NEW YORK—I’m here on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street with Ada and Jimmy and the other Jim, the one carrying a French horn and wearing a cape made out of fake dollar bills with "WALL STREET SLAVERY" and other slogans on them. We’re getting ready to walk in front of the New York Stock Exchange and demand that Hillary Clinton release the transcripts of the speeches Goldman Sachs paid her hundreds of thousands for.
Actually Jimmy is away right now getting a hot dog, which Jim says "won’t kill him." The rest of us are trying to figure out whether we’re at the right place for the protest because we were told to be at "the federal building," which could mean either here or the New York Federal Reserve or the Court House. We don’t really know.
This is not the only thing I’m confused about. Somehow I have found myself carrying about 100 oversized-novelty $1 bills that I am supposed to hand out to people over the next two hours. Each one features Hillary Clinton with dollar signs over her eyes, her hands making a shushing motion, and flanked on her respective sides by a seal that says "Wall Street: Look the Other Way" and a pyramid draped with lines reading "NAFTA," "Deregulation," and "Welfare Reform."
Jim, who has just handed the bills to me, explains that I have to be careful. "Don’t just put ’em on the street," he says. "You could get arrested for littering."
The police would do that?
"They can do anything they want to us, really."
Jim does a lot of the talking today.
Soon we are joined by Jesse, who is wearing a t-shirt that features a picture of Abraham Lincoln hoisting a boombox over his shoulder, and three high-school students from Staten Island who are skipping class today to protest. One of them ends up carrying Jim’s bag for him.
Eventually Ada and Jim think there are enough of us to get started. The first thing we go over is the chanting program. We are going to say at least three.
"Who’s going to be my ‘Hillary, Hillary’ buddy?" Ada asks.
I volunteer for this one, which is the "call" part of the call-and-response. And I am so good at yelling it that I can’t quite remember how the second half goes, though I am pretty sure it is a generic "Release the transcripts!" The other chants, which we rehearse together, are "What do we want? Transcripts. When we do want ’em? Now!" and "Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like."
"I’ve got a rap ready," says Jim.
While we are going through this Jimmy is sitting high up on the steps eating his hot dog and applying paint to a piece of canvas.
Things are really dragging on. It is almost noon and we still haven’t walked the 400 feet or so over to the Stock Exchange. Where is everybody? I was expecting scores, maybe hundreds of people. Jesse, talking the protest equivalent of shop with a guy named Raymond, explains that no one is here because it’s a weekday. If it were a weekend, he says, the crowd would be 10 times as large, but the bankers wouldn’t be working so there would be no one for us to yell at.
"So the problem is we either have speakers or listeners, but not both."
Jesse is going up to Albany tomorrow to push for an increase in the state minimum wage. He can’t remember what the current one is, but he has looked into the issue. "I did some math based on studies about the psychology of happiness and with how much money it starts to level off. $15.30 is where it starts to level off."
Just as we are getting ready to go we realize our ranks are continuing to swell.
"Hey, we’re up to 20 people," says Jim. "Here, free money. Wall Street got free money. Now we want free money for the people."
Finally we get moving. As pledged I am helping Ada with the "Hillary, Hillary," but I’m not sure what my voice is supposed to sound like. Should I be intimidating? Optimistic? I settle on what I think of as "loud but broadly tolerant."
Maybe it’s just me, but for some reason every single person walking past us right now looks like an absurd Michael Douglas caricature of an evil Wall Street tycoon. Most of them are just smirking as they go by, but a few have stopped on the sidewalk. When I try to hand one of my fake dollars to a kid who can’t be more than 22 with the same hair and glasses as Benjamin Horne in Twin Peaks, he recoils as if I have leprosy.
Now we are all standing in the middle of the road facing a sidewalk of onlookers. One of the new guys is holding a giant lime-green cardboard check made out to "Hillary ’R Girl Clinton"; the box on the right gives the amount as "$$$$$$," but below it says, "One ring to rule them all." Someone else has a "Congrats on the big endorsement" sign with pictures of Clinton, Kissinger, and Nixon.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is an American flag made of money," Jim says. "We want free money. We want to tax Wall Street. We want to tax the billionaire class."
He pauses. "Somebody else say something."
Nobody steps up, so we do two more rounds of "What do want? Transcripts! When do we want them? Now!"
A Wall Street bro starts cursing at us.
"We want to tax your ass, too," says Jim.
Ada decides to make a speech. "This cannot be a one-sided deal. Everyone needs to pay their fair share. The income cap needs to be lifted and everyone needs to put into this society as much as they take out."
"From each according to his ability!" sneers a guy in a blazer on his way into the Stock Exchange.
"I drove here this morning from Albany, New York," says the guy with the Kissinger sign. "I drove three and a half hours and took my 16-year-old daughter out of school." He tells us how he lives paycheck-to-paycheck and is working very hard but still can’t quite make his mortgage payment every month. Later he says that on Monday he held a phone-banking event at his house, during which his daughter made 150 calls to Michigan voters.
Then we hear from Jackie, a purple-haired old lady who is involved in local government. "I’m part of the establishment now," she says, before laying into Hillary for her "bullshit."
When she finishes, we go in for another series of chants. Protests are very repetitive. Maybe someone should have prepared some remarks? I am starting to sense boredom, and not just my own.
Jim gives me a hopeful look. I don’t want to let him down. I stare down the crowd.
"Bernie won Michigan last night," I say, much louder than I would guess my voice has been at least since I was a teenager trying to scream over my friend John’s bass amp. "You know why? Because people there realized that the Clintons screwed the working class in the ’90s with NAFTA." I mention my maternal grandfather’s 35 years at Buick and talk about the UAW. When I finish there are a bunch of cheers from our side, and even the bros on the sidewalk are staring at me intently.
"Awww, grandpas for Bernie," Ada says.
I don’t think my speech is very good.
After another few strong rounds of alternating between "What do we want? Transcripts!" and "Tell me what democracy looks like!" Jim says it’s time to start marching to "the Trump building." It is about two minutes before I realize that he means the structure better known to students of American architectural history as the Bank of Manhattan Trust building, and not Trump Tower, which is about an hour and a half’s walk from here.
The change of scenery does not liven things up much. When no one wants to address the crowd on the sidewalk, we fall back into chanting. I end up having to speak again. I decide to start with a phrase I’ve heard Bernie Sanders use over and over again.
"We need to be absolutely clear about the transcripts," I say. "Hillary Clinton’s fees for speaking to Goldman Sachs are more than Bernie Sanders’s net worth."
A lady chimes in: "Because he’s not corrupt!"
I point to big capital letters behind me that say T R U M P. "Because Bernie’s the only person in this race who’s not either bought and paid for by the billionaire class or a member of the billionaire class himself."
I think this speech is better than my last one, but apart from a lone cry of "Trump," no one says anything. I notice that a cop is talking to a nice-looking woman pushing a baby stroller and making the cuckoo sign in our direction. I realize that despite my best efforts I’ve only managed to give away one of my dollars. I’m grateful when Jimmy takes them off my hands even though it means that I have to carry his hand-painted sign.
Eventually Jim finds himself drawn into an argument about socialism with a guy who approaches us from the sidewalk. It doesn’t take long for him to get upset.
"I am not and have never been a member of the Communist Party!" Jim says indignantly.
One of the ladies doesn’t like how he’s handling this, sniping and yelling at our interlocutors. "I can be polite to a banker I hate," she says.
When we loop back to Federal Hall again for some group photos and a last round of chanting, during which we add "Feel the Bern!" to our repertoire, we meet a guy in a red "Make America Great Again" hat.
"Build that wall!" he shouts in response to each of our choruses.
But it’s no use. We are drowning him out. He looks angry.
"Trump was right about universal health care!" I say.
"Racism, racism, that’s all you talk about," he shouts back, which confuses me.
Suddenly I notice that it’s 1:00 p.m., our scheduled end time. I need to find Jimmy and return his sign. Ada is saying that she has to go back to work. Jim, who is still wearing his cape, says the same thing. It occurs to me that we never did hear his rap.