FOUR NEW YORKERS

Names have been changed to protect the identities of the interview subjects.

OMAR: I uh… I didn't really understand how the financial system worked. I just knew there was a bunch of important shit on Wall Street and that people were going to be holding some kind of protest there. I found out about it through Facebook.

I signed up mostly because I thought the event's name was hilarious. "Bastille Day II: Occupy Wall Street Turbo HD Remix." It sounded like a great time to me.

ULYANA: It's New York City, you know. There's always protests and shit like that going on. But this seemed like it would be a big one. I was too young for the original Occupy protests, and I didn't wanna miss out on the sequel. (Laughs.)

BIJON: I remember it was raining. Just a drizzle in the morning, but it kept getting worse throughout the day. And still, it was so bright.

I think that incongruity—the sunny sky and the onslaught of rain—contributed to the chaos that followed. If a torrential downpour couldn't stop the sunshine, it wouldn't stop Bastille Day II.

DANI: I was new to the city. I was lonely, no friends. So I'd made it a habit of just going to any sort of meetup or event I found online. I guess I was hoping to meet people.

God, I was naive.

OMAR: It was unlike any protest I've ever seen, right from the start. The presence of reps guaranteed that. Volunteers had set up with generators and reps and were passing out repped water bottles, snacks, and sunscreen. That was nice, sort of reassuring.

Then I noticed other people repping shit like body armor and gas masks. I started thinking, you know, what kind of protest is this going to be?

DANI: I got there and immediately started chatting up some of the people who were distributing free water. I offered to help out, and they were so grateful. They put me to work in their tent right away. All of the volunteers had a sort of nervous vibe about them. One of the older ladies working the rep told me she didn't like some of the "elements" in the crowd.

Another guy said, "Yeah, these ain't New Yorkers." I told them I was new to town too, and the older lady was like, "That's not what we mean."

ULYANA: I figured there'd be people with reps at the rally, so I brought along a couple of M-80 firecrackers. Powerful sons-of-bitches. The explosion is enough to take your fingers off if you aren't careful. And the noise they make is just incredible. I figured if I could get somebody to rep a couple dozen of em, we'd have some fun.

OMAR: All of the cops were milling around the perimeter of the event. So the deeper you went into the crowd, and the further you got from "law and order," the crazier people were getting with reps. I had only walked a hundred feet or so into the crowd when I started seeing people repping drugs right in the middle of the street.

The dealers had crowds of people around them, including cronies keeping watch for anybody who might try to bust them up. They were manufacturing everything: weed, pills, powder, even loaded syringes. This one guy was passing out the needles and saying, "It's a clean rep, never before used."

BIJON: I was in one of the office buildings on Wall Street that day. Watching from the 16th floor. I saw the people repping guns long before the police did.

OMAR: Right after I walked past the drugs guys, I saw people handing out weapons. I don't know that much about guns, but I think they were AK-47s. Really scary looking.

BIJON: They were M16A2 rifles.

DANI: A group of guys came walking toward our tent. They were carrying assault rifles. I knew right then that they must be repping guns somewhere in the crowd.

The older woman leading the volunteers turned to us and told us to go find more supplies. Medical-grade bandages, pain-relief drugs, that sort of thing. "We may need it," she said.

We all knew what she meant.

ULYANA: Of course I headed straight for the center of the crowd and found the guys repping guns. I showed some of them my M-80s, and immediately I was the belle of the ball. They popped them into the rep, and we had a hundred more within 10 minutes.

One of the guys, he was tall, with a mustache. He looked like the leader. He asked me if I wanted to see "the real shit." He had a tent set up right there on the ground, in the middle of everything. And inside was a girl running a rep. She was printing out stack after stack of C-4. Little green rectangular packages, with a timing device on top. Just like in a video game.

OMAR: Somebody shoved one of the guns into my hands. I was like, "What the fuck!" Threw it down and kept walking. I started to think maybe I should just get out of there.

ULYANA: When I came out of my tent I found an assault rifle just lying on the ground. I figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So I picked it up. That was about the point when somebody started setting off the M-80s.

DANI: Suddenly there were gunshots. They were coming from somewhere deeper in the crowd. People were running and screaming. A bunch of the volunteers grabbed their shit and took off too.

The older woman, the leader, stayed in her seat. Kept working the rep. She was printing out medical supplies. She looked me straight in the eye and said, "It's okay honey. You can go."

I decided right then that there was no way I was gonna leave her.

ULYANA: When the M-80s started popping off, people were running and screaming. And cops started pushing aside the barricades and running in toward our group.

One of our guys picked up a gun and just started spraying the cops. Full auto, taking out pigs.

A huge firefight broke out. I guess a lot of the guys had come there specifically for this. They wanted the fight. Probably 20 or 30 of them were firing back at the cops.

At first, I'm not gonna lie, I was kinda excited. I was like, "Yo, this is just like GTA." Cops were dropping everywhere. Then I realized I was still holding a gun, making me a target. I threw that shit down and started running.

BIJON: I don't know what the police were thinking. They were so outnumbered. And when they first started firing into the crowd… I suppose they didn't realize how well coordinated the armed rioters were. Half of the cops were bleeding out on the ground within a few seconds. The remaining forces either abandoned their post or focused their energies on dragging their injured comrades to safety.

OMAR: I was standing on the steps of Federal Hall when the shooting started. I took cover behind the statue of Washington, not knowing what the hell to do. A couple of cops got shot down right in front of me.

I thought about pulling them to safety, but the bullets just kept raining down on them. There was no way they were still alive.

DANI: Two men came running toward our tent, carrying a body between them. They were yelling for a doctor.

We told them we couldn't do anything for them, but they just dropped off the injured person and ran back into the fighting. I realized it was a girl. She had a bullet wound in her thigh, one in her shoulder, and one in her stomach. She was bleeding so much, but she wasn't saying anything. Just crying quietly. I was pretty sure she wasn't gonna make it.

ULYANA: I was trying to run away when the tall guy with the mustache caught me by the arm. He said, "Help us blow up The Fed."

I was like, "What the fuck is The Fed."

And he said, "I think it's the place where they print all the money."

I was like, "Oh shit, yeah, I'm in."

He tossed me some C4 and pointed me toward a building with gigantic columns.

I ran over and a guy there showed me how to plant the charges. We started putting them all around the building, at the base of the columns and all along the foundation. I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

BIJON: They thought Federal Hall was the Federal Reserve? Dumbasses.

DANI: We were losing the girl and we knew it, when out of nowhere, like a dream, this woman appeared.

She was carrying a bag of something. She said "I'm a doctor. This is O-negative blood. Let me use your rep."

We couldn't even process what she was saying when she tossed the bag into our rep and started scanning. We were gonna give repped blood to the gunshot victims. The doctor was barking out orders, getting us to clean off an area and prepare for the blood transfusion.

I was thinking, "Wait, you can rep blood?"

OMAR: The firing had mostly stopped. When I poked my head out to check out what was going on, I saw like half a dozen people running up the steps. They were yelling, "Place those charges!"

I was thinking, charges? A few of them aimed their guns at me—I just threw my hands in the air and hollered, "I'm friendly! I'm friendly!"

They let me go. I fucking booked it.

ULYANA: The timer on the charges were set to three minutes. Once they were all placed and activated, I just took off. I ran around the corner, past Trump tower. The street outside it was absolutely swarming with cops. I guess it was the staging ground for the second wave of law enforcement. Nobody stopped me.

BIJON: Federal Hall is on the spot where the Congress of the Confederation met. It's where George Washington was sworn in as President. It's, like, a museum. It has nothing to do with printing money. Fucking idiot kids.

DANI: I guess there's no reason to assume you couldn't rep blood… but still. Something about it seems wrong, doesn't it? That's what was going through my mind when the explosions went off.

OMAR: I had only made it about a block down Broad st. when I heard the bombs. The noise was just tremendous. Glass was shattering all around me. I couldn't hear for minutes afterward. I just kept running in what felt like silence, to me. I've never experienced anything like it.

BIJON: I mean, for God's sake, the New York Stock Exchange was literally on the corner across the street. (Laughs.)

They didn't think to bomb that instead? Instead they go after one of the great symbols of the previous regime, leaving all the real underlying power structures untouched. So typical.

And their C4 wasn't even enough to fully take out any of the columns. They just made a huge mess.

Did you manage to save the injured girl?

DANI: I don't know… the police came and swarmed us before we got too far with her.

The doctor tried to get them to back off, but the cops were so spooked by the bombs that they weren't taking any chances—they handcuffed everyone and dragged us off.

I never saw the girl again.