WhenLoveGivesBirthToResistance

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In a tense showdown above the East River, the police arrested about 400 demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street protests who took to the roadway as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday afternoon.

The police did not immediately release precise arrest figures, but said it was the choice of those marchers that led to the swift enforcement.

“Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” said the head police spokesman, Paul J. Browne. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.”

But many protesters said that they thought the police had tricked and trapped them, allowing them onto the bridge and even escorting them across, only to surround them in orange netting after hundreds of them had entered.

“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us on to the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who was in the march but was not arrested.

Things came to a head shortly after 4 p.m., as the 1,500 or so marchers reached the foot of the Brooklyn-bound car lanes of the bridge, just east of City Hall. In their march north from an encampment at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, they had stayed on the sidewalks – forming a long column of humanity penned in by officers on scooters.

Where the entrance to the bridge narrowed their path, some marchers, including organizers, stuck to the generally agreed-upon route and headed up onto the wooden walkway that runs between and about 15 feet above the bridge’s traffic lanes.

But about 20 others headed for the Brooklyn-bound roadway, said Christopher T. Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who accompanied the march. Some of them chanted “take the bridge.” They were met by a handful of high-level police supervisors, who blocked the way and announced repeatedly through bullhorns that the marchers were blocking the roadway and that if they continued to do so, they would be subject to arrest.

There were no physical barriers, though, and at one point, the marchers began walking up the roadway with the police commanders in front of them – seeming, from a distance, as if they were leading the way. The Chief of Department Joseph J. Esposito, and a horde or other white-shirted commanders, was among them.

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“Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”

“…it’s generally true that we become who we’re told we are. If we’re told over and over again that we are worthless, that we are born into sin and that sin is our main nature and characteristic, then that becomes the dominant self understanding that drives our lives. So consequently we look for someone to redeem us and take that sin away from us. In that context, we understand Jesus as having this very specific role to save us from ourselves and from a state and condition that we could not help. But I think that’s a very limited understanding of human nature and of Jesus. In the end, that approach is ultimately unhelpful for most people. I don’t think that inspires or ennobles us and I don’t think it motivates us to live a higher life. I think it perpetuates a self-image that is ultimately destructive and unhelpful. Think about this as a parent. If you tell your children over and over again: You’re a failure! You’re a disappointment! Can you expect children to grow up and be healthy? No, and yet we expect that steady diet in many of our churches. Then, we wonder why a lifetime in this kind of church doesn’t lead us all to sainthood. I think that approach to preaching actually pushes us away from sainthood.”

“People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them.”

“…the fundamental problem with the United States of America is that at all levels of society we have lost sight of the difference between money and wealth. At every stratum, from the very bottom to the very top, you can find overwhelming majorities of people who believe that having a lot of money is the same thing as being rich. And what these people are about to find out the hard way, like they did in the Weimar Republic, is that it isn’t true.”