As apocalyptic acts of public protest go, yesterday’s Occupy Wall Street act-out was a bit of a piffle.
There was the promise to shut down Wall Street. Didn’t happen.
There was an effort to disrupt subway service. Didn’t happen.
And there were to be acts of “massive” civil disobedience at Foley Square and the Brooklyn Bridge. Didn’t happen, either.
To be sure, Foley Square was full to overflowing by 5 p.m. — hardly surprising, when it’s surrounded by government office buildings and the public-employee unions have been an Occupy mainstay from the outset two months ago.
Which is ironic, given that government employees in New York enjoy health-care and pension benefits that even millionaires might envy — and that surely elude the reach of the vast majority of 99-percenters.
But, in the end, Occupy Wall Street’s Day of Action turned out to be all talk.
The rhetoric was rabid, sure.
But there were nowhere near the “tens of thousands” of demonstrators who were supposed to fan out across the five boroughs and convulse New York.
“Some of the demonstrators deliberately pursued violence,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “That’s behavior that has nothing to do with the First Amendment.”
Thus there were arrests — 177 by sunset, including five for assault.
But the “real story,” Bloomberg asserted, “is that not that many people are here.”
Except, at the end, for the union members.
As rush hour approached, contingents from a number of unions — including the SEIU health-care union, the UFT and DC37 — participated in a largely peaceful march across the Brooklyn Bridge.
But not before a gaggle of the usual suspects went through the ritual-arrest process, and an embarrassing number of elected officials prostrated themselves before their union masters.
So what happened to the “revolution”?
Well, it was wet and very chilly yesterday; bad weather always puts a damper on uninformed outrage.
Monday night’s cleansing of Zuccotti Park has clearly diminished the movement’s critical mass.
But maybe that “movement” was more illusion than reality all along.
At the end, there were more vagrants, criminals and nut-jobs than protesters at Zuccotti Park.
Apart from self-aggrandizing union poobahs pushing their own agendas, there has been little coherence in any of the protesters’ “demands” — just resentment, envy and entitlement.
Yesterday doubtless could have ended differently, of course. Credit the professionalism and patience of the NYPD for seeing to it that it didn’t.
Bottom line, though: It seems that Occupy Wall Street has passed its sell-by date — and even the Occupiers know it.