Category: NYC

the head of the march as it arrived at 34th Street, confronted by the NYPD

The NYPD: Incompetent, malicious, following orders, or all three?

We had to go to Times Square yesterday afternoon to be a part of Occupy Wall Street’s assembly on the October 15th “Global Day Of Action”, but we were unable to start all the way downtown as many others did. As it happened, we arrived at 6th Avenue and 34th Street a few minutes before the vanguard of what I believe was the main march coming from the south.
We joined the throng, and along with thousands of other people of all ages and stations, snaked our way along some narrow, treacherous sidewalks, ending up on the west side of the block of Broadway between 42nd and 43rd Streets. The passage was impeded, first by the metal police barriers whose feet splayed into the path of feet temporarily neglected by eyes being used to avoid bumping into people, but also by sidewalk furniture of every kind, construction canopies, concrete repair areas, and hundreds of surprised tourists and other pedestrians.
In spite of our numbers we were forcibly squeezed into spaces designated by metal barriers and lines of moving police scooters on either side of the vehicle roadway. This was the order of our Constitutionally-renegade constabulary, ever heedless of the rights of assembly and speech, yet pathologically-obsessed with defending the rights of New York’s privileged motor vehicle traffic.
I’ve been in both “permitted” and “un-permitted” marches in New York City for 25 years, and I don’t recall any where we were forced to stay on the sidewalk once large numbers had been massed.
I find it embarrassing both as an American, a New Yorker, and a rights activist to report that the march was confined to sidewalks for its entire length, but that was only the beginning: The confinement continued even after the marchers had reached (or tried to reach) their destination, Times Square itself. Everyone was pressed behind barricades or forced into pens set up at the discretion of units of the NYPD – to protect themselves from us, but also to demonstrate that they could control our ability to assemble in civil society as effectively as they could control our movements.
Unfortunately the NYPD’s jealous possession of another instrument for controlling both speech and assembly has escaped the notice of too many of those whose rights they routinely trample. The human microphone is a wondrous thing, but it had to be invented because in New York the police, in addition to their monopoly of the freedom of assembly, have a monopoly on the freedom of expression represented by the electric megaphone and the microphone.
Even while walking up Broadway we were in touch through Twitter with some of those who were closer to Times Square itself and what we were hearing didn’t reassure us that we would be safe from police incompetence, rage, or their moves to deliberately provoke violence. That, plus the police brutality we’ve seen directed toward Occupy Wall Street over the past month, kept up from trying to move further north, or in fact remain standing in any place where we might not be able to easily escape.
These images are therefore pretty unexciting, but they may provide a little context for what happened on and around 46th Street yesterday evening.
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when I could join a protest and not fear I would be arrested, unless it was my intention to be arrested. In those days I could and would encourage anyone I knew to do the same, also with the totally reasonable expectation they would not be arrested – and certainly not be badly beaten. But today’s NYPD is a very vicious agency. It’s also a loose cannon; there is absolutely no way to predict what the cops will do at any moment.
We’ve also seen that at every level they are safe from being held accountable, even for the most horrible offense.
But with particular respect to what they are doing vis-�-vis this movement, we have to remember that cops take orders; More than ever before we should be asking who’s giving those orders.

Continue reading “Occupy Wall Street goes to Times Square – sorta”

early review of Occupy Wall Street: Times Square, spotted within its cast of thousands

Today in Times Square, elsewhere in the city, and all around the world, it became clear that the popular protest phenomenon known as Occupy Wall Street was no longer being ignored.
This is true even if our absurd-Right’s in-house propaganda machine, Fox-excuse-the-expression-News, still insists on pretending it doesn’t see anything.

The sign was taped onto a post at the edge of the throng which filled the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Liberty Park this evening.
What a difference a thousand days can make.

Supporters of Occupy Wall Street [OWS; Twitter #OWS], including unions, community groups and students, arranged for a “permitted” assembly in Foley Square on Wednesday to be followed by a “permitted” march to Liberty Park. Meanwhile at Liberty Park itself the people who were a part of or identified with Occupy Wall Street were to assemble around 3 o’clock in the no-longer-quite-so-small village which has sprung up in the former Zuccotti Park and then march north to join them at 4:30 in the huge courthouse square. That march did not have a permit, and no application had been made for one. In the absurd, antidemocratic mind of the New York City Police Department it was “illegal” to go uptown, but “legal” to come back, or so it would have seemed until that evening.
The crowd was extraordinarily diverse, high-spirited, and intense in its focus on resistance to the preposterous structure of greed and corruption which has wiped out the U.S. economy and any remaining vestiges of responsible government – at any level. The day proceded without incident until some 15,000 protesters arrived in the Wall Street area. Liberty Park and the surrounding streets were unable to contain the numbers, and when some of the marchers attempted to walk east from Broadway down Wall Street itself, a police brawl erupted, with white-shirted officers once again leading the assault with batons and mace. This time at least one NYPD “suit” also got into the act.
There were 28 arrests, and I think it’s safe to say that none of them were bankers or politicians.
Since I had left the site by 7pm, this photo essay is able to document only the happier part of the day, before the NYPD’s fetish for protecting the streets of New York from its people had shown its ugliest side.
For the record however, Wall Street and the blocks on Broad Street near the Stock Exchange have been closed to vehicle traffic since 9/11, and, subject to the whim of the NYPD, suspicious pedestrians as well. Stagy vehicle barriers ensure the safety of the bankers and brokers from truck bombs, but to combat the threat to the monied sort posed by the protesters of Occupy Wall Street the police had to unsheathe batons and mace.
Don’t the cops know that getting to Wall Street is an American dream?

The first two pictures in the series below show the march the NYPD had not permitted going up Broadway while confined to a sidewalk whose width, already reduced by “street furniture”, was further diminished by layers of redundant steel police barricades whose footings presented a tripping hazard to people crushed together and unable to see where they were walking. The portion of the road normally reserved for several lanes of vehicles had been narrowed to one, the remainder taken over by stationary police cars and vans, police scooters, and police pedestrians, all elements as unnecessary as they were expensive.
The other images, which until near the end are of the Occupy Wall Street marchers, speak for themselves.

Continue reading “Occupy Wall Street day 19: many friends arrive”

This post presents a very brief tour of the #OccupyWallStreet compound in Liberty Park, in the form of a photo essay, on day 18 of the occupation.


reception/information


media center


celebrity care


first aid station


cafeteria


lockers


performance space


reading room


showers

Tuesday, October 4, 2011, inside Liberty Plaza, New York City

ADDENDUM: The list of participants in the march has grown. This is what was being reported by #OccupyWallStreet as of 8:30 this evening:

AFL-CIO (AFSCME)
United NY
Strong Economy for All Coalition
Working Families Party,
TWU Local 100
SEIU 1199
CWA 1109
RWDSU
Communications Workers of America
CWA Local 1180
United Auto Workers
United Federation of Teachers
Professional Staff Congress – CUNY
National Nurses United
Writers Guild East
VOCAL-NY
Community Voices Heard
Alliance for Quality Education
New York Communities for Change
Coalition for the Homeless
Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP)
The Job Party
NYC Coalition for Educational Justice
The Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center
The New Deal for New York Campaign
National People’s Action
ALIGN
Human Services Council
Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State
Citizen Action of NY
MoveOn.org
Common Cause NY
New Bottom Line
350.org
Tenants & Neighbors
Democracy for NYC
Resource Generation
Tenants PAC
Teachers Unite

Tomorrow is big.
#OccupyWallStreet is likely to move into another dimension with the “Community/Labor March to Wall St against Corporate Greed and the Big Banks”. A number of unions and community groups will be a part of the march of the 99 percent Thursday afternoon. These include the United Federation of Teachers, 32BJ SEIU; 1199 SEIU Workers United; and Transport Workers Union Local 100; PSC-CUNY United NY; the Strong Economy for All Coalition; the Working Families Party; Vocal-NY; New York Communities for Change; Community Voices Heard; Alliance for Quality Education; [list in formation].
It has been announced that this march is “permitted”, meaning that the permits which the NYPD requires for any public assembly have actually been obtained, having been sought in deference to the preferences of some of the groups participating.
It was to start at City Hall (250 Broadway), but the assembly point has been changed, presumably in response to the anticipated numbers. Now it will assemble near or just east of Foley Square (map). The marchers will go down Park Row past police headquarters and City Hall to Broadway, where they will turn left and continue five blocks to Liberty Park (until recently called Zuccotti Park).
Any doubts about the importance being vested in this event are likely to be dismissed after even a quick look at the Google results for “Community/Labor March to Wall St against Corporate Greed and the Big Banks”.

Carrying On
A demonstrator* at Zuccotti Park on Thursday, Day 13 of the Occupy Wall Street protests. [New York Times photo caption]

I saw him almost as soon as I arrived at the Plaza. He was standing at the eastern end of the park, facing Broadway, the pedestrians passing on the sidewalk and the line of cops posted close to the curb. I was somewhere to the rear and side. He was shirtless; he was silent and almost motionless; he was holding a large handprinted cardboard sign; and he had a distinctive face, with a look which spoke of control and resolution.
I noticed the shirtless part first (and the inescapable Line of Beauty), then, as I walked around to face him, I was surprised at the tender, clearly (and graphically) heartfelt message of the sign. It was only later that I thought of his resemblance to the signature Guy Fawkes images of anonymous.
I took some pictures of the guy with the raised fist, but I thought they lacked sufficient appositeness to be included in the scenes I later uploaded in my post about a visit to the #OccupyWallSteet encampment on Thursday.
Then I saw the image here at the top on an inside page of Friday’s hard copy edition of The New York times, page A23 to be precise. It was a three-column-wide picture with a short caption offering almost no enlightenment and with no mention of the words on the sign the “demonstrator” was holding. There was no article accompanying it.
I was disturbed by the casualness, even flippancy with which the Times had used it as filler, as entertainment for readers it had not informed about its context. It was also at that time that I first thought of Fawkes.
I thought both the messenger and the message deserved more, so I am posting my own image below.

*
UPDATE: When I published this post the demonstrator’s name was not available to me. I asked at the time if anyone might know his identity, and I also wrote that I would like to know if the natural “mask” evoking one of the groups which initiated the 2011 Revolution was a conscious device (n.b. New York has outlawed the wearing of real masks for almost two centuries). Since then a reader has pointed me to this Times video in which the activist shown here appears, his name described in the credits as “Christopher Scully”. I still don’t know the story of the facial hair.



[I was unable to locate the image I saw in the paper on the New York Times own website, so this JPEG of the photo by Timothy A. Clary is from Agence France Presse – Getty Images, and it was published, cropped slightly at the bottom, by MSNBC]

General Assembly democracy, September 24, 2011

There was never anything mysterious about what the Wall Street protesters have been asking, but the obtuse may now find enlightenment with the appearance of a document published today by the General Assembly of #OccupyWallStreet, a “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City“.
It is in the nature of this unparalleled intensely-democratic movement that the text is not described as an official statement [“There is no official list of demands” @OccupyWallSt has tweeted] and what appears here will certainly change, but this is an historical moment; its significance should not be lost on any of us.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

Posted on September 30, 2011 by NYCGA

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

Cornel West returned to talk to the people in Liberty Plaza this afternoon before the 4 o’clock Stock Marker bell daily march; it was a clearly a mutual admiration society

I was downtown this afternoon visiting friends actually living with #OccupyWallStreet, and to meet others there who had come down for the first time to see what it was all about. I wanted to join the march which snaked through the Wall Street neighborhood twice every day, but I arrived early enough to breathe the air charged by the commitment and energy which sustains this remarkable phenomenon. This is the working map of the the encampment, but it’s actually looking more and more like Tahrir Square each day; @NickKristof, who showed up later in the day, wasn’t the first to notice this, and he’s not likely to be the last.
When I arrived Cornel West was at the top of the steps at the eastern end of the park. This time I didn’t see him address the entire group, as he did a few nights ago, telling the General Assembly, “Don’t be afraid to say ‘revolution’“. Instead, he seemed to be holding court, and he was loving it, as we all were.


at about 3 o’clock representatives of the SEIU [Service Employees International Union] arrived, bringing cases of bottled water for thirsty campers


the media and information office is still one of my favorite photo subjects, although it’s probably in a tie with the General Assembly


no explanation necessary


the pre-march advisory assembly, just before the crowd pushed off


the moment we stepped off the skies turned black and within minutes we were all drenched by torrents of rain which continued (at least for me) until I finally escaped down a subway stairway an hour later; as we neared Broad Street on a narrow sidewalk these food cart workers, who were cleaning up their kitchen, both gave us thumbs up


we marched straight up Broad Street, passed the Stock Exchange, and eventually headed east on Wall Street; meanwhile anyone who like me was not covered by a plastic poncho had been soaked to the skin within minutes; and these people go out twice a day, rain or shine – and many of them live outside, rain or shine; that’s pretty awesome

one of the colorful chrysanthemum planting beds inside Liberty Plaza [Park? Square?], a small American flag peeking out from behind rain tarps on the stone pavement below it

This post is the second of a series of captioned photographs taken last Saturday, beginning in Union Square mid-afternoon and ending that evening back at the #OccupyWallStreet campsite in Liberty Plaza. The first post is here.

[to open this second post completely, click onto the line of text at the bottom]

My experience of what I call the NYPD’s September 24th mini-riots began with my arrival at Union Square. Having rushed over from my apartment after seeing the live stream, I got there just as the demonstration had reached the southern end of the park. Hundreds of people who had walked two miles from the Wall Street area were smiling and in good spirits. They were marching west.


since Union Square had been the objective of the march, when it arrived there the enormous crowd had unavoidably begun to bunch up; some were still entering the park from the south, walking across 14th Street, and their numbers had forced others to walk in the street

The police didn’t like that. They quickly became violent, ordering the marchers to do what in fact couldn’t be done and be where they couldn’t be. Without waiting they started assaulting the peaceful people and some bystanders, seemingly at random. Most of the rage and brutality came from the higher-ranking officers (the white shirts); it was clear at the time, and even more clear in the still and video images which record what happened, that many of the beat cops appeared to be shocked at what they were being told to do but perhaps more terrified of the anger of their superior officers.
The NYPD had unrolled their hated contemptible plastic netting and were using it to separate the march into segments, and/or arrest any poor soul unlucky enough to be caught in the traps. People immediately panicked, screamed, and yelled (a totally natural response to such an assault and outrage), and that only further inflamed the cops, and the senior officers in particular.
I was trapped for a moment myself, but in an almost Keystone Cops melodramatic turn I spotted an open parking garage door and, with at least one other panicked refugee from the street roundup, ran into the building. Expecting to be pursued even inside, I started to run up a ramp to another level when I noticed another wide entrance opening to the side street to the west. My companion and I both slipped out of it just seconds before the attendant succeeded in closing the heavy overhead door. He may have been panicked himself by the violence going outside and was apparently notinterested in allowing the garage to become any kind of refuge.


even after the disturbing events on 14th Street, a section of the march proceded peacefully down University Place, where most of its participants tried to remain on a sidewalk much too narrow even for their reduced number; the police however were more interested in unrolling their nets once more (here at 12th Street), and again shutting down the street entirely, than seeing the march continue on its way downtown without incident or major disruptions


the police once again attacked the crowd violently at the intersection of 12th Street and University Place sometimes pulling their victims from the crowd, throwing or flipping them to the ground, binding their arms behind their backs with plastic cuffs, arresting them, and in several instances, macing them; support people, both trained and drafted on the spot, recorded the names of the arrestees when they were able to do so


the NYPD’s monstrous system of weirs, birthed during the 2004 Republican National Convention, was as confusing to its potential victims as it was feared: No one knew where it would end up when it was first displayed, and of course no one wanted to end up like a trapped animal


if anyone was blocking pedestrian and motor traffic for other than a few moments, it was the NYPD, which locked down the streets below Union Square for what must have been a couple of hours; as usual, their self-directed assignment was, by their own admission, if not in these exact words, to keep a peaceful assembly of New Yorkers from interfering with the passage of vehicles to which their streets have been sacrificed

Continue reading “#OccupyWallStreet day 8 (cont’d)”