Tom Morello and Occupy Wall Street Take Union Square (Photos)

05/01/2012

Union Square on Tuesday afternoon was near impregnable. With immigrant groups, unions, stands selling socialist newspapers (holy crap are there apps for that), people holding Trayvon Martin signs, chalk drawings, marker drawings, old timey cameras, few no anarchists and almost no cops.

The May Day/OWS combination celebration rolled into Union Square around 2:00, and is scheduled to leave at 5:30 for Zuccotti Park, with a "Guitarmy" led by Tom Morello, effectively the keynote speaker of the festivities.

Morello led off with a nice anecdote about workers in a guitar factory in Seoul, South Korea, who were fired en masse when they tried to strike. Unfortunately, Morello followed that up by being rude to his guitar tech, several time in a row, into the microphone. I guess workers are only sympathetic when they're 10,000 miles away.

Tom Morello played a horrific original song called "Rock Rebel Something or Another" before a terrible cover of "This Land Is Your Land," which may be victim to more bad renditions than any song in history. This year is the centennial of Woodie Guthrie's birth, and if we were alive "he'd not only be here," Morello said, "he'd be headlining." True, as far as it goes, but he would have played his song well, too. Anyway, whoever decided that Tom Morello needed to ditch the effects pedals for an acoustic and highlight his voice needs a protest of his own.

Absolutely the worst thing I've heard so far is the representative of the musician's union, who took the mic to tell everybody to write in to the Grammy's and demand that categories like zydeco and jazz be added back to the awards. Somebody tell this guy that people took the day off from work for this.

Once the jazz started, Union Square took on the feel of a normal, if crowded, Saturday. By the western half of the park, everybody was sitting down, barely bothering to hold signs. Some were napping, others were having polite conversation. A couple I sat next to were German tourists, and I don't think they cared about May Day from Sunday.

Through this peace, a drunk woman in yellow hair was dragged away by her friends, the sole instance of activity in the entire half of the park."This isn't anarchy!" she complained to the folks sitting down. "This is civilized!"