NYC Spent $30 Million Policing Occupy Wall Street, Officials Say Updated May 17, 2012 8:54pm
May 17, 2012 8:54pm | By Julie Shapiro, Jill Colvin

Occupy Wall Street protesters march down Broadway from Union Square on May 1, 2012. (DNAinfo/Joseph Tabacca)

LOWER MANHATTAN The city has spent a staggering $30 million on police overtime at the Occupy Wall Street protests, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Thursday.

The total overtime cost has ballooned over the past two months from $17 million in March to nearly double that on Thursday, Kelly said at a City Council budget hearing.

The spike in spending follows the massive May Day protests of Tuesday, May 1.

The Occupy Wall Street protests along with Hurricane Irene, which cost the NYPD $7 million in overtime pay have busted the NYPD's overtime budget, pushing it up to $604 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, Kelly said.

That's $53 million more in police overtime than the city paid the previous year, he said.

While the NYPD is devoting a large amount of manpower to policing the protesters, Kelly said the effort is not hurting the NYPD's ability to fight crime across the city, since the overtime workers are taking on extra shifts on their days off.

"Most of these events, for instance Occupy Wall Street, that's covered by overtime," Kelly said. "So that's somebody who is not normally working. We're not taking them out of the precinct. We're having them work on their day off to cover these events. So the impact on commands…is minimal."

Kelly also blamed the huge rise in overtime costs on the city's cuts to civilian officers, whom the department uses for administrative duties so uniformed cops can spend more time on their beats.

The number of full-time civilian positions at the NYPD has fallen to 14,431, he said, and will drop to 14,107 next year.

"These civilian reductions have affected all department functions, especially clerical and administrative, and the city's continued hiring freeze had limited the department's ability to fill vacancies in technology, trade and other professional titles," Kelly said in his testimony.

"It certainly has the potential of impacting adversely on patrols," he added later during a question-and-answer session.

However, Kelly added that after years of declining ranks, the NYPD has just completed two major hiring rounds for uniformed officers, welcoming a class of 1,631 recruits between last December and this July and another 1,055 in January 2013.

While crime has edged up across the city so far this year, Kelly pointed out that murders are down, with 132 so far this year, compared to 168 by this time last year.

Queens City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who chairs the Council's Public Safety Committee, said he is still concerned there are not enough police officers on the force, but he called the murder decline "truly remarkable."

Nato Livestream:

March just beginning.

http://www.ustream.tv/occupycarlisle

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet

Hundreds of Protesters Head to Chicago Mayor's House to Oppose Health Clinic Closures
Sunday, 20 May 2012 09:01
By Allison Kilkenny, Truthout | Report

Police in riot gear guarding Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house. (Photo: Allison Kilkenny)
As hundreds of protesters slowly marched to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Ravenswood neighborhood in Chicago, news trickled in over Twitter that three young NATO protesters recently arrested had their bail set at $1.5 million and were being charged with terrorism-related offences.

The marching protesters were angry and disappointed. Some feared the media's attention would focus solely on the act of three young men instead of the acts of hundreds who were marching to oppose the closings of six mental health facilities all across the city.

Hosting NATO will likely cost the city an estimated $55 million, and health advocates claim only a fraction of that bill, around $2-3 million, is needed to keep these facilities open.

Basically, priorities are skewed, or as Occupy puts it: "Shit is f-d up and bullshit".

Not only are mental health facilities being shuttered, but students are being crushed under a mountain of student debt, while people are losing their homes, and the U.S. government continues to pour billions of dollars into foreign assaults and occupations.


Protesters sitting in street in front of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house. (Photo: Allison Kilkenny)
Kevin Caby, an Occupy Chicago protester and former student at both Columbia College Chicago and Northern Kentucky University, says he owes over $100,000 in student loans.

"I am participating in this because I oppose the risky behaviors and pro-Bourgeoisie mentalities of the whole Reagan era, extending into the Bush era, and now even the Obama era. That whole attitude of if we take care of the wealthy, it will somehow get to the poor when it's obviously not helping," said Caby.

"You see the wealth gap in the United States rising ridiculously, even compared to global southern countries. It needs to stop," he said.

At a time when things are so bad for so many people, I asked Caby why more people weren't protesting in the streets. Protesting students in Quebec recently struck so much fear into the hearts of their leaders that the provincial government passed an emergency law restricting demonstrations and shutting some universities to buy officials time as they desperately seek to put an end to three months of spirited protests.

"I was talking to some individuals last night, and they were afraid of the police presence, so I think it is that fear of the police state that we have that if they step in the way, they can be harmed, or it could damage their future by getting a record or something," Caby explained.

For many protesters, the march wasn't in the name of some distant, abstract notion, but rather a fight for life over death.

Debbie Delgado, a former patient at Northwest Mental Health, which closed in April with five other city-run facilities across Chicago scheduled for closings, wore a hospital gown and carried a sign that read, "How much is a life worth"?

Delgado lost a son to gang violence in 2006, who died in the arms of her other son, who subsequently suffers from PTSD. Now, Delgado protests on behalf of herself and her son, who refuses to look for another yet-to-be-closed clinic.

Delgado was one of 23 activists arrested for occupying the Woodlawn Mental Health Center in early April.

"We have people dying at home. [Emanuel] has split us to different locations…and it takes us eight miles to get there now," Delgado said when describing life in a post-Emanuel world, adding she's sickened by the amount of money spent on security for NATO officials when poor citizens are having their basic services terminated.

"I'm very angry about that because we voted for Emanuel, but now that we need him, he's shutting us down. You hear in the news that he's talking about planting flowers downtown or fixing up the Cubs' area, but why can't you use that money here to save lives?"

Delgado talked about the difference in care between previously public-run facilities like Northwest Mental Health and privatized care. She claims the Mental Health Movement has seen two suicides since the closing of clinics began, and more individuals are getting lost en route to their new clinic destinations.

Furthermore, the new care is unaffordable

"It can cost as much as $100, per session, for a therapist," said Delgado, a skyrocketing cost considering the public facilities used to provide the same care for free under Medicare.

"People can't afford that because they're low-income," she said.

"I'm here to continue fighting because some of them don't have their medication because they fired the doctors, the nurses, the therapists, and everything, so these patients are out of medication, and when we went to the Daley Center three weeks ago to tell them we need medication, Emanuel had us arrested," said Delgado, adding, "In one year, he destroyed so many lives."

Protesters marched peacefully through the streets of Emanuel's neighborhood before sitting in the street before his home where a phalanx of Chicago police greeted them, dressed in riot gear.

It was a strange sight: a pristine, sweet, unpretentious neighborhood missing only the white picket fences surrounding the yards, marred by a police riot response team ominously guarding Emanuel's immaculately manicured lawn.

Despite the presence of police and hundreds of protesters, for the time being, the CPD have shown great restraint in dealing with activists.

Police have made their point in other ways. It's common knowledge among protesters that the police possess an LRAD device, or sound cannon. CPD casually parked horse trailers nearby the protesters' gathering spot today before the Rahm march. Photographer Zach Roberts posted a photo of an armored vehicle resembling a tank to Twitter after the CPD apparently parked it in plain sight of photojournalists. Helicopters constantly fly overhead marches.

It seems the CPD have figured out bashing protesters across their heads isn't necessarily the only way to convey they have total control of the city.

Standing before the row of riot police gathered at Ravenswood was a young man dressed in fatigues, two gold medals gleaming on his left shoulder.

Sargent John Anderson is one of the veterans who will be ceremoniously returning their medals on Sunday to NATO's generals. Though not a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Anderson said he intended to march with the group tomorrow in solidarity.

"I'm here because these are the people I fought for. I did not fight corporate interests, and when I realized I was fighting for corporate interests, I had to find another way to fight for these people," said Anderson before explaining why he intended to return his medals.

"I'm going to return my Global War on Terrorism and my Iraq Campaign medals. The Iraq Campaign medal, I feel like we have no business being there and we created a lot of problems and caused a lot more instability. Of course, the situation wasn't ideal when we went in, but it's far from ideal now. I had no business being there. We have no business being there, so I don't want it anymore. The Global War on Terror: pretty much it's the result of our poor domestic and international affairs and the way we exploit different people throughout the world. If we handled our ways differently, then we wouldn't be in this situation right now."

I asked Anderson what moment, or moments, inspired him to try life as a protester.

"I was studying history and we read about World War I, and there's something called the December Christmas Truce of 1914. At the time, the Germans and the French were fighting, I believe in Belleau Wood, and around Christmas time, the troops started exchanging gifts and singing carols back and forth, and on Christmas Day, they ended up having a Christmas party in No Man's Land, playing football and things like that. It really caused me to question the entire idea of a friend and an enemy, and really what it means to be a human being."

The other moment occurred when Anderson was doing some training in the middle of the desert during his second deployment.

"I had seen all of these major corporations come in: Halliburton, KBR, Honeywell, Raytheon, all of these big names that you always hear about. They're over there just raking in money when there's really not a whole lot going on. I'm sitting here, doing these training exercises, and I just realized how absurd the entire thing really was," he said.

Like his civilian protester counterparts, Anderson thinks the amount of money being spent on NATO and the military budget is absurd, especially during a time of austerity for the 99 percent.

"I think that's absolutely absurd, especially since we are now pulled out of Iraq pretty much entirely. The money that's going there, I can't offer any explanation for where it's going, and I was in the supply unit, the logistics unit, and I can't offer any explanation for where it's going, but I know it's not going to peace initiatives. It's not going to education. It's not going to public schools. It's lost."

Marching right now on Boeing........

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jessehadden

Tens of thousands of students marching in Quebec.

watch livestream HERE

I Spy An Occupy: Obama's DHS Surveils Legit Protesters

By Spencer Mandel on May 21, 2012
Remember the Occupy Movement? Since last November, when the NYPD closed the Zuccotti Park encampment in downtown Manhattan the Movement's birthplace and symbolic nexusOccupy's relevance has seriously dwindled, at least as measured by coverage in the mainstream media. We're told that this erosion is due to Occupy's own shortcomingsan inevitable outcome of its disjointed message and decentralized leadership.While that may be the media's take, the U.S. Government seems to have a different view.If recent documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) are any indication, the Occupy Movement continues to be monitored and curtailed in a nationwide, federally-orchestrated campaign, spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).In response to repeated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the Fund,made on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild, the DHS released a revealing set of documents in April. But the latest batch, made public on May 3[SUP]rd[/SUP], exposes the scale of the government's "attention" to Occupy as never before.The documents, many of which are partially blacked-out emails, demonstrate a surprising degree of coordination between the DHS's National Operations Center (NOC) and local authorities in the monitoring of the Occupy movement. Cities implicated in this wide-scale snooping operation include New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Denver, Boston, Portland, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles.Interest in the Occupy protesters was not limited to DHS and local law enforcement authorities. The most recently released correspondence contains Occupy-related missives between the DHS and agencies at all levels of government, including the Mayor of Portland, regional NOC "fusion centers," the General Services Administration (GSA), the Pentagon's USNORTHCOM (Northern Command), and the White House. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF, contends that the variety and reach of the organizations involved point to the existence of a larger, more pervasive domestic surveillance network than previously suspected.These documents show not only intense government monitoring and coordination in response to the Occupy Movement, but reveal a glimpse into the interior of a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people. These heavily redacted documents don't tell the full story. They are likely only a subset of responsive materials and the PCJF continues to fight for a complete release. They scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with anti-terrorism' funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.

(justiceonline.org)

As alarmist as Verheyden-Hilliard's charge may sound, especially given the limited, bowdlerized nature of the source material, the texts made available contain disturbing evidence of insistent federal surveillance. In particular, the role of the "Fusion Centers," a series of 72 federally-funded information hubs run by the NOC, raises questions about the government's expansive definition of "Homeland Security."Created in the wake of 9/11, the Fusion Centers were founded to expedite the sharing of information among state and local law enforcement and the federal government, to monitor localized terrorist threats, and to sidestep the regulations and legislation preventing the CIA and the military from carrying out domestic surveillance (namely, the CIA ban on domestic spying and the Posse Comitatus Act).Is nonviolent, albeit obstructive, citizen dissent truly an issue of national security? The DHS, for its part, is aware of the contentiousness of civilian monitoring. That's why, in a White House-approved statement to CBS News included in the dossier, DHS Press Secretary Matthew Chandler asserts thatAny decisions on how to handle specifics (sic) situations are dealt with by local authorities in that location. . . DHS is not actively coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and/or city governments concerning the evictions of Occupy encampments writ large.However, as a reading of the documents unmistakably demonstrates, this expedient PR nugget is far from the truth. In example after example, from its seeking of "public health and safety" grounds from the City of Portland for Occupy's ejection from Terry Schrunk Plaza, to its facilitation of information sharing between the police departments of Chicago and Boston (following a 1500-person Occupy protest in Chicago), the DHS's active "coordinating" with local authorities is readily apparent. Other communiqués are even more explicit in revealing a national focus, such as the DHS's preemptive coordination with the Pentagon about a port closure in Oakland, and its collection of identity and contact information of Occupy protesters arrested at a Bank of America in Dallas.Those Pesky AmendmentsThe right to public assembly is a central component of the First Amendment. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect Americans from warrantless searcheswith the definition of "search" expanded in 1967 to include electronic surveillance, following the Supreme Court's ruling in Katz v. United States. Assuming the Occupy protesters refrain from violenceand the vast majority do, in accord with a stated tenet of the Occupy movementthe movement's existence is constitutionally protected, or should be.The DHS's monitoring, documenting, and undermining of protesters may in fact violate the First Amendment. In a recent piece for Dissent Magazine, sociologist James B. Rule explains the fundamental importance of a movement like Occupy in the American political landscape.This surveillance campaign against Occupy is bad news for American democracy. Occupy represents an authentic, utterly home-grown, grassroots movement. Taken as a whole, it is neither terrorist nor conspiratorial. Indeed, it is hard to think of another movement so cumbersomely public in its deliberations and processes. Occupy is noisy, disorderly, insubordinate, and often inconvenient for all concernedstatements that could equally well apply to democracy in general. But it should never be targeted as a threat to the well-being of the countryquite the contrary.Accordingly, Rule calls for the White House to rein in the ever-expanding surveillance activity of the DHSwhich he contends is motivated by its own funding interests, and which prioritizes security at the expense of civil liberties.The resource-rich Department of Homeland Security and its allies no doubt see in the rise of the movement another opportunity to justify their own claims for public legitimacy. We can be sure that many in these agencies view any noisy dissent as tantamount to a threat to national security.[snip]Nobody who cares about democracy wants to live in a world where simply engaging in vociferous protest qualifies any citizen to have his or her identity and life details archived by state security agencies. Specific, overt threats of civil disobedience or other law-breaking should be dealt with on a piecemeal basisnot by attempting to monitor everyone who might be moved to such actions, all the time. Meanwhile, the White House should issue clear directives that identification and tracking of lawful protesters will play no further role in any government response to this populist moment.Optimistic as it may be, Rule's appeal to the White House is a problematic one, given the ubiquitous influence of the DHS revealed by these documents. If the White House-approved press release is any indication, the Oval Office, while not directly authorizing the DHS's initiatives, is certainly turning a blind eye to the Department's focus on the Occupy movement as a potential terrorist threat. Federal surveillance of citizens in the Bush years, most visible in NSA warrantless wiretapping controversy, has apparently not ceased with Obama's inauguration.Which raises the question: Does Obama, as he claims, "stand with the 99 percent," or with those who cannot stand them?

# #
http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/05/21/i-spy-a...rotesters/

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/24-1

Published on Thursday, May 24, 2012 by Common Dreams

Cut It Out: An Open Letter to Black Bloc Anarchists


by Carl Gibson

I like to compare those using Black Bloc tactics at a nonviolent protest to taking a 6 year-old kid to the symphony. You'll likely find yourself constantly apologizing to those sitting in your row when the child makes fart jokes every time he hears the tympani. No matter what you do, how nice you are, how appreciative you are of the music or how knowledgeable of the composer you are, the crowd will only remember you for having the annoying kid with you who ruined it for everybody.

The highlight of the historic NATO summit protests in Chicago last weekend was when Veterans for Peace, joined by their families, threw their war medals in the direction of McCormick Place, where NATO generals were meeting, to denounce the senseless violence they committed to earn their medals. The veterans also delivered a flag to the mother of a soldier who committed suicide. An Afghan woman tearfully denounced the war that took the lives of family members. The ceremony was powerful and emotionally-gripping, and showed that members of the military rejected being sent overseas to risk their lives so the 0.1% in the military-industrial complex could profit from wasteful contracts and resource exploitation. And it would have been the media's top story and the topic of everyone's conversations if you didn't have to act like a selfish bunch of ass clowns.

According to those who were there, you disrespected the veterans by chanting through the Veterans for Peace's call for a moment of silence for lives lost overseas. By starting confrontations with riot police during the ceremony, you deprived veterans and their families their moment of justice for your own selfish need to have all the attention. You didn't stop war, end capitalism, or even get close to the NATO summit. All you did was attract more riot police to an otherwise peaceful event, leading to kettlings, beatings and arrests. Way to go.

I'm willing to accept that there were likely several agents provocateur working with the police inside of a Black Bloc to incite violence. I'll acknowledge that even within your ranks, some differ with others using the most extreme tactics. And I'll denounce police for kettling and beating protesters with unforgiving brutality. But I'm still going to say it: your tactics do our movement more harm than good, and you need to just cut it out already.

The thing is, Black Bloc tactics actually serve the cause of the 0.1%. By making the dominant message about protesters vs. police instead of 99% vs. 0.1%, your tactics divide public opinion and turn it against the majority of those in the movement who don't believe in violence of any kind, including property destruction. Infantile behavior taken by some of you, like taunting police, blowing cigarette smoke in their faces and throwing rocks through the windows of small businesses takes the moral high ground away from the movement, legitimizes the rule of the 0.1% and justifies the existence of an oppressive police state to the average American whom we're trying to reach.

The top commenter on this YouTube video explaining Black Bloc said, "Black Bloc activists are the true revolutionaries, not these pacifists who advocate social democracy as a way to clean up capitalism's bullshit." Another Black Bloc anarchist at the NATO summit said, "We're the ones that stand up and say, 'Fuck the police...We're the ones that have balls." Such ignorance exemplifies the futility of Black Bloc tactics. No matter how much you destroy or how intimidating you appear, the police state and the military-industrial complex will always have more armor, more guns, more tear gas and pepper spray than you can take, and in any standoff, they will beat you 100% of the time. Cops know how to handle violence. And city governments will continue to spend millions of dollars defending them when they attack you without abandon.

Occupy Wall Street was unknown outside of our own circles until an NYPD officer famously pepper-sprayed two women without provocation, even getting Jon Stewart to talk about the event. When student protesters at UC Davis were unjustly attacked, the world saw it and got angry. These actions forced average Americans to take the side of the victims, or at least learn more about their cause. But when your group of black-clad anarchists curses at cops and smashes windows to protest capitalism and get beaten by police afterward, you are only justifying your own punishment by testosterone-fueled riot police eager to crack a head with a baton and strengthening capitalism's iron grip on society.

Nobody asked you to be the self-appointed "Defenders of Dissent" at our actions. Nobody asked you to give us lessons in how to be "real activists." If you want to join the movement, join the movement. But stop dividing the movement into the "true revolutionaries" and "fake activists." You aren't helping anyone except the 0.1%. Either cut it out or go the hell away.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3817[/ATTACH]

Keith Millea Wrote:http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/24-1

Published on Thursday, May 24, 2012 by Common Dreams

Cut It Out: An Open Letter to Black Bloc Anarchists


by Carl Gibson

..... Either cut it out or go the hell away.

It is my considered opinion that not all, but way more than half...perhaps as many as 75-95% of 'black-bloc' 'activists' are really police and other intelligence provocateurs - or some dumb idiots that are blindly following them. Only a handful have an 'honest' rationale for doing what they do [though I disagree with and challenge that rationale]. Its mostly a phenomenon of provocation and they won't go away by being 'asked to' politely or with righteous anger. [i.e. they didn't disrupt the Veterans For Peace because they were selfish or rude; they did so according to plan!] To get rid of them in the short term, they'd have to be exposed for what/who they are - in the long term my ending the Police State.

Occupy Wall Street Library Sues City, NYPD For Destroying 2,800 Books


The OWS Library in happier times. (Flickr User david_shankbone)


Today Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Wall Street Librarians filed a federal lawsuit against Mayor Bloomberg, the City, and the NYPD for compensatory and punitive damages totaling $47,000 for the roughly 3,600 books that were confiscatednearly 2,800 of them destroyed during the raid of Zuccotti Park on November 17. "This is an important and potentially historic lawsuit," attorney Norman Siegel, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit says. "It not only addresses the seizure and destruction of the books, but it also seeks to show why, how, and who planned the raid on Zuccotti Park."

Siegel says the information on the planning of the raid should come out in discovery, and adds that the city should have been subject to a court hearing before seizing and destroying the thousands of books that made up the libraryincluding Bloomberg's own book. "Every other city did it before they raided encampments, but not here. The city violated the civil rights of the librarians. The Bloomberg administration had the power to do what they did, but not the right."

William Scott, one of the People's Librarians who lived in Zuccotti Park and helped maintain the collection, said the police only gave one of his fellow librarians Stephen Boyer, 45 minutes to remove 3,600 books. "And police weren't even letting anyone in and out of the park at the time. So it was an impossible task."


Police and Sanitation employees destroy property in Zuccotti Park (Screenshot)


Scott says that the Sanitation workers were "poorly supervised in their task. At around 1:45 a.m. they began loading books into the sanitation trucks with crushing mechanisms, and continued to throw books and library structures in them until flatbed trucks showed up much later." The $1,000 in punitive damages indicates that the librarians and the protesters believe that the city went beyond negligence, and had a callous disregard for their property, an assertion supported by the photos of destroyed property in the custody Sanitation Department.

You can watch a video of the raid and read a copy of the complaint below.

[video]http://www.scribd.com/christopher_robbin_1/d/94717644-OWS-Library-Complaint[/video]

http://www.scribd.com/christopher_robbin...-Complaint