OWS New York Evicted; NYPD in Contempt of Court

At 1AM last night, police cleared Zuccotti Park, allegedly violently – again, after clearing out the media ("for their own safety"). Reports are that the occupiers' computers and other hardware, as well as their tents, were dumped into garbage trucks and hauled off.

At 7-something this morning, a NY court issued an injunction ordering that the protesters must be allowed back into the park pending a fuller hearing at 11:30AM today. Mayor Bloomberg was reportedly informed, and the protesters have one or more copies of the court order, which they showed to the NYPD.

The protesters then returned to Zuccotti, to find it still barricaded.

All times stated in this post are Eastern time.

UPDATE: Per CNN and HuffPo as of 3:33PM: the NY S. Ct. has ruled in favor of OWS.

Further update: That report proved false, at least in part. The ruling was that the protesters should be re-admitted to the park but would no longer be allowed to camp there in violation of rules imposed after the occupation began.

It would be interesting to know the source of the earlier report. {It turns out the confusion arose when CNN belatedly reported the issuance of the TRO some 6 hrs. after it issued and 1.5 hrs. after the subsequent hearing was to have begun, and OWS-er's assumed that this was the decision based on the hearing.}

To fill in a few more details: After the eviction, a temporary restraining order was issued by Judge Lucy Billings holding that OWS must be allowed back into Zuccotti pending the results of a hearing to be held later in the day. This order was issued at 6:30AM and, one source says, was served on Mayor Bloomberg by 7:50AM. The protesters returned to the park to re-occupy the park, but police had blockaded it off and refused to let them in notwithstanding the court order. For reasons as yet unclear, prior to the scheduled hearing, the case was transferred to Judge Michael Stallman. That judge held in favor of the City at approximately 4:30PM.

So for nearly nine hours, Mayor Bloomberg and the police – all of whom had no doubt sworn to uphold the Constitution and laws – were in contempt of court.

Further FURTHER update: The Guardian reports that not only did NYC authorities clear the media from the park grounds before commencing the eviction . . .

. . . the city closed airspace in lower Manhattan to prevent news helicopters taking aerial shots of the scene. Vans were used to obscure views of the park and a police cordon effectively blocked accredited media from reaching the site. Some of those members of the press who were in the park or were able to get there say they were arrested, pepper sprayed or treated aggressively.

One of the few reporters on the scene when the police moved in was Josh Harkinson, a writer for Mother Jones magazine. As police used tear gas to remove the last protesters from the park Harkinson identified himself as a member of the media and was physically dragged out of the park. He was told that reporters had to stay in a "press pen".

Reporters tweeted their frustration using the hashtag #mediablackout and said police were ignoring and even confiscating press passes.

A New York Post reporter was "roughed up" according to the New York Times' Brian Stelter. Lindsey Christ, of local cable-news channel NY1, said on-air this morning that "the police took over, they kept everybody out and they wouldn't let media in. It was very planned."

(Emphasis supplied.)

Timelapse of Earth

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station, 2011. Edited by Michael König; more details here. (Thanks, Robin!)

Occupy Portland Supporters "Too Big to Jail"

Watching Occupy Portland livestream. The mayor had decreed the eviction of the camp tonite, but 7,000 Portlanders came out in support of the occupiers. Police are overwhelmed (so far).

(Image thanks to Occupy Portland livestream.)

UPDATE: Observers report that at one point, the crowd chanted to police, "You're sexy, you're cute. Take off your riot suit!"

FURTHER UPDATE: AS OF 4PM the next day (Sun.), the police are back, determined to clear park; media have been evicted; police have announced they WILL use gas and projectiles if necessary.

Further FURTHER UPDATE: (9PM Sun.) The park has been cleared, but protesters are holding a General Assembly nearby to discuss where to reconvene, etc.

Occupy Dallas: Artists for Teachers, Teachers for Arts March

Maybe 50 protesters, not bad for Dallas, considering the camp conducts marches daily, so there's probably a certain burn-out rate.

It's hard to imagine any actual crime occurring in or near the camp, as alleged, given that our march was surveilled by at least eight cops in or on 5 vehicles, wielding still and video cameras – nearly one cop per each half-doz. protesters! If only they watched the bankers so well.

By the way, the camp was (again) immaculate.

Photos by Ben Britt (thanks, Ben!)

The Art Guys Strike Back

Received today:

“No Show”

a non-exhibition featuring nothing at all by Seth Mittag

at

icetsuoH Contemporary Museum of Modern (iCMM)

This non-exhibition will not open on Tuesday, November 15, 2001, 7-11 p.m.

Said The Art Guys, icetsuoH Curators of Modern and Contemporary Activities, “Well, Seth was going to do a show but then he got too busy and had to cancel so we thought that rather than canceling the show, which sounds so, like negative, you know, we decided that we should press forward and go ahead and do this non-show.”

Said Seth Mittag, “I have nothing to do with this.”

For less information, contact icetsuoH Contemporary Museum of Modern

713-409-4750

http://www.theartguys.com/icetsuoH.html

Artists for Teachers to March with Occupy Dallas

"Occupy Dallas . . . together with Creative Factory Occupy Dallas . . . will be hosting a peaceful march on November 12th . . . .

"The march will serve the purpose of [raising] awareness [of] the effects [of] Texas budget cuts . . . on Dallas area teachers and also [on] the arts programs that our children attend. . . . We stand in support of artists and teachers who have helped fill the gaps in education that our government has created.

"The public is welcome to join us at City Hall Park [that's behind City Hall] on November 12th [tomorrow!] at 10:00am. The march will begin at 11:00 am. We will proceed to the Arts District, march along Flora Street and return to City Hall Park where local musicians and visual artists will share their gifts with us from 1pm-4pm."

(Thanks, Lizzy! Edited for length.) Starts behind City Hall. Be there!

Three Points About the Alleged Problems at Occupy Camps:

1. Re- allegations that the camps have become breeding grounds for unsanitary conditions, vagrancy, crime, etc.,* one point I haven't seen made elsewhere is that even if the camps were broken up, any criminals, vagrants, or the like that may have been drawn to the camps aren't just going to vaporize; they're going to disperse right back into the rest of the city. And without being unduly pessimistic, they're probably going to be doing more or less the same things there that they were doing at the camps.

If the camps are in fact drawing more trouble-makers into a central location, they should generally be easier to find and police there, not harder. What's happening is probably not so much that the camps are creating problems as that they are making more visible the failures of the police and society at large to cope with trouble-makers – or poverty and the like in general.

2. The second point is just a reminder that incidents of violence almost certainly come not from bona fide Occupy protesters but from agents provocateurs, criminals, or anarchists et al. trying to exploit the situation for their own ends.

3. In ALL cases, the solution is NOT to restrict the First Amendment rights of bona fide protesters. The solution is to police the trouble-makers and help the poor.

(Alternatively, since it's the protesters who are the main victims of the alleged crimes or problems, why not let them decide which they'd prefer, to suffer the problems or to have their rights curtailed? Since we're so keen on deregulation and letting individuals suffer the consequences of their own choices . . . . )

*Here are a couple of recent photos of one of these alleged breeding grounds (the Dallas camp; and when I was there, I did not see the least sign of trash or disorder), as well as some links to documented instances of the use of agents provocateurs by agencies in the U.S.

(And P.S.: If Dallas officials think the Occupy camp is a problem, they should have shut down the Texas State Fair decades ago!)

Now Online:

A piece I wrote that was published in the hard copy journal of true stories, Fray magazine, here. Illustration by Mal Jones (see more by Mal in his Flickerstream).

The piece is excerpted from a longer work-in-progress, Diary of the Dead.*

As fellow-contributor Jarrett Liotta put it, "I'm happy to get my Fray copies, which have a retail value of $60. (That's a lot of money in the Sudan.)"

Contributors other than me have written for The New York Times, Wired, Salon, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Bust, et al., so I felt honored to be included. The quarterly zine is edited by JPG co-founder Derek Powazek.

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* I picked that title long ago and wasn't going to give it up just because a cr&ppy movie came along and used it later.