May Day Spiral

It’s been a busy week and I’m only now turning my attention to the May Day demonstrations, particularly this image by the talented photographer, Stuart Isett, who shot the activities in Seattle for Bloomberg. (His work, Lost Boyz, about Cambodian refugees who escaped to America, got caught up in gang life, and were then deported back, is very powerful.)

The amount of irony in this photo is hard to calculate (especially with the suicide this week of the popular former pro-football star, Junior Seau. His family is turning his brain over to researchers to further study the connection between concussion, brain injury and depression in former pro players.)

In the photo, the clothing of the Black Bloc types constitute a uniform every bit as distinct as those worn by a pro football team. More significantly, though, as hard times grind on and the “haves” remain insulated from accountability as much by the distraction and seduction of popular culture, there’s a perverse logic to the fact these hooligans choose to take out their frustration on the retail face of a sports-entertainment empire all-too-popular for its violence.

(photo: Stuart Isett/Bloomberg caption: Protesters break the glass of a National Football League store during an Occupy Seattle May Day rally and anti-capitalist march in Seattle, Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, May 1, 2012. Occupy Wall Street demonstrators took to the streets in May Day protests from New York to California, picketing banks in Oakland with helicopters overhead and sending a singing “Guitarmy” to Manhattan’s Union Square.)