» Occupy Wall Street “Occu-Pirates” Launch Sailboat-Based Encampment At UWS Boat Basin

Occupy Wall Street “Occu-Pirates” Launch Sailboat-Based Encampment At UWS Boat Basin

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

If you thought Occupy Wall Street was finished, think again.

Pockets of the protest movement are still alive and kicking, including a group who have set up camp on a sailboat at the 79th Street Boat Basin and call themselves “Occu-Pirates.”

DNAinfo has news on the water-based encampment and the participants’ battle with the Parks Department over it.

The article includes a rambling (and I think delusional) video interview with two members of the protest, one of whom is pretty much straight out of central casting.

Some morsels from the interview:

They’re planning “a fleet” of protest ships, and envision an entire “Occupy colony, colonizing and occupying the water.”
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“The whole point is to be self-sufficient; carry our home on our backs like a turtle… we’re going to be a mobile protesting unity carrying our homes with us, and I hope we have a floating community here by the end of the summer.”

Oh, joy.

Of the drum beating in the video above, the boat’s owner, Tom Fox, told DNA:

“People were happy to see us. It was like a tourist attraction.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most people are in fact not happy about this.

I’ll never understand why protesters think that banging a loud drum is an effective way of making people sympathetic to their cause. It’s even more absurd in this instance, given that the location along the river is a place most New Yorkers visit for peace and relaxation.

That video up top is via YouTube user Anothersemolina. If you click over to YouTube, you can read some comments about it that I believe were posted by the drummer, John Eustor.

I had some issues trying to play the DNAinfo video on their website, so I’m embedding it below: