Crackdowns reach epicenter of Wall Street protests

Police arrest an Occupy Wall Street pro­tester at Zuc­cotti Park on Tues­day in New York. After an early police raid remov­ing pro­test­ers, hun­dreds returned to Zuc­cotti Park car­ry­ing pho­to­copies of a court order they say gives them the right to return there. The National Lawyers Guild obtained a court order allow­ing the pro­test­ers to return with their tents to the park, where they have camped for two months. The guild said the injunc­tion pre­vents the city from enforc­ing park rules on the pro­test­ers. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Bebeto Matthews)

CHRIS HAWLEY

MEGHAN BARR

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — Crack­downs against the Occupy Wall Street encamp­ments across the coun­try reached the epi­cen­ter of the move­ment Tues­day, when police rousted pro­test­ers from a Man­hat­tan park and a judge ruled that their free speech rights do not extend to pitch­ing a tent and set­ting up camp for months at a time.

It was a poten­tially dev­as­tat­ing set­back. If crowds of demon­stra­tors return to Zuc­cotti Park, they will not be allowed to bring tents, sleep­ing bags and other equip­ment that turned the area into a makeshift city of dissent.

But demon­stra­tors pledged to carry on with their mes­sage protest­ing cor­po­rate greed and eco­nomic inequal­ity, either in Zuc­cotti or a yet-to-be cho­sen new home.

“This is much big­ger than a square plaza in down­town Man­hat­tan,” said Hans Shan, an orga­nizer who was work­ing with churches to find places for pro­test­ers to sleep. “You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.”

State Supreme Court Jus­tice Michael Stall­man upheld the city’s evic­tion of the pro­test­ers after an emer­gency appeal by the National Lawyers Guild.

The pro­test­ers have been camped out in the pri­vately owned park since mid-September. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he ordered the sweep because health and safety con­di­tions and become “intol­er­a­ble” in the crowded plaza. The raid was con­ducted in the mid­dle of the night “to reduce the risk of con­fronta­tion” and “to min­i­mize dis­rup­tion to the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hood,” he said.

By early Tues­day evening, some pro­test­ers were being allowed back into the park two by two. But they could each take only a small bag.

Later Tues­day, the pro­test­ers held a gen­eral assem­bly where they dis­cussed top­ics includ­ing where and how to retrieve their belong­ings that had been swooped up in the raid and options for going for­ward, includ­ing appeal­ing the judge’s decision.

Still, some pro­test­ers believed the loss of Zuc­cotti Park may be an oppor­tu­nity to broaden and decen­tral­ize the protest to give it stay­ing power.

“Peo­ple are really rec­og­niz­ing that we need to build a move­ment here,” Shan said. “What we’re ded­i­cated to is not just about occu­py­ing space. That’s a tactic.”

But with­out a place to con­gre­gate, pro­test­ers will have a harder time com­mu­ni­cat­ing with each other en masse. The lead­ers of the move­ment spent most of Tues­day gath­er­ing in small groups through­out the city — in church base­ments, in pub­lic plazas and on street cor­ners — and relay­ing plans in scat­tered text mes­sages and email.

Robert Har­ring­ton, owner of a small import­ing busi­ness in New York, stood out­side the bar­ri­cade with a sign call­ing for tighter bank­ing regulations.

“To be effec­tive it almost has to move out of the park,” Har­ring­ton said. “It’s like the anti­war move­ment in the ’60s, which started as street the­ater and grew into some­thing else.”

“The issues,” he added, “are larger than just this camp.”

Pro­test­ers milling around Zuc­cotti Park said they were dis­mayed by the ruling.

Chris Habib, a New York artist, said he hoped the group could set­tle on a new protest site dur­ing a meet­ing later Tues­day evening. He was con­fi­dent the move­ment would con­tinue even if its flag­ship camp was dismantled.

“A judge can’t erase a move­ment from the pub­lic mind,” he said. “The gov­ern­ment is going to have to spend a lot of time in court to defend this.”

Pete Dutro, head of the group’s finances, said the loss of the movement’s orig­i­nal encamp­ment will open up a dia­logue with other cities.

“We all knew this was com­ing,” Dutro said. “Now it’s time for us to not be tucked away in Zuc­cotti Park and have dif­fer­ent areas of occu­pa­tion through­out the city.”

The aggres­sive raid seemed to mark a shift in the city’s deal­ings with the Wall Street protests. Only a week ago, Bloomberg pri­vately told a group of exec­u­tives and jour­nal­ists that he thought reports of prob­lems at the park had been exag­ger­ated and didn’t require any imme­di­ate intervention.

The New York raid was the third in three days for a major Amer­i­can city. Police broke up camps Sun­day in Port­land, Ore., and Mon­day in Oak­land, Calif.

The tim­ing did not appear to be coin­ci­dence. On Tues­day, author­i­ties acknowl­edged that police depart­ments across the nation con­sulted with each other about non­vi­o­lent ways to clear encamp­ments. Offi­cers in as many as 40 cities par­tic­i­pated in the con­fer­ence calls.

When New York police began their crack­down at 1 a.m., most of the Occupy Wall Street pro­test­ers were sleeping.

Offi­cers arrived by the hun­dreds and set up pow­er­ful klieg lights to illu­mi­nate the block. They handed out notices from the park’s owner, Brook­field Office Prop­er­ties, and the city say­ing that the plaza had to be cleared because it had become unsan­i­tary and hazardous.

Many peo­ple left, car­ry­ing their belong­ings with them. Oth­ers tried to make a stand, lock­ing arms or even chain­ing them­selves together with bicy­cle locks.

Den­nis Itur­ralde was fast asleep on a cot when the shout­ing woke him up. Dark fig­ures were run­ning through the tents in the dim orange light of street­lamps. Some­thing slammed into the cot, flip­ping him to the ground.

“They came in from both sides, yelling, ‘You have 20 min­utes to vacate the premises!’” said Itur­ralde, a Man­hat­tan cook.

Within min­utes, police in riot gear had swarmed the park, rip­ping down tents and tarps. The air was filled with the sound of rustling tarps, rum­bling garbage trucks, shouts and equip­ment crash­ing to the ground.

“They were tear­ing every­thing apart,” Itur­ralde said. “They were hit­ting peo­ple, spray­ing peo­ple if they didn’t move fast enough.”

Around 200 peo­ple were arrested, includ­ing a mem­ber of the City Coun­cil, at least a half-dozen jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the con­fronta­tion and dozens who tried to resist the evic­tion by link­ing arms in a tight cir­cle at the cen­ter of the park.

The arrested jour­nal­ists included a reporter and a pho­tog­ra­pher from The Asso­ci­ated Press who were held for four hours before being released.

Free­lance radio jour­nal­ist Julie Walker, who works part time for the AP on the week­ends, said she was arrested on a dis­or­derly con­duct charge while walk­ing sev­eral blocks north of Zuc­cotti Park after cov­er­ing the raid. She said an offi­cer grabbed her arm twice and arrested her after she asked for the officer’s name and badge number.

“I told them I’m a reporter,” said Walker, who was work­ing for National Pub­lic Radio. “I had my recorder on before he ripped it out of my hand.”

Ear­lier in the day, another judge had issued a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order that appeared to bar the city from pre­vent­ing pro­test­ers from re-entering the park, but it was uni­lat­er­ally ignored by the police and city officials.

In con­trast to the scene weeks ago in Oak­land, where a sim­i­lar evic­tion turned chaotic and vio­lent, the police action was com­par­a­tively orderly. But some pro­test­ers com­plained of being hit by police batons and shoved to the ground.

City Coun­cil­man Yda­nis Rodriguez, who has been sup­port­ive of the Occupy move­ment, was among those arrested out­side of the park on charges of resist­ing arrest.

Police Com­mis­sioner Ray Kelly said Rodriguez was try­ing to get through police lines to reach the pro­test­ers. Rodriguez was released Tues­day night with vis­i­ble scrapes on his left tem­ple and right fore­head. He said an offi­cer assaulted him two blocks from the park as he went to observe police action. Police had no imme­di­ate comment.

Sev­eral jour­nal­ists were detained or man­han­dled by police while try­ing to cover the eviction.

“The law that cre­ated Zuc­cotti Park required that it be open for the pub­lic to enjoy for pas­sive recre­ation 24 hours a day,” Bloomberg said. “Ever since the occu­pa­tion began, that law has not been com­plied with, as the park has been taken over by pro­test­ers, mak­ing it unavail­able to any­one else.”

The police com­mis­sioner said offi­cers gave the crowd 45 min­utes to retrieve their belong­ings before start­ing to dis­man­tle tents and let peo­ple leave vol­un­tar­ily until around 3:30 a.m., when they moved in to make mass arrests.

“Arrest­ing peo­ple is not easy,” he said, adding that he thought the offi­cers showed great restraint in the face of “an awful lot of taunt­ing, peo­ple get­ting in police offi­cers’ faces, call­ing them names.”

The ouster at Zuc­cotti Park came as a rift within the move­ment had been widen­ing between the park’s full-time res­i­dents and the movement’s power play­ers, most of whom no longer lived in the park.

Some res­i­dents of the park have been grum­bling about the recent for­ma­tion of a “spokescoun­cil,” an upper ech­e­lon of orga­niz­ers who held meet­ings at a high school near police head­quar­ters. Some pro­test­ers felt that the selec­tion of any lead­ers what­so­ever wasn’t true to Occupy Wall Street’s orig­i­nal anti-government spirit: that no per­son is more impor­tant or more pow­er­ful than another person.

Posted by AP News on Nov 15 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.