teers at an Occupy kitchen in Brook­lyn. Nobody is allowed to stay in the church dur­ing the day. At night, the place is patrolled by an Occupy secu­rity team led by Marine Corps Sgt. Halo Showzah, a 27-year-old Iraq war vet­eran from the Bronx.

“We walk around the church with flash­lights, mak­ing noise to wake these peo­ple up and mak­ing sure they’re good,” he said. “No sex in the church, no drink­ing, no smok­ing, no shoot­ing, no sniffing.”

The church was quiet and cozy Wednes­day night as about two dozen peo­ple staked out their respec­tive cor­ners of the room. Some pre­fer the bal­cony; oth­ers like to curl up by the door. Some­one fid­dled around on the piano and sang a few songs as a cat watched from a pew. Showzah wan­dered around and chat­ted with every­one, mak­ing jokes and dol­ing out advice to the singer.

The secu­rity threat is very real here. At least 30 per­cent of the crowd is a mix of chron­i­cally home­less, drug-addicted peo­ple, some of whom suf­fer from “psy­cho­log­i­cal issues,” as sev­eral pro­test­ers put it. Among other rules, the pas­tor has demanded that the Occu­piers sta­tion at least one men­tal health expert “within easy reach” of the church every night.

Even some of the church dwellers them­selves are fed up with their fel­low pew mates. Chris Allen, 36, is work­ing on a backup plan in case they get kicked out.

“I feel peo­ple are mess­ing up the church and we’re not going to have it much longer, so I’m wor­ried about putting money in my pocket,” said Allen, an unem­ployed con­struc­tion worker from Long Island who lives here with his wife. “Because when it snows and I have nowhere to go, I’m not going to be stuck on the streets like every­one else for being idiots.”

Who is allowed to stay at the church is a source of con­tention and per­pet­ual infight­ing. If you’re not on the offi­cial list kept by Occupy orga­niz­ers, you’re not allowed inside. But it’s unclear what dis­tin­guishes the gen­eral pop­u­lace from an Occupier.

About a month ago, a tele­phone hot­line was set up so peo­ple could call and request a spot at one of the churches. But space is lim­ited. And each church sojourn has an expi­ra­tion date.

Some churches will­ingly opened their doors to pro­vide tem­po­rary shel­ter after the police raid. None of them are equipped to house pro­test­ers forever.

Dur­ing day­light hours, some peo­ple migrate down to Occupy’s atrium at 60 Wall St., while oth­ers head off to hunt for jobs or dis­ap­pear into the city. At night, there are often coun­selors on hand for emo­tional support.

Typ­i­cal argu­ments are rem­i­nis­cent of life at Zuc­cotti, which had its own share of crim­i­nal activ­ity. A fre­quent com­plaint, for exam­ple, involves a man who appar­ently never bathes.

Meals are dona­tions from food pantries and left­overs dropped off by nearby restaurants.

The debate over pro­vid­ing food and shel­ter for the church Occu­piers plays into a larger one that has divided New York’s pro­test­ers ever since the police raid. While some are deter­mined to occupy another space some­where in the city, oth­ers say an encamp­ment is unnec­es­sary and, at its worst, a burden.

The church dwellers believe they are car­ry­ing the torch for the lost encamp­ment — and that, some­day, they will form the foun­da­tion of a new one.

“We really have been call­ing it the ‘Occu­piers army’ that we are build­ing,” explained pro­tester Jason Har­ris, a teacher from Massachusetts.

Posted by AP News on Jan 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.