Rhetoric Race and Religion
by GINIA BELLAFANTE
On Tuesday afternoon, on the steps of Federal Hall, in Lower Manhattan, where Occupy Wall Street protesters have been contained in recent weeks, Loren Hart, a conservatively dressed man of 33, sat reading a newspaper as he held a sign that gave quiet expression to pervasive grievances: “The economy is failing us. Our climate is worsening every day. Perhaps we should make some serious changes.” Mr. Hart arrived in New York from North Carolina in October to join the Occupy movement with the expectation that he would stay a few days, but he has felt unmotivated to leave.
Issue-specific protests are now so ubiquitous on the menu of New York experience that Mr. Hart has had plenty to do since the police cleared Zuccotti Park of demonstrators in November. Last week had him rallying in Union Square to denounce the rise of student debt. Several days earlier he was arrested at the Brooklyn Supreme Court for participating in an action organized in part by Karen Gargamelli, a Queens housing lawyer who sought to disrupt foreclosure auctions by gathering demonstrators to sing during them. Two weeks ago, 63 arrests were made in a series of these disturbances around the city (which take place under the banner Organizing for Occupation), and many of those hauled off were, like Mr. Hart and Ms. Gargamelli, members of the Catholic Worker Movement.
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