Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Magda Hassan]

http://pastebin.com/GkXrYNwr

Via BNO News:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


October 14, 2011
http://www.nyc.gov

STATEMENT OF DEPUTY MAYOR CAS HOLLOWAY ON BROOKFIELD PROPERTIES POSTPONING THEIR CLEANING OF ZUCCOTTI PARK

"Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park Brookfield Properties that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation. Our position has been consistent throughout: the City's role is to protect public health and safety, to enforce the law, and guarantee the rights of all New Yorkers. Brookfield believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation."

[Peter Lemkin]

A huge number of Union members and supporters showed up. There were about 5.000 people there just before the 'deadline' [the normal who sleep over is about 6-700] - so the Mayor caved in and cancelled the cleaning and removal of the occupiers who are now marching all around Wall Street! :pinkelephant:

[Keith Millea]

10.13.11 - 6:31 PM
The People (Of Egypt) Are Calling for Change

The powerful short film, "I Am Not Moving," juxtaposes Occupy scenes with footage of the Arab Spring alongside a righteous-sounding Hillary Clinton and Obama on the people's rights of expression and assembly. Watch it, post it.



http://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/10/13-3

[Peter Lemkin]

Good video!!!!! Shows the ****ing hypocrisy! :moon: N.B. While still not confirmed, there is word on the 'street' that the FBI has a plan to round up several thousand of the Occupy X people from the major occupations and put them in camps, without any legal access nor charges under the unPatriot Act to deter this spreading any further. Supposedly this is named 'Zero One' - Again, unconfirmed at this point, but some of the leaders of the OWS, NYC were told by someone with inside connections to the FBI. Now, while this is a possible plan, they have to be weighing the effect it will have....to their advantage or against it.....and THAT depends on how fast the movement grows - especially tomorrow [the day the Zero One was to be put into action]! Tomorrow is an international day of Protest and Occupation! Stay tuned.....we live in interesting times! [if not good ones!]

[Peter Lemkin]

OWS 1, Bloomberg 0: Zuccotti Park Cleanup Postponed
Posted October 14th 8:30am

The proposed cleanup of Zuccotti Park by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which was seen by many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters as the first step to disbanding the protesters, was canceled early Friday morning. The news was greeted by cheers from the crowd. Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said the owners of the private park, Brookfield Office Properties, made the decision to put off the cleaning.

Supporters of the protesters had started streaming into the park in the morning darkness before the planned cleaning, forming a crowd of several hundred strong. Chanting.

"Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park Brookfield Properties that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation," the deputy mayor's statement said.

Many feared the cleaning would lead to a confrontation between the police and protesters, who vowed to stay put. In celebration, several hundred Occupy protesters marched down Broadway a block from Wall St.

As the Associate Press notes:
Brookfield, a publicly traded real estate firm, had planned to power-wash the plaza section by section over 12 hours and allow the protesters back but without much of the equipment they needed to sleep and camp there. The company called the conditions at the park unsanitary and unsafe.


The company's rules, which haven't been enforced, have been this all along: No tarps, no sleeping bags, no storing personal property on the ground. The park is privately owned but is required to be open to the public 24 hours per day.

In a last-ditch bid to stay, protesters had mopped and picked up garbage. While moving out mattresses and camping supplies, organizers were mixed on how they would respond when police arrived.

Many protesters said the only way they would leave is by force. Organizers sent out a mass email Thursday asking supporters to "defend the occupation from eviction."

Word on the street is that police are coming with flexicuffs to Zuccotti Park and looking to reign in the celebratory marchers on Broadway, NBC News reports. According to the NBC New York Twitter account, traffic on Broadway has been shutdown and "4 people arrested in NY as Occupy Wall Street' protesters march to Wall Street, gather under Stock Exchange."

CBS News notes: "Police motorcycles in a V-like formation moved toward the protesters in the standoff. One man lost his balance and was run over by a police motorcycle. Police descended on the protester and got him out from under the bike, but violence broke out. Radio station WINS-AM reported that police descended on some protesters, wielding their nightsticks and batons. A police captain reportedly hurled his megaphone and wound up rolling around in the street with a protester. A WINS-AM reporter said he was pushed around by police."

The protesters quickly returned to the relative safety of Zuccotti Park.

[Peter Lemkin]

JUAN GONZALEZ: The situation at the Occupy Wall Street encampment is rapidly developing this morning. Thousands answered a call for support and streamed into New York's Financial District overnight ahead of a, quote, "cleaning" that many feared would actually lead to a [clearing] of Zuccotti Park, where protesters have stayed since September 17th. Well, shortly before 7:00 a.m. this morning, they got word that the feared evacuation had been canceled.

UNIDENTIFIED: It is 6:30 a.m. in Liberty Plaza right here. The mood is jubilant. Brookfield Properties announced they are postponing the cleaning.

PROTESTERS: The people, united, will never be defeated! The people, united, will never be defeated! The people, united, will never be defeated!

AMY GOODMAN: Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway issued the following statement about the canceled park cleaning, which reads in part, quote, "Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti ParkBrookfield Propertiesthat they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation," unquote.

For more, we go directly to Zuccotti Park, site of the Occupy Wall Street encampment, where we have a number of Democracy Now! producers on the scene. We're starting with Ryan Devereaux. We're using Democracy Now! live stream to broadcast from the heart of the park.

Ryan, tell us what has happened. As we broadcast right now, word came down about an hour ago that, well, the 99 percenters had won this round. Tell us what happened.

RYAN DEVEREAUX: That's correct, Amy. As the sun began to rise over Liberty Plaza this morning, news started to break, started to filter out, that the cleaning operation, that some had viewed as a pretext for an eviction, was going to be delayed. Cheers broke out. People blared horns. The mood was incredibly jubilant and celebratory. It was a tense night here in the park. They were cleaning all day yesterday and all through the night to make sure that this place was spotless when city inspectors came to check it out. And I must say, it is very, very clean. The rain also helped. But the mood here is one of sheer joy. A number of protesters have marched down Broadway in the direction of Wall Street, unclear where they're headed. But it's quite the scene here.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Ryan, what's been the relationship between the protesters and the police? Obviously, it was very tense and confrontational early on in the first weeks of the protest. Has there been any change in that?

RYAN DEVEREAUX: Well, it's been a really interesting dynamic between the protesters and the police, that's for sure. Obviously, you know, some of the things that the police have done in recent weeks have caught a lot of headlines, beginning in late September when 80 people were arrested on a march near Union Square. Four young women were corralled and pepper-sprayed by Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. That was caught on video, thatthose videos went viral, as did another video of Bologna pepper-spraying another protester on the sidewalk. Following that incident, the protest gained more attention. More people began to follow what was going on, and more people turned out in Liberty Plaza to support the cause.

Exactly one week later, the NYPD made headlines once again when they arrested over 700over 730 protesters attempting to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. The arrests came under fire from a lot of critics who said that the police led the protesters onto the bridge, that they escorted them onto the bridge, and that they gave them the false impression that they would be able to cross the bridge. And then, when they made it about halfway across, about a third of the way across, they were stopped, kettled, as it's calledcaught in orange netsand arrested en masse. And once again, the police, in their actions, gained this movement a ton of attention, a ton of press and a ton of sympathy in the United States and around the world.

And following that incident, we began to see occupation movements springing up around the country. There are reportedly over a thousand occupations taking place in cities around the United States, and similar crackdowns, I should say, in a number of [inaudible], in Boston and an attempt in Atlanta. It's really something else. Something about this movement has resonated with people across the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Ryan, I was with you last night until around 11:00, as we walked through the park. And what was clearly in evidence were many, many mops, brooms, soap buckets filled with water. People were cleaning that park up. And I think it's interesting, the words of the New York City deputy mayor, Cas Holloway, who said, "Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park." I think what they did is they received notice from the occupiers of Zuccotti Park that they would not be moved. We watched as the General Assembly did that chant, when you have a human mic and they keep repeating. The forces were so strong, the determination, but also keeping the park clean, that was very clear, as well. People were cleaning up throughout. How about, Ryan, the issue of union leaders. For example, Teamsters. Have they come out to stand with the protesters today?

RYAN DEVEREAUX: Yes, absolutely, Amy. At about 6:00 in the morning, a march of union members arrived to Liberty Square, and the reception was one of pure joy, chanting, cheering. It really bolstered the numbers here. And you're right that the resolve among the protesters here has been quite remarkable. They spent the better part of all day yesterday cleaning this plaza, making sure that it was as clean as possible when the inspectors would arrive, giving the city absolutely no excuse to say that this was a unsanitary place. The General Assembly here allocated $3,000 from their treasury to buy cleaning supplies. People were armed with mops and buckets and did everything they possibly could to make this as clean as possible, so that if the City of New York did attempt to push them out, it would be clear that this was about something more than cleaning this plaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Ryan, you and Democracy Now!'s Hany Massoud, around midnight, talked to a number of the protesters last night who were helping with the cleanup effort. Let's watch and listen.

LUKE RICHARDSON: My name's Luke Richardson. I'm 25. If you look to my left over here, you'll see a lot of people are pushing brooms, mopping, cleaning, scrubbing. And we're doing this in preparation for basically the Brookfield's cleaning crew to come through tomorrow. They've asked us to leave, section by section, and allow them to do what they're saying is a routine cleaning of this park. And so, we're preparing for them. We don't want to give them anywe don't want to give them any reason to see fault. We have been cleaning since day one. We have a sanitation committee. But we're doing a big extra special cleaning today.

PONCHO GUTHRIE: Poncho Guthrie. The park is cleaner than a lot of areas around here. Now, I'm not from the area, but a lot of people I know who have lived in the area say it's cleaner now than it was before the occupation came in. There aren't any rats in there. The place is very sanitary. Garbage is picked up three times a day. We take care of the recycling. It's very sanitary conditions. The only things that are lacking are things like showers and restrooms, which could be provided with a city permit. But unfortunately, we don't have a city permit. So, any sanitary issues are kind of on Mr. Bloomberg's plate.

LUKE RICHARDSON: So we do get a sense that the cleaning is a pretext for aas an excuse, basically, to try and remove us from the park. We've seen this happen in Spain during the M15 movement. We've seen it happen in New York City more recently during the Bloombergville occupation. So there's a lot of history, even dating back to the early days of like the late 1800s, early 1900s, of people getting removed on grounds of sanitation, using the same, exact pretext.

KANENE HOLDER: Kanene Holder. I anticipate that we're going to see these people, who have been discredited, and they're not leaders, and they're not organizers, and they don't really know what they're doing, and they're just anarchistswe're going to see them extremely organized. And they are going to occupy their humanity and stand up for what's right, in ways that the media and the police and every other institution in this country will sit there and say, "You know what? Hmm, they have a point there."

PROTESTERS: Occupy Wall Street! All day, all week! Occupy Wall Street! All day, all week! Occupy Wall Street! All day, all week!

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the sounds and the people who were at Occupy Wall Street last night at midnight. Again, the latest news we have is that, as of 7:00 this morning, the time that was designated by the city for a cleaning up of the park, which many took as a clearing out of the parkwe now turn to Jumaane Williams, New York City council member for District 45, first-generation Brooklynite of West Indian parentage. He has spent much of his career fighting for affordable housing. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, well, Councilman Williams, I wanted to ask you about the reaction of other members of the council who have been protesting this attempt by the city to move in and clean the park.

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: I just lost him.

AMY GOODMAN: Jumaane Williams

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: OK, I think I heard the question. I lost part of it. But the reaction has been very good from the majority of my council members, and not all the usual suspects. Republican Dan Halloran has been down here previously, as well. I think everyone kind of understands that this is a great movement going on, and more importantly, it's something that should be supported, just like we supported all the other movements that were going on around the world. And a lot of them had guns attached to it, and we supported them. These areno, there's no guns here. It's just peaceful, peaceful protests, peaceful people here trying to spread an ideal. And there's no reason to not support them like we supported everyone around the world.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: Hello?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Councilman, the city has been claiming that it was Brookfield Properties, the owners who built the park, who arewho asked for the cleaning. But I've been hearing from sources in the Health Department, as recently as the middle of last week, that they were being asked to come up with a rationale for the city to move in on the protesters. So it sounds like it was this claimit sounds like this claim thatthis claim that the city is saying that it was the owners of the park who asked is really a subterfuge for what is actually going on. We've apparently lost Councilman Williams, but do we have Michael Ratner on?

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: As you can see, it's spick and span over here. And the fact that they were saying they can come back

AMY GOODMAN: This is Jumaane Williams.

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: but with rules and regulations, says to me that what they want to do is squash the movement. I was excited when I saw the Mayor come here. I thought he was coming to engage the protesters or engage the occupiers and talk about their anger. But it seemed that he was just part of setting up the ruse. I guess today he didn't want to be known in history as the person who squashed the movement. But, you know, all of the people who tried to set up the rules and regulations of how to protest might have been the same people who tried to stop the civil rights protesters, who tried to stop the women's suffragist protesters, the people who put their hoses on and say, "You can't march here, and you can't do this." You can't give rules and regulations to a voice like this when people are suffering.

AMY GOODMAN: City Council Member Jumaane Williams, it's unusual what a group of city council members did, including you, yesterday, holding a news conference, telling the Mayor that he should not be using the police to guard the private cleaners to come in and clear the park, talking about other parks that are not cleaned, why suddenly is there an obsession with concern for the cleanliness of this park, which, by the way, the protesters have been cleaning around the clock since last night. Talk about that news conference and how the Mayor is dealing with you and other city council members who were defiant yesterday.

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: Well, Zuccotti Park became the most important place to clean and the most important issue in New York City. And I have a bunch of places in my district and around the city that I could

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to try just to go to the audio stream of you

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: that we could gettry to get cleaned

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to fix up the audio

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: OK, should I keep talking?

AMY GOODMAN: as best we can. We're going to just go to the audio of you, instead of the audio and video, so that we can have better sound. Jumaane Williams, explain what you were just saying.

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: They said to turn off the video.

AMY GOODMAN: We can hear you well now, City Council Member Williams. Go ahead. Just explain what happened yesterday.

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: Yeah, all of a sudden, Zuccotti Park became the most important thing in New York City and the most important thing to clean. And I have a bunch of places in not just parks, but all over my district, that could use some cleaning, and particularly some other places in New York City. But my question to the Mayor is, where was he when we were talking about ways to save money for programs so people wouldn't be getting shot in my district? Where is he now when we're asking for his support on the millionaires' tax? I can't believe that this is the most important thing going on in New York City, that you would expend so much resources to make sure that this park gets cleaned up. It doesn't make any sense. And I don't think anyone is tricked by his guise of saying that it's really that important to get Zuccotti Park cleaned up. And we, as council members and elected officials, saw through that, and we stepped up.

And I'm happy that, for now, he seems to be on the right side of history, and we should celebrate this battle. But the war still rages on, and we have to see what's going to happen tomorrow. I'm hoping that he at least pretends to care about the 99 percent of us, and not just the one percent, like himself and his friends. And I'm hoping that he does that, you know, come back down. Everybody who's sat down with the occupiers, from the council member of this district, from the community board of this district, who had concerns and sat down and negotiated, and the occupiers have worked out their concerns. There's no reason why Brookfield, no reason why the administration, no reason why the Mayor or the commissioner can't do the same thing.

But it's the arrogance of these folk, that we've seen time and time again, that they can just come and do whatever they want, even though people are suffering. So, instead of coming down and to talk about the suffering that's going on, the poverty that people are living with, the fact that one of my precincts has the most gun violence throughout the city, the fact that people are losing their homes, what they want to come talk about, with police presence, is cleaning up Zuccotti Park.

AMY GOODMAN: City Council Member Jumaane Williams, before you go, you know, weour global audience got to meet you on the day after Labor Day, because of your arrest the day before, if in fact you were actually arrested at the West Indian Day Parade. Could you explain what happened there? Again, Jumaane Williams is a New York city council member from Brooklyn, and the West Indian Day Parade on Labor Day is the largest such gathering in the United States of the Caribbean community. What happened to you, City Council Member Williams?

COUNCIL MEMBER JUMAANE WILLIAMS: Well, myself and a good friend of mine, Kirsten John Foy, who is a aide to a public advocate, which is a citywide official here, were finishing the parade and trying to get back to a function for elected officials and for dignitaries and guests and people of the like. And the police are saying there was a frozen zone. But that's really publicity. There was no frozen zone. There was no sensitive area. What it was is a barricade to try to prevent the parade-goers from going back. And we were given permission, more than one time, to go there. But we ranwe got into some police officers who didn't care I was a council member, didn't care he was an aide. We were, in fact, arrested. We were detained for some time and then let go. And this is all part of the same fight. I think there's a culture of suppression. There's a culture of inequality. And that's all part of it.

AMY GOODMAN: City Council Member Jumaane Williams, I want to thank you for being with us, New York city council member for District 45 in Brooklyn. He is a first-generation Brooklynite of West Indian parentage, has spent much of his time and his career fighting for affordable housing. We're going to go to a break, and we'll come back, and we'll talk about what is this park, this privately owned park that's open to the public, Zuccotti Park. We'll also be speaking with human rights attorney Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He's on the ground in Zuccotti Park. We'll find out about what was a break-off march today that was happening just as we got word that the Mayor would not be using the police to move in with cleaners to clean out the park, or what the protesters said was clear out the park. We'll find out what the latest developments are, as we stay on Zuccotti Park. But first, a break.

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: We're staying in Zuccotti Park. Our producers are there on the ground. As of this broadcast, about 7:00 this morning, the protesters got word that Brookfield Properties, which runs the park and has the building at Liberty Plaza across the street, would not be sending in cleaners, fortified by New York City police, to move the protesters. At this point, that's what we understand.

Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a co-author of the new book Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in Twenty-First-Century America.

Michael, tell us what's happening on the ground. The Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said that they would not be moving in. They had just gotten word from Brookfield Properties. But I wonder if they hadn't simply gotten word overnight, as the people, the groups, swelled in Zuccotti Park, that they would not be moved, and so the city caved, at least for now.

MICHAEL RATNER: Now, Amy, I was here last night at the General Assembly, and it was one of the most moving experiences, as you know, that you can have being here. Incredible experiment in democracy. And I woke up this morning to get down here, with the other National Lawyers Guild and Center people, to be here for what we considered might be a bloodbath. I've been in these before. I was in Columbia in '68. And I was totally fearful of coming here. And all of a sudden, when we were down here, at 7:00, we heard the announcement that called off any arrests. And I can tell you, the roar that went through the park and their joy, because it would have been a bloodbath. I think they went back, because the idea that they were going to come in here when there were thousands of people all over the place, union people everywhere, they could not have successfully closed this park down. And I think they recognized it. Apart from the illegality of it, the First Amendment rights of the protesters, it was just too massive. It's too big now. This park is becoming a permanent feature, I hope, of the next generation of protests. So we're hopeful. We encourage people to still get down here.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Michael, as I mentioned to Councilman Jumaane Williams, I was hearing in the middle of last week from people in the Health Department of the city that the administration was trying to come up with some rationale to use to actually clear the park, and they were looking at a health emergency as the most likely one. But could you talk about this particular parkbecause it'sthe protesters, in choosing it, really were brilliant, in the sense that it's not a public park that has a closing hour, but it was actually one of these parks that was allowed to be built by a private developer in exchange for getting a higher building that the developer wanted to buildand what that means in terms of what the legal rights of the protesters are in this particular park?

MICHAEL RATNER: Now, Juan, yesterday we wrote a letter to Brookfield Properties, the Mayor and the police, outlining the fact that the so-called health emergency was a pretext. You've been here. You know that this place is cleaner than the streets we live on in New York City, much cleaner. They needed a pretext for exactly the reason you're saying. It's a private-public park. While we haven't seen the agreement, it's open 24 hours.

We said in that letter, "You can't come in here. This park cannot bepolice cannot come in here. If you want to come in here, you have to get a court order to get in here. There's no health emergency, and it's illegal to come in."

This is a 24-hour open park. And even the, quote, "regulations" they've tried to impose in the last few weeksno sleeping bags, no tarpsthose are made up. Our view is those are illegal. You can't do that in this park. You can't issue regulations after the fact. It's a First Amendment-protected territory in this city and in this country. They tried to come up with a pretext. They realizedthe letter that we sent outlined all of the cleaning that we've been doing, the people in the park worked all night on and all day on. And I can tell you, you can eat off the ground in this park. So it was a BS excuse. But it reallyyou know, that was part of it, the legality. But really, the main part was the fact that there were thousands of people here this morning at 5:00 a.m.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, Michael, last night, as Ryan Devereaux and I walked around, oh, around 11:00 at night, we saw on the granite stone there is the sign that has always been there. It's a steel sign that says, "Zuccotti Park. No skateboarding, rollerblading, or bicycling allowed in the park." That's been there for a very long time. And for those who are watching, I'm showing that right now.

Well, right next to it is what looked like another steel sign that had been there for a long time. But when I just peeled it back a little, it clearly had just been put up with tape, but it looks like metal. And it says thispeople said it had just been put up: "Notice: Zuccotti Park is a privately-owned space that is designed and intended for use and enjoyment by the general public for passive recreation. For the safety and enjoyment of everyone, the following types of behavior are prohibited in Zuccotti Park: camping and/or the erection of tents or other structures; lying down on the ground or lying down on benches, sitting areas or walkways, which unreasonably interferes with the use of benches, sitting areas or walkways by others; the placement of tarps or sleeping bags or any other covering on the property." Now, again, this islooks like it's written in a metal plaque, but in fact this is a plastic sign that was put up right next to the official one that says don't skateboard. "Storage or placement of personal property on the ground, benches, sitting areas or walkways, which unreasonably interferes with the use of such areas by others." And then it goes on to say what it always had said: the use of bicycles, skateboarding and roller blades, roller skates. And thatit goes on from there. That metal plaquethis is very creative, though actually it was plasticput up right next to the sign that said the standard, no skateboarding, roller boardingrollerblading.

MICHAEL RATNER: You know, Amy, it shows how desperate they are. They have a set of rules here that allow exactly what's happening right now. And now they're trying to change the rules once they don't like the way it's come out for them. They can't do it. They can try and go to court and do it, but they certainly can't, because a private owner decides I want this rule or that rule, can't just call up the cops and say, "Hey cops, why don't you come in and arrest the people here, because we just made up a new set of rules?"

AMY GOODMAN: Michael, this raises

MICHAEL RATNER: Can't do it.

AMY GOODMAN: This raises an interesting quesion. Looking at the New York Times story that was called "Privately Owned Park, Open to Public, Has Its Own Rules" that was in yesterday's paper, it reads, quote, "Zuccotti Park, the half-acre plaza in Lower Manhattan now synonymous with Occupy Wall Street, exists in a strange category of New York parkland, identified by a seeming oxymoron: a privately owned public space.

"The park was established in a wave of development that spurred corporate plazas after changes were made to the city's zoning laws in the early 1960s. The laws generally give real estate developers zoning concessions in exchange for public space. There are now at least 520 such parks, arcades and plazas in New York City, both indoors and out, [providing] a total of 3.5 million square feet of space.

"Zuccotti is unusual in that it does not adjoin the 54-story office tower, 1 Liberty Plaza, that spawned it. Rather, it is bounded on all four sides by streets: Broadway, Trinity Place, and Cedar and Liberty Streets.

"And while the developer did not win the right to build a larger structure in exchange for the park, it was given leeway on certain height and setback restrictions, according to Jerold S. Kayden, a lawyer and professor of urban planning and design at Harvard University."

This idea of who owns this park anyway, and the name of it, of course, the CEO of Brookfield Properties, that is across the street. Michael, if you could just comment on that use of this public property.

MICHAEL RATNER: Yeah, I don't think you couldI don't think it's a good argument that Brookfield somehow owns this park. Brookfield got the right to do certain things to its buildings, so that the public could really have access and use this park. So the idea that Brookfield, a private developer, can start issuing all kinds of regulations on a park that really belongs to you and I and the rest of the people here in Liberty Park is really outrageous. It is not a private park in that sense at all.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you, Michael Ratner, for being with us. Was there, by the way, a Wall Street march today, leading from Zuccotti Park to Wall Street?

MICHAEL RATNER: There were two marches. There was one that I was on up to the City Hall, completely peaceful, on the sidewalk, but militant, brought tears to my eyes when you hear people say, "The people, united, will never be defeated." Then there was one down to Wall Street, a separate one, going down to the Wall Street bull, with some amazing slogans down there, such as "castrate the bull." So it's been an incredibly vigorous time here in the park. I encourage people to get down here, get to your own Occupy Wall Streets, and get to this park.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Michael Ratner, speaking to us from the heart of the park, from the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement in Zuccotti Park.

And finally, Yotam Marom is with us, one of the Occupy Wall Street organizers. Yotam, what are the plans for today and for tomorrow? Three marches planned for tomorrow.

YOTAM MAROM: Well, yeah, so basically a [inaudible] plan. The idea is, well, we're standing in solidarity with hundreds of thousands of people from around the world all arising on the same day. And the plan for New York is a bunch of different actions on a bunch of different issueseducation, housing, jobs, war, the environmentall over the city, all day, culminating in a huge convergence at Times Square at 5:00 p.m.

AMY GOODMAN: Yotam Marom, I want to thank you for being with us. Again, on Saturday, there are major plans for marches on Chase Manhattan Bank, on Times Square, and we will of course continue to follow this on Democracy Now! and at democracynow.org, when we are not on the air. We have just been following Twitter, which a tweet has just gone out: "NYPD arrested four on Maiden at Waterand Water. Saw one man fall from rear of police van, face bloodied." That's all we see right now on the Twitter feed.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, as we turn now to our next segment. Keep tuning in. Go to our website. Follow us throughout the weekend as we continue to follow not only Occupy Wall Street in the Unitedin New York, but all of the different occupations that tare taking place in this country. We heard police raided Occupy Denver in the last hours. And a few nights ago, Occupy Boston was also raided. In Manila, there are marches. I'm going up to Quebec City tonight. And I was just on the CBC this morning, and the news anchor was saying that there are protests planned across Canada this weekend, tomorrow. And we will continue to follow all of these developments.

[Ed Jewett]

Move On Tries to Take Over Occupy Wall Street Protests

Posted on October 14, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

Move On Tries to Co-Opt the Protests

David DeGraw one of the primary Wall Street protest organizers just sent me the following email:

Top MoveOn leaders / executives are all over national television speaking for the movement. fully appreciate the help and support of MoveOn, but the MSM is clearly using them as the spokespeople for OWS. This is an blatant attempt to fracture the 99% into a Democratic Party organization. The leadership of MoveON are Democratic Party operatives. they are divide and conquer pawns. For years they ignored Wall Street protests to keep complete focus on the Republicans, in favor of Goldman's Obama and Wall Street's Democratic leadership.
If anyone at Move On or Daily Kos would like to have a public debate about these comments, we invite it.
Please help us stop this divide and conquer attempt.

DeGraw who is wholly non-partisan [like the writers at Washington's Blog] tells me that about half of the protesters are liberals, but the other half are libertarians (and see this.)
This mirrors what one of the original organizers of the "Occupy Trenton" protest told me: MoveOn attempted to set the agenda and pretend it was their event.
As I noted last week:

Everyone's trying to cash in on the courage and conviction of the Wall Street protesters.
People are trying to associate Occupy Wall Street with their pet projects, in the same way that advertisers try to associate the goodwill of the Super Bowl, NBA playoffs, World Series or Olympics with their product.
But I hear from OWS organizers that the protesters come from totally diverse political affiliations. Many protesters support Ron Paul, many like Obama, others are for other parties or candidates or don't vote at all.
The protesters themselves are having none of it, tweeting today:

We don't want to be the democratic tea party or liberal tea party. We want to be our own movement separate of any political affiliation.

Update: Another tweet from the protesters:

We don't represent liberal interests nor are we the liberal tea party. We represent the interest of the 99%

And as I pointed out Tuesday:

The two main challenges [facing the protesters are]: (1) An attempt by both the Democratic and Republican parties to co-opt it (see this, this and this); and (2) agents provocateur (see this, this and this) [and here].

Posted in Politics / World News | Leave a comment

[Keith Millea]

The two main challenges [facing the protesters are]: (1) An attempt by both the Democratic and Republican parties to co-opt it (see this, this and [url=http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/10/welcome-to-the-ows-99-movement-"we-will-not-be-co-opted".html]this[/url]); and (2) agents provocateur (see this, this and this) [and here].

Tomorrow will be a BIG day for this movement.

Agents Provocateur.....Expect Them!!!!!

[Ed Jewett]

BLOOMBERG VS. OCCUPY: Round 1 Occupy #ows

A timeline:

• A big bank protest is planned for the 15th of October (see video)
  

October 15th: Occupy Banks .

• To block the bank protest, Mayor Bloomberg initiated a plan to evict the Occupation from Liberty Square on the 14th of October. He claimed the city needed to "clean" the park.
  
• In recognition of the threat, the Occupy movement gathers its strength. It makes a widely reported call to come to the park on the morning of the 14th to block the eviction.
  
• Occupy then rapidly delegitimizes the complaint. It starts to deep clean Liberty Square with powerwashers, brooms, and mops (they even hired a dump truck). It even offers to let cleaners into the square to clean 1/3 of it at a time.
  
• With the complaint delegitimized, the Occupy movement goes on the offensive. It personalizes the eviction move (already inside Bloomberg's OODA). It finds Bloomberg. He's at a gala dinner at Ciprianis (a Wall Street restaurant). They surround the restaurant and try to enter it to deliver a petition with 310,000 signatures. Bloomberg hides, departs from the rear.
  

• Surprise! The deputy mayor announces that the eviction is cancelled.
  

Posted by John Robb on Friday, 14 October 2011 at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)