Update5: The ruling looks like it is coming down. Occupiers can return to park, can use sleeping bags but no tents. Confirmed. OWS has 45 minutes to appeal. NYTimes confirms. So, the answer to this is relatively simple: occupy but don’t sleep there. Have someone rent some local space to sleep and occupy the site in shifts. Journalist at the courthouse says Occupiers can get into the park but are being prevented from doing it by police.
Update4: Still unconfirmed reports that the court has ruled in favor of the occupiers to return to Zuccotti Park with tents. But there is some weird activity going on at Zuccotti park. The police are moving people away from the entrance to the park and telling them to keep moving. Still no idea what that’s all about. Hmmmm, if I was the mayor and his 1% BFFs and I lost the park to some protestors, what would I do to make them go away…. I *might* make the park uninhabitable. How would that happen? OR, I might let them have the park but make it difficult to impossible to get into it.
Update4: CNN and Huffington Post report that Occupy Wall Street has won the right to reoccupy Zuccotti Park. With tents. Still unconfirmed.
Update3: We are waiting for Judge Stallman to rule whether the police can continue to block access to Zuccotti park in spite of an injunction. Ruling to come in at around 3:15pm. Rumor: the crackdowns and evictions around the country were coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security. Mayor Jean Quan in Oakland has admitted that she was part of a conference call with the mayors of 18 other occupied cities. It’s clear by now that the evictions were coordinated. Who coordinated them is still a matter of speculation.
Update2: Globalrevolution.tv has had more than 60,000 viewers today. AND there are more and more and more people marching down to Zuccotti park in support of the occupiers who have been prevented from re-entering despite a court injunction preventing the police from keeping them out.
So, what did Bloomberg and his 1% cohort accomplish today? He alienated the press, he has lost a court case upholding the 1st amendment rights of the occupiers to assemble and he has rallied the city around the occupiers.
Yep, didn’t see *that* coming.
Oh, and there’s a general strike at UC Berkeley. (who couldda predicted?)
Unconfirmed report: Ocuupy Cleveland just mic checked VP Joe Biden. So much for Obama campaign astroturf rumors.
Update: See Not-Your-Sweetie’s personal account of the regrouping at the Trinity Church property at 6th and Canal. It looks like she got out just in time. Here’s a pic from her photo essay:
A rabbi, a buddhist and some priests walked into a crowd
Follow the action at www.GlobalRevolution.tv
Beatings of protestors now.
They are arresting a woman in a wheelchair. Yep, they really are. Four cops surrounding a woman in a wheelchair. Priscilla?
It looks like there are even more people showing up to the fenced off area around 6th and Canal(?). Soooooo, that worked out well for the police.
20 people arrested at the Trinity Church property. 4 were journalists from various media outlets. One from the AP. One man was roughed up, thrown to the ground with police physically on his back.
More first hand accounts of the eviction early this morning from journalists who were there to cover it:
The city blog Gothamist put it this way: “The NYPD Didn’t Want You To See Occupy Wall Street Get Evicted.”
As a result, much of the early video of the police operation was from thevantage point of the protesters. Videos that were live-streamed on the Web and uploaded to YouTube were picked up by television networks and broadcast on Tuesday morning.
At a news conference after the park was cleared Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the police behavior, saying that the media was kept away “to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect members of the press.”
Some members of the media said they wereshoved by the police. As the police approached the park they did not distinguish between protesters and members of the press, said Lindsey Christ, a reporter for NY1, a local cable news channel. “Those 20 minutes were some of the scariest of my life,” she said.
Ms. Christ said that police officers took a New York Post reporter standing near her and “threw him in a choke-hold.”
That reporter and two photographers with him declined to speak on the record because they are freelance workers and lack some of the job protections of full-time employees. But as they sipped coffee on Tuesday morning in Foley Square, where some of the protesters had regrouped, they expressed surprise at the extent of what they described as police suppression of the press.
And now there are a lot people angry about being displaced, irritated from lack of sleep, congregating in various places downtown. Before, there was just one venue. Now there are many.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan Admits Cities Coordinated Crackdown on Occupy Movement
spammy eats my comments 🙂
Awwwwww, poor widdle ralphy. 😦
I will go rescue them.
thanks 😉
your comments must be very tasty.
and pithy, don’t forget pithy 🙂
Have at it, sports fans.
And may I remind everyone that myiq is a faithful She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named disciple.
So, what we have here is a whip kisser who admires a Tea Party leader who likes to “target” Democratic congresspeople she and her gun totin’ followers don’t like. She has no problem hanging out with Glenn Beck like they’re BFFs.
Now, he is militantly anti protest, even though he is well aware of the tactics that right wing groups will take to discredit the occupiers.
What does Myiq have against poor and unemployed middle class people protesting the inequity of the system caused by the rich?
One point is just a data point. Two points are a trend. Three is a correlation.
I have to wonder who Myiq is working with.
Face it, myiq, this movement is bigger and more resonant with the public than the astroturf Tea Party ever was. There are more people who show up to an OWS march whenever the occupiers call for it than the super organized and corralled Tea Partiers ever could.
You’ve lost.
RD, I doubt Teh Klown is deliberately working with anyone.
I’d guess he just got programmed with anti-DFH ideology at an impressionable age, like many other of our fellow citizens, most notably our corporate President Backtrack Iscariot Obummer. The Malefactors Of Great Wealth and their Corporate Media are taking advantage of that programming, portraying the Occupants as just another gang of DFHs.
Also, I gather he lives closest to the Oakland Occupation, which according to what I’ve read at the Hullabazoo–which is definitely NOT a wingnut site–has attracted the largest fringe of predatory droogs of any of the Occupations. One of the commenters on a ‘Zoo thread noted while the Oakland Occupation was plagued with droogs, the Occupants right across the Bay in Frisco were quite well-behaved.
I guess early anti-DFH programming explains the willingness of the Agnew Holers to believe the Corporate Media’s concentration on the lowlife fringe of the Occupations–which the CM does not only from political bias, but also from the old newsroom adage “If it bleeds, it leads.”
Alas, it seems the Agnew Holers’ opposition to Obummer may have derived its emotional energy less from anger at the Obummer gang’s theft of the 2008 Democratic nomination, than from anti-DFHism, and the misperception that Obummer and his droogs were DFHs. That misperception made them easy prey for She Who Must Not Be Named, who serves as a gateway drug into wingnuttery. Some of the Holers are even enthusiastic about the Tea Birchers now.
The Agnew Holers avoided assimilation into the Oborg Collective, only to be assimilated into the Wingnut Collective instead. 😦
Nevertheless, there is a certain internal consistency about his commentary in the past year that can not be explained by problems with DFH. Besides, Myiq and I are in the same age cohort. We were little kids during the summer of love. That was someone else’s generation and we were too young to have an opinion about such things.
Sorry, I have to be more skeptical on this. I don’t even believe the excuse that once he was in the security industry because I have been to the occupation site and have marched with those people. And they are about the last people on earth who would deliberately break the law with any kind of violent action. So, why is his perspective from an armchair so totally out of touch from mine as an actual participant?
It’s because he’s been sitting in his armchair. Without direct first hand experience, how credible is his opinion on this? Why is he so willing to accept the right wing narrative?
Think about that because this is not a one off.
It’s too bad because I really believed in him at one time. I stuck up for him when no one else would. But he has gone too far for me. Maybe not for you, but for me.
I hadn’t been over for some time so I went over and read a post about the candidates where myiq ended with a line about how Obamanation is praying that Romney is the nominee.
If you think Obama would rather run against Romney than Newt, you’re either a lawyer with a client or you have a screw pulled completely loose 😉
I’ve been suspicious of him since back in the fall of 2008- it was way too easy for him to drift into sexist comments about women in general as so called “jokes”. I don’t trust anyone like that.
I thought of renaming Teh Klown “Myiqutus of Wingnutborg”, but that’s too unwieldy.
How about “Myiqutus of Teaborg”? 😈
Oddly enough, I don’t have a problem with his silly ex-wife jabs. Sometimes, women take themselves waaaaay too seriously.
May I suggest “Tea Birchers” as a name for the TP cosplayers? 😈
Heh Heh 🙂
Ralphb,
I pray for a Romney nomination, and here’s why. Romney is the least scary Republican running for it. Romney wouldn’t be that much more conservative a President than Obama is. I would view a President Romney with distaste, but not with the dread which would make me vote for Obama. Nominating Perry or Bachmann or Gingrich or Palin or probably Cain would make me vote for Obama.
But I don’t want to have to do that. So that is why I will pray and work for a Romney nomination over on the R side. So that if Romney gets it, I will be set free to write in “Clinton” as the most effective and humiliating counter-Obama protest possible.
I know what you mean and think he’d be the hardest to defeat. That’s why I can’t see anyone wanting Gingrich, Cain, or Perry to get it. Unless you really have went wingnut or something.
I have a lot of sympathy for the people who left the Democratic party and gravitated to the Tea Partiers because of their anger and feeling of impotence. But they jumped on the wrong bandwagon. They are the 99% and whether they go to the occupations or occupy from the comfort of their couches, *this* is the movement that will take their fight to the ones who are stepping on them.
Me 2. In fact I’m one of them but it didn’t take that long to realize that the tea party didn’t represent my beliefs. I’m still angry but would like to channel that into some kind of positive direction.
Being continually negative about everything is a soul killer and I think the occupations or the message can be an antidote to that.
From way off in the boondocks, I’ll defend both OWS and the Tea Party — at least the early, un-coopted crowds at both. They even have a core issue in common: bailouts, crony capitalism.
The media distorted both groups, opponents called both of them astroturf. Imo they both came out to a good slogan — sensible normal people. (An early poll found c.60% of Tea Party supporters had been GOP; c. 75% at Zucotti had voted for Obama; both groups were disillusioned now trying direct action.)
Tea Party got co-opted, perhaps from getting too deep in politics too soon. So OWS is trying a no-politics route. Same goals. Pincer action.
Funny how the folks that comment there are quick to attack OWS but they sure do love them some Tea Party!
I am astounded at how quick some of those so-called “Democrats” ( if they really were Dems ) dropped the charade and seem all too willing to attack those giving voice to what we are having to endure at the hands of the “Ruling class!”
I made a comment there the other day about police brutality and my experience with it and I was basically called a liar by folks I don’t know nor know of me! Some there believe a cop would NEVER resort to violence due to someone asking why he was pulled over in the first place., and they would never beat him in front of his wife and three daughters while handcuffed! Oh no…Not in these United States…I must have been fibbing!
I’ve lurked on other sites as well to try to gauge the mood of the people on sites I loved to frequent and I’ve noticed something disturbing……once this OWS movement took off, many folks I thought ( by their writings and comments over the years ) were like minded in our disgust and anger over the way were treated by our beloved Democratic party, have shown themselves for who and what they really are.
Little wonder why it was so easy for the DNC to disregard it’s voting base…..Too many of us have forgotten what it meant to be a DEMOCRAT!!!!!!!
Not to mention the free bus transport, food service and other incentives … via the Koch bros.
Not to be out done, there are some clowns that are not pro BULL. Ole!
City council member Ydanis Rodriguez beaten by #nypd and bleeding from head. #ows
RD, Spammy ate my comment for some reason–and I know I did NOT name the former Governess of a large northern state. 🙄
Riverdaughter, since the thread where you asked me to clarify what I meant by a permagreen tab for a useful information permanode is now closed, I will offer my best thoughts here.
As this blog continues covering the OWsites and movements in more sympathetic detail than most, and with more eyewitness facts and observations; more and more people will become aware of this blog. It may become a go-to blog for OWSers and OWSupporters. This was the only blog I know of that gave an email address for people to right in suggestions about what the OWSerfolk might start thinking about, for example.
So as more OWSers come here they will see any recommendations commenters leave here for what to study and think about for how we got here and how we might get elsewhere through organized political efforts. They will also see any recommendations left for personal freedom-building and dis-enslavement persons might try to achieve in the meantime. Some of those suggestions will include book titles or periodicals titles or websites descriptions and URLs. If any of those recommendations turn out to be of such high information value that they would be good permanent standing go-to resources for infoseekers, they could be stored and posted in a permanent location which is easy to find. That permanode for good information could be called up by its own Green Tab with the appropriate name. Of course that would only work if you or trusted blog assistants and partners felt it worthwhile to study all the incoming recommendations to see if any of them are even worth permanent posting. I will give an example of what I think might be a website of long-term value for people seeking to lower their exposure to the OverClass DebtCropper Society.
And here is the link to that website I just spoke of as an example of what “might” be worth preserving in an easy-link easy-click greentab permanode. It is called Anti Consumer and it is a meta-linksite to many inforesources and thought-stimulating articles about how to live more efficiently on less money and stuff, and also how to create or aquire stuff in the small but emerging parallel economy, a sort of Free UnMarket CounterEconomy in opposition to the Slave Market Economy we all live in. ( Well, it turns out the shitty icons prevent me from leaving the link here either, so I will have to post a sub-sub-comment just for the link.
http://www.verdant.net/
I just looked over your site. I’m not unsympathetic. Obviously, if I were, I wouldn’t be following this movement and going to zuccotti park. However, I’m not sure I’m into signing on to a particular set of solutions without thoughtful consideration, data collecting, model building and extrapolation.
For example, I’m not onboard with the idea that consumerism is an evil thing. I believe in all things in moderation. And there are things that people make that we find useful or beautiful or necessary that we might like to consume. I will not be condemning anyone who buys a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes. I can remember when I was a poor student how I coveted a pair of cognac colored Frye boots with a braided detail on the side. They were more than $200 and back then, that was an extraordinary amount of money. But they were so beautiful and so versatile and so well made that I worked extra hard to buy them. And so I did.
But I didn’t buy 30 pairs of Fryes. And I think that is a difference that some people on the left fail to discriminate. There’s nothing wrong with buying something special, as long as you realize that if you buy many of those things, they cease to be special.
Same with growing your own stuff. I’d love to have a garden that I couldn’t kill. But it’s unlikely that my tiny piece of townhouse yard is going to feed my family. I don’t want to feel guilty because I didn’t move back to the land.
I *am* a big proponent of mass transit and am kind of militant about it. But I’m not going to force people to give up their cars. I just want to make the mass transit experience so efficient and cost effective that people want to take it and leave their cars at home.
See where I’m going with this?
It’s one of the reasons why we have a credo but no specific policy prescriptions. That’s because I don’t want to lock myself into a solution that I later have to back out of when it proves to be unworkable. Like pharma. I’m going to bet that any proposal the left makes about pharma right now is going to cause more harm than good. That’s because the left doesn’t understand it yet. Once we geeks bring it up to speed, it can start making some sensible decisions about it. But right now, it has no idea what the real problems are. How can it expect to know how to solve them? We need thoughtful consideration, data collection and forecasting to see what will be the most beneficial to the public going forward and I’m not sure that all crunchy granola proposals are ones I want to sign on to.
What do you think?
I’m with OWS all the way and get your point on purchasing. I’ve never owned a really nice car so after decades of work and paying off all my debts, I bought one. That new Caddy does not make me a 1%er.
According to various sources, the 1% is those who make over $350,000- $400,000 per year — regardless of how they spend it or their political positions.
I basically agree with you. On the case of Pharma, my feeling is the research money shouldn’t belong to big corporations, it should be an arm of government- all those unemployed chemists like you should be doing drug R&D for a health care government agency, instead of being driven by profit margins it would be driven by the need to find cures for diseases, etc…
Ciardha, that would be great! I’d love to work for the government. But it has to pay a living wage for NJ. That wage has to be enough to support a family, afford a nice place to live, a Disney vacation once in a childhood and save for a college fund. Right now, that’s not what we’re seeing. So, either the government can move us out of NJ so we can actually live decently on $60K/year or it’s going to have to increase the salaries here in NJ to industry standards, even if they’re only on the low side of industry.
But think of all the money we’ll save when the government owns the patents and we get to chuck the marketing departments!
I have a friend who works for the EPA in their R&D department and she makes 80K a year. Federal government jobs tend to pay much better than municipal government jobs. (Another example- my dad was making 33K a year as computer programmer, when I was born in 1966, in a federal government job, and 55K in 1978 when my parents divorced. And my dad just had a Bachelor’s degree.) I contrast I earned less than 40K working in a municipal library last year, that with a college degree and after 16 years in that library system. Federal government jobs are also much more secure than state and local government jobs.
Riverdaughter, you raise very fair points. I think I could say something valuable in reply, but not in the small time remaining on my lunch break. I will keep thinking . . .
Re-reading my comment and your reply to my comment leaves me thinking that there is a big question and a little question. The big question is: would a greentab link to some permanently accessible pertinent information-sites or resource sites be a good thing for this blog as it becomes ever more known to the Occupy community? Are there sites or resources or a few very-best books that serve the basic need for this early stage of gathering information, impressions, and understanding of where we are and how we got here and where we might go? Do I understand you to be saying that the most valuable resources now would be the general and foundational and not the particular and detailed, especially if disputable? If so , would such basic resources even exist? If they would, and if you know of any that would meet the early-stages need you describe, I hope you decide that this blog might be a place to permalink to a few of the very best of them.
The little question is: was the particular link I offered worthy of inclusion into such a permalink node if you decided that such a permalink infonode ought to be set up? And my answer is: that would be entirely up to you. I think I am getting a slightly better feel for what
kind of information and keys to finding/building knowledge you want at this stage. I am not sure if I know enough to recognize them. Perhaps I may if I understand clearly enough.
About being able to buy nice things for use and pleasure, that is a very fair point. I also like nice things in some areas . . . good olive oils
and vinegars and other food inputs. And books. Lots of books. Even though that site I offered is crafted in a spirit of buying as few nice things as possible in order to deprive the establishment economy of consumer support, I think some of the little links within it could help people save money “here” in order to spend it “there”. But that too is more particular and fine-focus that a foundational quest for data and understanding of where we are and how we got here.
James Downie writing in the Washington Post.
Bloomberg’s disgraceful eviction of Occupy Wall Street
Yeah……Wonder how those defending the police action and haters of OWS would feel when “THEIR” precious Tea Party is crashed by the goon squad for exercising their free speech?
Oh wait….That won’t happen. The KOCH brothers own the police don’t they?
Yeah they won’t beat or bite the hand that feeds them, yet. Your comment above is golden. When I saw people commenting about the “hordes of dirty commies” running around everywhere, I just gave up. 🙂
Yep, the 1% overreached. The one thing you never ever want to do is piss off the press. Bloomberg has his own printing press but the 99% doesn’t read it but rarely.
They really stepped in it.
RD – no curfews in the park? They can be there but no tents or camping? I like your idea of shifts!
They’ll figure something out. Necessity is the mother of invention. But as long as the occupation is down there, and people like myself will be making day trips to it, it would be a very good idea to put in some porta potties. There aren’t enough public toilets in NY for even the non-occupiers. What harm would it do? And I’ll bet the Daily Show could be hit up to sponsor them. It’s a twofer. Jon or Colbert could be doing their civic duty to keep Manhattan clean and in return they get a couple of seasons of political bathroom jokes. How could they lose?
HERE’S THE RULING.
Click to access OWS111511.pdf
Just heard an OWS attorney say protesters can come back to the park but without “structures” – specifically doesn’t say sleeping bags….now I’ll go read it and see it that is true….back in a flash…..
I read it as saying no sleeping bags or lying down. The judge said the protestors can go back in the park subject to the laws “and rules” that Brookfield put into place AFTER the start of the Occupation. Those rules are:
“Camping and/or the erection of tents or other structures. Lying down on the ground, or lying down on benches … The placement of tarps or sleeping bags or other covering on the property Storage of placement of personal property on the ground, benches, sitting areas or walkways which unreasonably interferes with the use of such areas by others”
Maybe we can put sleeping hammocks in the trees? Cocoons hanging from existing structures?
Those rules sound like the ordinances some cities are using to keep the homeless from getting too comfortable.
That’s exactly what those rules are about….I continue to argue that when the Occupation started THOSE RULES DID NOT EXIST. The Occupiers had no notice and, therefore, unless and until they voluntarily give up their original site (being evicted by Bloomberg does not count) then they are OK.
That should be correct.
Glenn Greenwald on the OWS raid.
A police raid suffused with symbolism
Copy cat. I wrote that post first.
Every word of this piece by Charlie Pierce is a gem, as is the following update.
A Militarized Force Takes to Zuccotti for the Economic Elite
Perfect for the new stage of the Occupation…can’t lay down in a sleeping bag in a park???? Sit up and stay warm!
http://www.sleepingbagsuits.co.uk/
(As seen at Corrente!)
What a great idea! And then they can do a modified grass orgy!
aka a grorgy:http://www.flickr.com/photos/ctyalcove/157814355/
Spammy is throwing a fit again.
Bad Spammy! Bad! 👿
I believe this could be called confirmation of a conspiracy.
Update: ‘Occupy’ crackdowns coordinated with federal law enforcement officials
And who is the boss of “federal law enforcement officials”?
Why none other than closet republican Obama.
If Harry, Barry, and Nancy acted like Democrats instead of Reagan clones from beyond the grave there would be no protests on Wall Street.
If they were FDR Democrats, there would be no need for protests on Wall Street.
So, they changed the judge to get the ruling they wanted. Interesting to read the tabloids covers today for their seething hatred and different degrees of cluelessness