Atlas Drugged Read online

  The “mayor” of Cooperville for the past five years calls himself Mr. B. Like many others, he is fiercely mum about his past. From the way he talks and deals with other people, most say he had to have been a white-collar executive, maybe even the head of something. But he’s laughed off every effort to piece together his biography. “You don’t wanna know and have got no reason to know,” he tells everyone who tries to probe. Whatever he may have been, Mr. B is a brilliant fundraiser and organizer. He’s found ways people can secretly donate everything from money to cell phones, since private charity is now illegal in the CSA. He created and manages the internal security force to keep outsiders from harassing park residents. Vigilante groups attack homeless for sport. So, Cooperville issues ID’s to its residents and has had no choice but to police its perimeter. The CC (Cooperville cops, as they are affectionately known) are armed. Again and again, Mr. B has stood up to anyone who’s tried to evict people from the park. Face-to-face, again last week, he told the mayor of New York City, “None of us wants to be here. But as long as we’re here, we’ll make the best of it. We aren’t going anywhere—until and unless it’s on our terms. So back off!”

  Wilson Brackett, III, the head of Internal Affairs, is as public about his past as Mr. B is private. He’ll tell you straight out that he’s the black sheep of a Boston Brahmin family who barely graduated Harvard and spent four years after college drinking away his trust fund. Before his money ran out, he met Ryan, his partner of fifteen years, and pulled himself together. Both were investment bankers on Wall Street and doing pretty well. Then, Ryan was diagnosed with MS, eventually couldn’t work, and lost his health insurance. Their savings were depleted to cover medical bills, but they managed—until Wilson lost his job when his firm folded. Wilson organizes all services and resources inside Cooperville, including the showers, toilets, electricity, and running water. He staffs the clothes, barber, and laundry tents so those who are looking for permanent jobs, and the thousands who work at day jobs, look presentable and don’t smell—especially don’t smell. He also manages all the cell phones and wireless communication in the park.

  Alma Parks was elected Head of Services unanimously each year for the past three years. She grew up in Cincinnati, the daughter of a prominent rabbi. After graduating from Antioch, she spent five years on three different kibbutzim in Israel. When she returned to the states, she got degrees in social work and business. A single mother who raised and educated two daughters and a son, she was always financially strapped but managed to get along. She worked as a guidance counselor in the one public school in New Orleans that hadn’t already been turned into a private charter. But as soon as it was, her position was eliminated. She invested all the money she had in an Internet startup business, which went bankrupt.

  Alma is as tough as Golda Meir, as compassionate as Mother Teresa, and as beautiful as Sophia Loren. In Israel, she literally helped make the desert bloom. She worked in a cotton field. She is a fierce egalitarian—the result of her family upbringing, as well as her kibbutz experience. Alma coordinates all information about jobs. “That’s all anybody wants,” she tells everyone. “Just give them a break. They’ll work like dogs and never complain.”

  There is no violence in Cooperville. There is no crime, not even petty stuff. The few who have disturbed the peace or tried to impinge upon the rights of others have been thrown out. No one is asking for anything from anyone, except a chance to work. And they’ll do anything—anything to regain their self-respect. Wilson also manages the cleanup crews so there’s no refuse and nothing in the park is destroyed. But crews have almost nothing to do. Everyone respects the environment. The park is cleaner than it ever was.

  Today, as on every Sunday at 3 p.m., Mr. B gives his weekly “warmup” (his word) speech to all of Cooperville. In addition to the crowd in front of him, others hear and see him on countless wireless devices throughout the park. “My fellow Americans,” he begins in his barreling voice, “it is now illegal to pledge allegiance to the United States of America. So, I ask you to say it silently to yourselves. Some day soon, I hope we’ll be able to say those words again—perhaps sooner than any of us might have imagined.

  “Your meal today has been donated by several individuals who understand your circumstances and who truly care about you. But you can never know who they are. As you know, in the Corporate States of America, it is illegal to give anything to anyone who needs anything. It’s everyone for himself. You can bribe politicians and judges, of course. You just can’t help average people. The Corporate Council says to help people is to keep them needy—and that’s a crime. So, you could go to jail for it.

  “Today, the sky is overcast. It is dreary. But don’t think it’s bleak. Remember: The sun is always shining behind the clouds. And today is a perfect example of how true that is. Mark your calendar: Sunday, June 5th is a red letter day, the day all of us have hoped for, but none of us could have imagined would have happened in our lifetimes. John Galt is dead.” He holds up three newspapers proclaiming the message in huge headlines as the crowd cheers.

  “You can read the headline and accounts in every newspaper in America and around the world. It’s on every blog and website. It’s viral on Twitter. It’s on radio and TV. Someone spooked New Atlantis yesterday. They were celebrating their sixty-seven fraudulent, conniving years in power, if you can believe it—the miserable decades we’ve suffered since Galt and his gang returned to rebuild the economy so they and others could rape it. The ‘great’ Hilton Manfreed was dishing out his usual free-market garbage when they got spooked. From out of nowhere, a voice interrupted the old coot and proclaimed, ‘John Galt is dead!’ I wish I had been there to see the bastard’s chain pulled. He finally got what he deserved. He got rattled. The whole lousy bunch of them got rattled. They didn’t have a clue what to do. It’s the first time they’ve been made to look like fools, the first sign they are starting to lose control.

  “You know it and I know it: Sixty-seven long, deceitful years ago, they started plotting to kill the middle class. Of course, that’s not what they said they were doing, except behind closed doors in the private offices of their ‘stink tanks.’ Publicly, they called it ‘trickle down’ economics. But they knew it was a piss-poor excuse for ripping off the country. Their religion is the free-market—or what they called a free-market, really a lot of laws they paid politicians to pass so they could get richer. They promised that what was good for the rich would be good for the poor, that prosperity would ‘flow’ down to the lowest of the low. They should have called it ‘fire hydrant’ finances. Like dogs, all they did was pee on the rest of us and turn their backs, without giving a shit.

  “For sixty-seven years, they’ve called everyone on welfare a thief and anyone who wasn’t a multimillionaire lazy. And they never asked why so many people never get ahead. They are so far gone, they think they’re as rich as they are because they earned it and deserve it. They think this land is theirs, not yours. They won’t own up to the fact that they have paid people off. And they’ve rigged the system worse than a slot machine so you’ll never win. Today, the government and our courts are a sham, stacked with their stooges, who protect corporate profits and personal fortunes—to hell, with you, stupid! ‘The little people’ don’t matter. To them, you’re throwaway, human toilet paper.

  “Sixty-seven long, dreary years ago, they started rolling back everything good about America, all the social progress we’d made. Make no mistake about it: They don’t believe all of us are created equal to them. You’ll never be able to join their country club so you don’t matter. And there’s nothing you will ever be able to do about it. They won’t let you in, even if you could afford to pay the dues. You are not one of them. They won’t say it out loud, but, in private, they tell each other how they really feel—every Jew is a kike; every Black, a nigger; every Latino, a spic; every Italian, a whop. Everyone who isn’t them, just isn’t.

  “For sixty-seven years, they’ve sucked the country dry s
o there’s nothing left for you. They treat you like animals—less than animals. They treat their dogs and cats better than you. They throw you their crumbs—and think you should thank them. They killed national health insurance. They’ve taken away women’s reproductive rights. They’ve ended public schools almost everywhere. Can’t afford school tuition for your kids? Too bad! All of you will just have to pick better genes in the next life. They killed your unions and said you’d make more money as free agents. Then, they fired you, moved their plants overseas, and hired foreign workers for a fraction of what they paid you.

  “Manfreed and his cronies quote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They praise our dead Founding Fathers. But if you’re living and breathing people, with hopes and dreams for a better life for you and your family and need to make a living, they don’t give a shit about you. They turned the greatest nation on earth, the United States of America, into the Corporate States of America, a business—no better than a vending machine. They live only to hear their cash registers ring with whatever money you can scrape up. Is your house on fire? Pay the firemen when they get to your house or they’ll let your place burn to the ground. Manfreed and his crowd have plundered public assets. They sold America out from under you. They call it privatization and say it is good for the country, but they sell everything at a fire sale to their cronies.

  “You played by the rules. You paid by the rules. You worked. You paid your rent. You paid your mortgage. But you were lied to and cheated. The tragic thing is how many people just like you believed the lies and the bullshit—and did nothing to stop the bastards. You’re here because a developer screwed you out of your land in Mississippi. Or you lost everything in a flood. Or you lost your job, couldn’t pay your mortgage and the bank foreclosed on your house. Or your kid got cancer and you didn’t have health insurance so you went bankrupt. Your stories are different. But the reason you’re on the street is the same: The United States of America that used to be your country was sold out to the lowest bidder. This was the land of opportunity. But it turned into one of monopoly and privilege. Money corrupted people. And people corrupted the system.

  “Look up, folks. Look up,” Mr. B says excitedly. From out of nowhere, a plane flies over the park, pulling a John Galt Is Dead banner. “Repeat after me,” he says, “John Galt is dead.” The crowd does so, cheers, and erupts into thunderous applause and whistles. “And now, because it is illegal to sing our beloved ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ please sing it to yourselves. Don’t forget to take your bag of snacks with you as you leave. They’ve been donated by a very special lady who cares about each and every one of you. I can’t tell you her name. But believe me when I tell you she loves you. Until next week, good day and good luck.”

  As the Cooperville crowd disperses after Mr. B’s talk, from her penthouse on Fifth Avenue, Misti Chase shakes her head and sneers as she looks down on Cooperville. Angela Fitzsimmons, president of her coop, is with her. “Damn homeless,” Angela says. “They’ve turned our beautiful view into a garbage heap.”

  “I haven’t been able to have a dinner party on my terrace in years,” Misti adds. Everyone knows Misti is the eyes and ears of the building. She keeps a written log of what’s going on in Cooperville. She asked Angela to come up so she could report what Mr. B had told the crowd. No one more publicly condemns the takeover of the park than Misti.

  If anything out of the ordinary happens, “the chaser”—as everyone calls Misti behind her back—immediately notifies the doorman, who calls building security. Since the city’s police force has been privatized, the only way a building can protect itself is to sign a contract with a private agency. Full-time, armed guards patrol Misti’s coop twenty-four/seven. They clear the sidewalk if anyone who looks suspicious so much as stops in front of the building. They shoo them on their way or escort them back into the park—anything so they’ll move completely out of sight. But as Misti Chase told the doorman when she went out to walk her dog, “No matter where they go, you know they’re always there, always capable of coming back. There’s no living from them. They haunt us.”

  “Times are tough,” he replied.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Misti counters. “My dog gets groomed only twice a month. I only have my dog walker six days a week now. We’ve all had to cut back.”

  Misti Chase wasn’t always Chase, and she wasn’t always Misti. She didn’t always live on Fifth Avenue. And she didn’t always trash the poor. She was born Myra Cohen in the Bronx. As a college freshman, she had marched for civil rights with The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She had protested the Vietnam War. She had picketed the White House during Watergate. You could hear her cheering loudly outside the White House when Richard Nixon resigned. Her husband Meyer, who insists everyone call him “Mike,” was a prominent proctologist. He made no bones about going into medicine for the money or about choosing his specialty because it was the way he thought he could make the most money. They became richer than they ever imagined they could be.

  Misti left to take her French poodle, Fave—named for Fifth Avenue—out for her afternoon walk. As usual, she had (what she called) her “Sunday bundle” under her arm, a Burberry shoulder bag ostensibly holding everything she needed to pick up after Fave. If Misti was one thing, she was organized—and always tried to keep up appearances. But as usual, she crossed the street and, after walking two blocks south, she passed a young, redheaded man who stood at the 81st Street entrance into the park. She opened her bag and took out a parcel wrapped in brown paper. Pointing to a trash bin about twenty feet west of them and handing him five dollars, she asked, “Would you be kind enough to throw this in the trash?”

  “Of course, ma’am, and thank you very much,” he said.

  Central Park West has always been the ugliest and most volatile side of Cooperville, the hardest to patrol and keep safe—not from the homeless, but from muggers preying on older men and women. They only want cash. But they can become physically violent if they don’t get what they want or if someone foolishly resists. Since the city police force was disbanded, anyone walking on the street is an easy target. No one knows by exactly how much crime has increased, because there is no longer a government agency to maintain records and statistics. Private security forces hired by individual buildings are only responsible for policing the area around them. Between buildings, everyone is fair game. The richest of the rich can afford to pay for personal security and have gotten used to having body guards and bulletproofing vehicles.

  “We live in a jungle,” CPW residents now complain. “It’s survival of the fittest.” Some of the loudest voices anguishing about the deterioration of security were people who had been the biggest proponents of reducing the size of government. “We don’t want to pay for a city police force,” they insisted. “We don’t want our money to go for other people’s security. It’s nothing but waste, fraud, and abuse. We can do it better ourselves.” Now, a group of CPW residents meets regularly to try to find a solution. Someone suggested creating their own police force, even hiring people from Cooperville, to patrol from 59th Street to 96th Street and from the CPW to Broadway. But no one knew how they could get everyone to pay their fair share for it.

  Two weeks ago, in the early evening, a homeless man was set on fire at the corner of 79th Street and Central Park West. Miraculously, he survived without any serious injury. A man came to his rescue, using his jacket to smother the flames. The security guard at the nearest building skulked away into the lobby, pretending he saw nothing. John C., a resident of Cooperville, had been returning from work. Two or three days a week, he was usually lucky enough to find work through a day-labor pool. When three young men demanded he give them his wallet, he told them he had only one dollar. But when they discovered twelve—he had just been paid—for spite, two of them held him down, while a third threw cigarette lighter fluid on him, then a match. “I can’t blame them,” he told the man who saved him. “They’re young. All they know is the hate the
y hear. I’m nothing to them. Other people are nothing to them. I don’t think they think we’re human.”

  Everyone in Cooperville was shaken after learning about the attack on John C., but relieved that he had not been seriously hurt. More patrols were assigned to the west side of the park. But once the initial shock wore off, like everything else, they took it in stride. They really had no choice. They were constantly under attack, real or imagined—the weather, illness, callous potential employers, you name it. Developing a thick skin is the only way they cope. But as hardened as they had become, no one, and least of all LuAnn Buford, was prepared for the shock of Sunday night, especially after Sunday afternoon had ended on such a high.

  LuAnn and her husband Billy had only been in Cooperville for six months. They had never been to New York before and never imagined they’d get there the way they did. It had always been their dream someday to get to the “big city,” as they called it. Billy had promised, and LuAnn knew he’d make good. She had always said she married him because his word was “as good as gold.” “He may not be good lookin’ and he sure ain’t rich,” she told everyone, “but he’s honest, and I love him to pieces for that.”

  Everyone called Billy the park’s “Fixer-in-Chief.” He was an auto mechanic by trade. But he could fix anything. He had a “tinkerin’ kinda mind,” he said with a smile. “Gimme anythin’ broke and I’ll do my damndest to put her back in shape, and most times I can.” He was also the world’s greatest scavenger. As LuAnn proudly told everyone, “My Billy can make somethin’ outta nothin’ to beat the band.” Before long, Billy had built the best shelter for them in all of Cooperville— and everybody said so. He called it his Taj Mahal, another place he always said he wanted to take LuAnn. After twelve years of marriage, they had no children. But they were devoted to each other. “He’s all I got, and all I need,” said LuAnn. “Ditto,” said Billy.