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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Zucotti Park Closed Awaits Hearing

    

  
   "In a surprise early-morning action, hundreds of New York City police cleared Occupy Wall Street out of Zuccotti Park on Tuesday, arresting dozens, throwing protesters’ tents into garbage trucks and touching off a chaotic scene in Lower Manhattan"

  "In a morning press conference, Bloomberg said Zuccotti Park was originally set to reopen at 8 a.m., but citing a potential court order that needed clarification, said that the park would remain closed to the public until that situation could be straightened out.
    If anything needs clarity it's this latest action. What is clear is that:
    "In a surprise early-morning action, hundreds of New York City police cleared Occupy Wall Street out of Zuccotti Park on Tuesday, arresting dozens, throwing protesters’ tents into garbage trucks and touching off a chaotic scene in Lower Manhattan."
    "The police, some in full riot gear, started handing out notices at around 1 a.m. from Brookfield Office Properties, the owner of Zuccotti Park, saying the public space had to be cleared out for sanitation reasons, The Associated Press reports. The papers said the park — where demonstrators have camped out for nearly two months — “poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard to those camped in the park, the city’s first responders and the surrounding community.”
     "Occupiers were informed they could come back in a few hours but that they would no longer be allowed to camp out at the park or bring back tents and sleeping gear."

      A demonstrator affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street yells at  a New York City police officer outside Zuccotti Park. | AP Photo
     I like the picture above because it suggests the visceralness of this kind of social unrest. Look at the expression of that protestor. It speaks volumes. We'll have to see what happens in New York. I had planned to go to Zucotti at some point in the near future-soon as time and money permitted(basically I have no money). Hopefully I will still get my chance.
     For their part OWS delcares that you cannot evict an idea whose time has come.
     "This burgeoning movement is more than a protest, more than an occupation, and more than any tactic. The "us" in the movement is far broader than those who are able to participate in physical occupation. The movement is everyone who sends supplies, everyone who talks to their friends and families about the underlying issues, everyone who takes some form of action to get involved in this civic process."
     At the top of the page of the above link read the words Shut Down Wall Street! Occupy the Subway! Take the Square!
     This takes us back to the question of what is behind the city suddenly attempting to shut down Zucotti Park? Bloomberg  takes responsibility for the it and says:
    
“Unfortunately, the park was becoming a place where people came not to protest but, rather, to break laws, and in some cases, to harm others,” Bloomberg said, noting that for some residents of the area, noise and unsanitary conditions of the Occupy camp had created “an intolerable situation.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68378_Page2.html#ixzz1do1FAdWh
   It's not clear what he means about bringing harm to others though there have been isolated incidents of violence.
   He added: “The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out — but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others — nor does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law. There is no ambiguity in the law here — the First Amendment protects speech — it does not protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.”

   
  Bloomberg said New York City has always been a city where people can express themselves. “We have a history going back to the founding of this city of being open and welcoming. And what was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that,” he said. “It had developed into a situation which was prohibiting a lot of people from expressing their views.”
  
He also reiterated that residents of New York City “have a right to be safe, and they have a right to say what they want to say, and they don’t have a right to keep others from saying what they want to say or not saying anything.”

   No right to keep others from saying what they want to say or not saying anything.. Yes lots of clarity. What seems more likely is that what precipitated the action was the talk of taking over Wall Street, the subways, the pubic square, etc.
   
  "It has been reported that the Occupiers had planned to shut down Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday by holding a street carnival on the movement’s two-month anniversary."

   The media was not welcome here either at this time: "
According to the New York Observer, members of the press were denied access to the park during the police raid. Towards the end of the eviction process, a group of protesters reportedly began to chant, “Media go home,” visibly unhappy with reporters writing about the developments.

   
“Folks in #thepeopleskitchen are gassed, tackled, dragged by arms and legs, and all others are being barricaded out so they can’t watch #ows,” the protesters wrote on Twitter at around 4 a.m."

  


  

     

   


    

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