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Grand Central Drowns Out Occupy Wall Street Protesters With Train Announcements
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 1, 2012
Modified Feb 1, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 1, 2012
Modified Feb 1, 2012
Share
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Grand Central Terminal was relatively quiet and uncrowded last night at 5:15, and if not for the heavy police presence, you wouldn't have known that protesters were about to start making noise about a grab bag of political issues. Last time Occupy Wall Street raised their voices in the station a handful of demonstrators were swiftly arrested. But the widely-replicated video of cops collaring a woman for shouting was bad optics, so this time the authorities played it smart—letting the rabble rousers yell to their hearts' content, while effectively drowning them out with an unbroken stream of announcements over the terminal's p.a. system.
"This is bullshit," said one commuter, Kyron Huigens, who was headed home to Croton-on-Hudson. "I come through here every day at this time, and they never do the announcements like this. They're interfering with free speech." Huigens told us he wasn't bothered by the protests, but he thinks "they could do a better job" making themselves heard. Another commuter who paused to watch the spectacle was asked what he thought of the protest and replied, "How should I know? I can't hear them!"
The demonstrators, who numbered approximately 40, spent a half hour roaming the Main Concourse, using the call-and-response "people's mic" to call attention to such issues as the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the National Defense Authorization Act, corporate "personhood," Monsanto, the American prison system,and a controversial natural gas pipeline proposed for Puerto Rico.
But, like last time, their messages were mostly lost in the din of train announcements and daunting acoustics of the cavernous Main Concourse. "What are they yelling about?" asked bewildered commuter Beth Mitze, on her way home to Westchester. Told about the various political messages, Mitze shrugged and went on her way, saying, "I don't care. As long as they stay out of people's way and don't make anyone late for their train." The only objection to the group seemed to come from one angry man who stormed by screaming, "You should be doing this outside the Federal Reserve!"
We approached a Metro-North "customer service" worker and asked him if it was normal for the train announcements to be made incessantly without pause, explaining that some protesters and commuters believe they were being made to drown out free speech. "Come on, you're just figuring this out?" he asked. "Of course they are." Other Metro-North workers insisted this was normal for rush hour, as did the Station Master's office, where we were told, "It's rush hour, so there are a lot of trains to announce."
But once the protesters finally dispersed completely, around 6:15, the departure announcements were no longer rattled off in a continuous stream. (Of course, one could also argue that it was no longer rush hour.) As this video demonstrates, they could be yelling about HBO cancelling Bored to Death, for all we know:
Tagged
first amendment thing
grand central terminal
occupy wall street
Politics
protesters
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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