Allison Kilkenny's report: NYPD Destroy Occupy Wall Street Camp (detailed info)

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Ever since protesters first took Liberty Square back in September, they've been discussing when Mayor Bloomberg would make the move to raid the camp. The general consensus has always been the mayor would dispatch the NYPD in the middle of the night, and in the early hours of Tuesday, that prediction proved correct. Mere days away from the two-month anniversary of the occupation, the NYPD lowered the hammer and completely dismantled the encampment, throwing away every scrap of Occupy gear, including around five thousand books from the group's library, and arresting around 70 people (note: this is an early report and arrest numbers will almost certainly change).

Hundreds of officers cleared the square under the guise of a "clear and restore" campaign that would eventually permit the demonstrators to return after the cleaning. Occupiers obviously had a difficult time swallowing the line as they watched the camping equipment that had become their homes over the past two months heaped into the back of sanitation trucks. Some protesters chained themselves to trees in Liberty, and some early reports indicate the NYPD cut down the trees in order to remove the demonstrators.

The New York Times:

The mayor’s office sent out a message on Twitter at 1:19 a.m. saying: “Occupants of Zuccotti should temporarily leave and remove tents and tarps. Protesters can return after the park is cleared.” Fliers handed out by the police at the private park on behalf of the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties, and the city, spelled out the same message.

In the past, Bloomberg has adopted the strategy of bowing to the demands of Brookfield, which decided to postpone at earlier scheduled cleaning of the park back in late October after thousands of protesters arrived at the park to defends its borders. It was perhaps his submissiveness to the hierarchy of private ownership or maybe the fact that Bloomberg's live-in girlfriend sits on the board of Brookfield Properties that kept the mayor passive these past couple of months when it came time to make decisions regarding the occupation's fate.
more:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/12296/nypd_destroy_occupy_wall_street_camp/

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. Fuck Bloomberg. Let this be his last week in office.

[Mac1949]

2. Has anybody noticed these are the same tactics developed

by the OGPU to fill the Gulags? Middle of the night raids and arrests, confiscation/destruction of property, intimidation/elimination of witnesses and press, burning/destruction of books etc. Nothing ever changes among the totalitarians,

[dipsydoodle]

3. That is an absurd comparison

.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. With all due respect, I think it is a valid comparison.

We have had years of history of midnight raids with people being hauled away in the middle of the night.It is a common practice in repressive regimes, and very chilling that it is happening here.

the police across the country have waited till 2 pm to raid camps, and the NYC police to night caged press,
in a pen of barriers, then parked two NYPD busses in front of press cage, engines running, blocking shots of square.

It is clear that there is a pattern of working in the dark, intimidation of protesters.

[Mac1949]

6. Thank you. To clarify, I was not meaning to imply that we have

a totalitarian government (yet) but simply that we are using many of the same tactics. :hi:

[dipsydoodle]

7. I meant

that to the best of my knowledge you have neither forced labour nor internment camps in the USA.

Maybe I'm wrong then. :shrug:

The Gulag (Russian: ГУЛаг, tr. GULag, IPA: <ɡʊˈlak> ( listen)) was the government agency that administered the main<1> Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment, and the Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.

>

On March 1940, there were 53 separate camps and 423 labor colonies in the USSR.<6> Today's major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.<8>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

[Mac1949]

9. In our for-profit prisons, prisoners are forced to work, under

threats of solitary, loss of privileges, and loss of good behavior time if they don't. This is of course not as severe as what Gulag prisoners endured, but the difference is qualitative. The principle is essentially the same, including that we do have political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, etc. within the same system as criminals. Again, I am not implying that we are going down the same road as the Soviet Union did, only that the methods and perhaps some of the results are similar. As far as internment camps, the INS "holding facilities" might be considered the equivalent. Anyway, I didn't mean to start a kerfuffle, and you are correct that we have nothing exactly equivalent. I still maintain, though, that the principle is the same. :hi:

PrisonLabor

[dipsydoodle]

10. OK

:hi:

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. I agree with you, and have said the same since 2003.

Your sig line says it all, too.And he should know, right?
The pattern of repression is very familiar, has a long history. Unfortunately, the old saying about ignorance is also truce.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. Recall if you can the “cages”

set up for demonstrators at the inaugural parade for GWB in 2001? The intent was clear then and became the norm under Homeland Security’s program to militarize the police as part of so-called anti terror training. We saw the same ideology at work in Chapel Hill this week when non-violent protest was put down by police tactical squad using drawn weapons. The underlying assumption appears to be that you are no longer a citizen once you publically disagree with Elected Authority: therefore you must be a criminal, and treated as such.

[KoKo]

12. When Bush came to NC...we protestors with signs were put in "Free Speech" pens...

Metal Barracade and our wooden handles for signs were confiscated (police said they could be used as weapons) and that was in 2004 when he came to visit one of his Big Wig Donators and we were standing on the side of the highway (that we paid tax dollars for) in quiet protest.

So...it's been going on for awhile.

[1776Forever]

4. I had heard on Friday morning on one of the last live broadcast from there that they had known from

"a good source" that this was going to happen. No one had been on the air much live since then. I think they thought after the weekend went by that they might get a pass for awhile but there was no live broadcasting since that time that I saw checking a couple of times a day. I hope all those that I came to know will be safe and won't be discouraged for long.

[blogslut]

11. Those with Twitter and an interest in OWS

Follow @allisonkilkenny

Her feed is super comprehensive and eminently reliable.