It's been a bit of a bumpy road for the Occupy Wall Street movement recently. The removal of barricades around Zuccotti Park was a win, but the group has been burning through their funds, Yoko Ono might be co-opting them, and they may soon be kicked out of the West-Park Presbyterian Church where many occupiers have been staying. On top of all that, Village Voice reports that DJ Spooky and club Work in Progress totally screwed over what's left of the OWS Library last night: "I found them fucking ungrateful. I did them a favor, and it wasn't the favor they wanted, so they threw a little fit. A bunch of them tried to get in, and they probably hadn't showered in days. All of a sudden I'm supposed to change my rules for them? It's a night club!" said WiP's creative director, Stuart Braunstein.
Though he admits he wasn't that familiar with everything that had gone on with OWS, DJ Spooky—aka Paul Miller—had invited the Occupy Wall Street Library to hold a book-party/dance-party at the club Work in Progress Wednesday night. Per Miller's request, flyers billed the free event as "Occupy the Library—books and dance featuring DJ Spooky and the People's Library." Librarians promoted the event on their website, urging other occupiers to attend, while hoping to get others to donate more books to the library.
But the night of the actual event didn't run too smoothly: more than 50 library supporters were forced to wait outside in the pouring rain, and ultimately were turned away from the club because of how they were dressed. "Some of your people my door is telling me haven't taken a shower and smell and look homeless we can't let them in cause this is a business," Braunstein explained to Stephen Boyer—the librarian who helped organize the event with DJ Spooky—in an email.
A club manager also told the librarians who were already inside, and had set up stations for the books in the club, that they had to move them to a hallway: "Wow—that whole exchange felt exactly like a lot of our interactions with the cops," said librarian Darah McJimsey afterwards. By the time DJ Spooky went on and gave his shout out to the People's Library, the occupiers had left.
"The club failed us," Boyer told the Village Voice as he left. "We had an understanding. Our name and our imagery are all over the flyers for this event, we promoted it, and now they're not letting us in. We feel used." Braunstein saw it slightly differently: "I'm not about dividing people into the 99 and the 1 percent. But honestly, the Wall Streeters inside are a lot nicer than those guys, and at least they pay some of my bills."
