We ran in bursts toward Zuccotti Park, cameras in hand, sure that we’d already missed the story. We hadn’t. For press that night, the story never materialized. If you weren’t in the park when the police came, you weren’t getting in—unless you were Mother Jones reporter @JoshHarkinson. Intent on having a reason for being out on the street at 2 a.m., I followed a group of protesters down Cortlandt Street. They walked as though they had a mission. But when they reached the curb at John Street after only a block, a protester began yelling, a cop began pushing, and all of a sudden, the group was being corralled down the street and away from where I stood.  

A cop pushed me into the crowd of protesters, and I tried to sound convincing as I mumbled, “I’m a journalist.” An officer gave me the option to walk away. And I took it. The night was young. Getting arrested wasn’t the story. And I had my gear to think about. 

Determined to get into Zuccotti, we set out with an Associated Press videographer and a man my colleague Andrew Katz had previously met only on Twitter to search for a break in the police barriers. I wanted an image of the park from above, and I asked every police officer I passed if he knew of a tall building I could shoot from at 2:30 a.m. No dice.

Police turned us away at one street leading to Zuccotti, then another and another. By this time, news about the press blackout was trending in my Twitterverse. Every outlet was being turned away at the gates. A Times reporter wearing only a credential issued by the paper passed one cop’s test, but when the reporter came back to borrow a cell phone from a fellow journalist, the Times reporter was ushered out. Over the course of the night, a number of journalists were pushed and arrested—even those who had NYPD credentials.

We got inventive. Katz had noticed that police were allowing cabs through their metal barricades, and so we hopped a cab and told him our destination: Zuccotti Park. The driver wasn’t having it. It was a slow night and he seemed happy to have a customer, but we weren’t the ones he wanted. At the corner of no return, at the intersection of Vesey Street and Broadway, he demanded we get out of his cab. He glared at us as we closed the doors and walked toward Zuccotti and into a scuffle between police and protesters.

Get on the sidewalk, police demanded at Fulton Street and Broadway. Protesters obeyed, but the police kept pressing, and suddenly three cops were on top of a man, pulling then pushing him to the ground. He began to scream that he couldn’t breathe as another two officers joined the fray. His screams were panicked, but before protesters could see anything more, the police pressed forward, pushing everyone back toward Vesey Street.

Our itch to get a story had turned into impatience, which had turned into rage. We were members of the press, after all. And the park was right there. We had heard the police helicopters overhead and seen the soon-to-be-full paddy wagons driving toward the park. But Zuccotti was just beyond our reach. 

Just after 4 a.m., Katz and I arrived at Foley Square, adjacent to the Manhattan Supreme Court. About a hundred protesters had gathered to hold a “general assembly” meeting. Cops lined up and then disbanded, then lined up and disbanded again. A few protesters were using the downtime to nap or catch up on Twitter activity. Before dawn broke, a new Twitter handle was born: @OccupyFoleySq. A new hashtag—#OFS—had been introduced. And according to Twitter, the bigwig social media guys were headed to the square. At a point, the media seemed almost as numerous as the protesters. 

Slowly the sky brightened. The police began to leave. And Zuccotti expats set about making plans to take back their “home.”

– Anna Hiatt / The Brooklyn Ink