So here I am, thinking it’s too quiet on the news front in terms of anything recently regarding modern pirates, not seeing anything dramatically grabbing the headlines half a world away.
Not realizing a story of interest not more than a mile off…
I present to you, the Occu-Pirates, a boat crew with connections to the Occupy Wall Street movement who are trying to remind people about OWS with protests on the Hudson, sailing one of the drum circles that used to fill the streets with sounds downtown along the river to “drum up” support (no pun intended; really) for the cause. This prompted the NYC Parks Department, operators of the West 79th Street Boat Basin, to threaten to revoke his mooring privileges if he did not cut that out.
Whatever you think of the OWS cause, or about class warfare in general, you do have to admit: If ever there was a tradition that needed to be kept alive in New York, it’s that of trouble at the wharves caused by pirates. This city would not be the same without Thomas Tew spending pirate booty in the taverns, making enough return on investments made in him by the Van Cortland family to put their names north of the city. We’d be a much poorer city in terms of our culture had Sadie the Goat not left the Fourth Ward to plunder the Hudson.
So if in the name of haves this pirate is forced to put to sea and leave for good, are we really any better off? If we lose a proud pirate tradition for the sake of the troubled sleep of the moneyed, then maybe it’s time to yell to the one-percenters, “Up against the Wall Street, motherfu-“
James Ryan 