Austerity by R. J. Renna Page B

to see a sprinkling of disbursement of people. We all started to feel as though this would be the beginning of the end. We estimated that about 10% of the park had left by noon.
     
    At around 16 hundred hours, the City of New York arrived with food supplies as an “enticement” for people who would vacate the area. A few thousand more left the park. However, by the evening, the disbursement has stopped. That’s when my heart began to sank. About 1.4 million people are going to take their chances, in the park, with no food.
     
    James Delgado, Occupy Central Park Survivor
    By the afternoon, we started hunting anything that moved, squirrels, pigeons, rats, even fish out of the reservoir. We had to ration out everything very thin. Only women and children ate. Men started eating the leaves off of the trees. We were like locusts. By the third day after our food was taken, we ate everything that could be eating, in the that park. Many people were starting to get sick due to eating diseased plants or animals. By the fourth day, I started to see some desperation.
     
    FBI Agent (NAME REDACTED), Undercover Agent, Occupy Central Park
    I had to make a decision here. I could come and go as I please. However, if I showed any evidence, that I ate anything, my cover would have been blown. I would have been in the middle of the park with a million potential hostiles. I had a 9 millimeter but that wouldn’t have gotten me out of the park.
     
    I went for six days without eating solid food. Instead, I started ingesting supplements to ensure that body would not deteriorate to an unhealthy level. However, I started to see women and children starve. Some of the older people, in the park, were beginning to have a serious downturn in their health. By the seventh day, I voluntarily blew my cover.
     
    I was surprised that no one expressed anger or disallusion when they found out my true identity. Instead, they seemed to trust me more. They knew we were all in the same boat. That’s when I started to sneak in and share my meager food supply allotment with three other people. It was at that point, that I started to spiritually side with the occupiers at the park.
     
    Jamel Washington, Inwood Resident and Occupy Central Park Survivor
    We all started to starve a week after the food went away. You started to see people lose lots of weight. Everyone in the park started to get skinny. The kids really started to look bad. The city promised that they would feed the kids but they couldn’t feed the parents. So you had moms and dads make this decision. Do they give up their kids to the city so the kids could eat. Or do they keep the kids and watch them starve. Some gave up their kids. Others didn’t trust the government with their young. That’s when I started to lose my mind. Shit just didn’t make sense anymore. I prayed for God to come down and straighten this shit out.
     
    Lisa Dolan, Occupy Central Park Survivor
    I started to hallucinate. I had not eaten in four days. I would see these humanoid forms in front of me. I would hear voices in my head. And I would shake. I had never felt this level of hunger and desperation in my life. I kept saying, “Let me out. Let me out.” I wandered around the park for an entire day looking for a way out.
     
    By the early evening, someone had escorted by to the outskirts of the park. I collapsed and a National Guardsmen placed me on a stretcher. They lied me down next to another woman. There were 35 of us. All women. We were all mumbling. The Guardsmen gave us water and an IV feed of nutrients. After an hour or so, I asked someone, “Where are the men?” One of the women answered, “They don’t have enough supplies for them.” I am only alive today because I was a woman. The men were left to fend for their own.
     
    James Gagaun, Occupy Central Park Survivor
    I was so hungry that I started eating the dirt. I didn’t even know where I was anymore. I started seeing things at night. It look like there