Occupy Wall Street: What Happened?

By the time the police kicked the protesters out of Zuccotti Park last November, the Occupy Wall Street movement had already split into at least two distinct factions. There were the mostly college educated activists and intellectuals who essentially made up the government of the park, and the drifters who slept in the park and relied on donations mostly allocated by the first group for food, clothes and other basic necessities.

After the eviction, some members of the first group tried to portray the raid as an unintended gift from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYPD to the movement. The 22,000 square-feet village of tents and tarps had garnered incredible attention and hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, but maintaining the space had come with significant challenges. In addition to feeding, clothing, and caring for the hundreds of people living there, the activists had to contend with the hazards of drug use and mental illness, reports of crime and the imminent approach of winter. Some saw the eviction as an opportunity to focus more of their energy on bigger things, like pushing for reforms to the financial system and to the United States government.

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Swarm NYC Financial District to Mark 1st Anniversary of 99% Struggle

Occupy Wall Street protesters are converging in the Financial District in Manhattan to mark the first anniversary of the movement’s beginning. Similar protests are taking place in dozens of cities today.

On Sept. 17, 2011, thousands of people answered the call originally put out by the Canadian-based magazine "Adbusters" to occupy Wall Street. Protesters slept in Zuccotti Park for nearly two months before the New York City police raided the encampment. We look back at some of Democracy Now!'s earliest coverage of the movement. We interview Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello at Sunday's anniversary concert in New York City’s Foley Square, and get a live update on the action unfolding today in the streets with Citizen Radio’s Allison Kilkenny.

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Source: Democracy Now!
Author: --

Occupy, After Occupy

At the corner of Spring and Varick streets, in the ethereal white halls of a Manhattan Mini Storage, two members of the Occupy Wall Street Archives Working Group have assembled competing visions of how the movement should be remembered. Their collections look deceptively similar: cramped, high-ceilinged storage closets packed with cardboard signs, boxes, banners, and stray objects such as a mannequin, a pig mask, a miniature tent, an orange mesh police net and hundreds of unopened letters. Neither self-appointed archivist has had access to the other’s stash. They rarely even speak to each other, having undergone a philosophical falling-out—one that, as the first birthday of OWS approaches, seems to hinge on the question of whether the movement should be spoken of in the past or present tense.

Occupy Wall Street Plans To Surround New York Stock Exchange To Mark Anniversary

Sept 15 (Reuters) - Occupy Wall Street marks its first anniversary on Monday, and, in a bid to rejuvenate a movement that has failed to sustain momentum after sparking a national conversation about economic inequality last fall, activists plan once again to descend on New York's financial district.

The group, which popularized the phrase "We are the 99 percent," will attempt to surround the New York Stock Exchange and disrupt morning rush hour in the financial district, according to a movement spokeswoman.

Inside Occupy Wall Street's New York March

On Tuesday afternoon, in a departure from recent history, Occupy Wall Street took the form of a duly-permitted march.

To mark May Day, over 15,000 people filled New York City's Union Square for an all-purpose solidarity rally. Tom Morello and Das Racist performed, reporters scouted out eccentric-looking interviewees, and friends shared rumors about what the night might bring. At 5:30 p.m., the Union Square crowd emptied out onto Broadway, heading south toward the Financial District. Since the marchers had a permit, the NYPD officers blanketing the route didn't interfere.

(Mother Jones journalists took photos at May Day marches in New York and Oakland, and Josh Harkinson wrote about what Occupy should do next.)

The marchers' presumptive destination was either Wall Street or Zuccotti Park, though as usual with the Occupy movement, no one seemed quite sure. After more than two hours of slow-paced marching, the procession had reached an ill-defined endpoint in Lower Manhattan. Wall Street itself appeared impenetrable—the entrance was fortified with multiple layers of metal barricades manned by cops. Zuccotti Park was inaccessible, too—the plaza was brimming with police, including Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona, who memorably sucker-punched a demonstrator in the face last October without provocation. (On April 28, Cardona yanked Katherine Bromberg, a New York Civil Liberties Union legal observer, off the sidewalk and arrested her; charges of disorderly conduct and blocking pedestrian traffic were later dropped.)

Occupy Wall Street May Actually Be Changing Wall Street Firms

Though the Occupy protesters have taken their tents out of Zuccotti Park, they're still making their mark.

The majority of marketing and communications executives at financial services firms said that Occupy Wall Street has impacted their business, according to a study conducted by Echo Research and Makovsky -- a research company and an integrated communications firm specializing in financial services, respectively. The number one challenge for firms this year is dealing with a negative public perception, according to Scott Tangney, an executive at Makovsky. In recent years past, recovering from the financial crisis superseded that concern.

"Banks and financial services firms have now shifted their focus from liquidity and financial performance to customer satisfaction and their own employees," said Scott Tangney, an executive at Makovsky. "The Occupy Wall Street Movement has indicated to firms where they need to be focusing."

The study’s findings come a little more than one week after Occupy Wall Street protesters were met with arrests celebrating the movement's six month anniversary.

A visit to Occupy Wall Street: This movement is too important to fail

Last weekend I was in New York City attending Left Forum, conveniently located at PACE University in Lower Manhattan, just a short walk from Zuccotti Park. So it was easy to head over and take part in events this past Saturday, March 17 marking the six month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). I wrote about the experience in the bilingual Vancouver newspaper La Source:

"The atmosphere was a microcosm for the inspiration OWS has provided, and the challenges it faces. At first, the mood was celebratory, especially when Michael Moore and a few hundred friends marched over from the nearby Left Forum conference. The chant of the hour was, 'We are unstoppable, another world is possible!'

Alas, the NYPD had other ideas. Shortly before midnight, after the crowd had thinned somewhat, they moved in, arresting dozens of people and clearing out the park – again.

This is still a very young movement, and the ideas and debates it has brought out throughout society are not going away anytime soon. I think the same is true of Occupy Vancouver (OV), however much the physical encampment that dominated the headlines in the fall has been wiped out. OV faced a relentless wave of negative press, culminating in physical eviction. When occupiers tried to move the camp over to the provincial courthouse downtown, it was Premier Christy Clark who moved quickly to draw a legal and rhetorical line in the sand. 'I’m fed up. It’s time to end this nonsense,' Clark snapped, and a day later OV was moved out from the law courts complex.

Watch: Police Get Violent As OWS Retakes Zuccotti Park

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters marked the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street by attempting to retake Zuccotti Park. By the end of the night, 73 had been arrested and the park forcefully cleared. In scenes that recalled the early days of the movement last fall, citizen journalists captured the New York City Police Department roughing up dozens of apparently peaceful activists. One of them, Craig Judelman, posted a bloody photo of himself on Facebook with the caption, "just got punched in the face like 5 times by NYPD." Journalists J.A. Myerson and Ryan Devereaux have good summaries of other alleged brutality, including officers throwing punches, "rubbing" a boot on someone's head, dragging a woman by the hair, and breaking a guy's thumb. Many other incidents were caught on tape.

Here are some of the most disturbing:

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Source: mother jones
Author: Josh Harkinson

Police Arrest 73 in Occupy Wall Street Crackdown as Protesters Mark Six Months Since Uprising Began

Michael Moore led hundreds of people from the Left Forum conference to Zuccotti Park on Saturday where hundreds had gathered to reoccupy the park to mark six months since the launch of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last September and launched protests around the world that gave voice to "the 99 percent." That night, New York City police officers cleared the park, making at least 73 arrests. Many people reported excessive use of force by officers; several cases were caught on camera. In one widely reported incident, a young woman suffered a seizure after she was pulled from the crowd and arrested. Witnesses say police initially ignored Cecily McMillan as she flopped about on the sidewalk with her hands zip-tied behind her back, but she was eventually taken away in an ambulance. For more, we talk to Guardian reporter Ryan Devereaux, who has been following the Occupy movement closely.

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Source: Democracy Now!
Author: ---

Flashback to Fall: Occupy Revisits Zuccotti Park After New Arrests

If you were to travel past New York's Zuccotti Park on Thursday evening, it would have looked a bit like it did last fall, as Occupy Wall Street protesters rallied there after six of them reportedly got arrested while protesting Bank of America. Completing the late 2011 motif, "hipster cop" Rick Lee apparently made the scene as well. A Ustream broadcasting the action at Zuccotti showed protesters clustered on the Zuccotti Park stairs while Flickr pictures show police massing around a small crowd in the middle of the park. Organizer Austin Guest said about 200 people showed up (Gothamist put the number closer to 50) and six were arrested in total, one while crossing the street in front of the Bank of America branch in lower Manhattan where they had their protest and five while sitting on the living room furniture the occupiers set up at the branch. On Twitter, frequent Occupy tweeter @DiceyTroop said police had also impounded two of their vehicles.

The protest against Bank of America, which activists say is "a morally and financially dead 'zombie bank' poised to shock the entire global economy into crisis," is the campaign Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi has been active in. His big feature on the bank's problems came out on Wednesday; in it, he called B of A "a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time." The bank just passed a Federal Reserve stress test, but Taibbi made the case that it hasn't cleaned up its act since the federal bailout four years ago.

Wall Street Protesters Complain of Police Surveillance

On Nov. 17, Kira Moyer-Sims was near the Manhattan Bridge, buying coffee while three friends waited nearby in a car. More than a dozen blocks away, protesters gathered for an Occupy Wall Street “day of action,” which organizers had described as an attempt to block the streets around the New York Stock Exchange.

Then, Ms. Moyer-Sims said, about 30 police officers surrounded her and the people in the car.

All four were arrested, said Vik Pawar, a lawyer for Ms. Moyer-Sims and two of the others, and taken to a police facility in the East Village. He said officers strip-searched them and ignored their requests for a lawyer. The fourth person could not be reached for comment.

Ms. Moyer-Sims, 20, said members of the Police Department’s intelligence division asked about her personal history, her relationship with other protesters, the nature of Occupy Wall Street and plans for upcoming protests.

“I felt like I had been arrested for a thought crime,” she said.

Occupy Wall Street In NYC On Pace To Run Out Of Money By End Of Month

NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) - The Occupy Wall Street group in New York is running low on money and on pace to run out by the end of the month, raising questions about the future of the movement that sparked a wave of nationwide protests against economic injustice six months ago.

Donations to the group, which raised about $500,000 within weeks of setting up camp in a park near Wall Street on Sept. 17, have slowed and with plans for an American Spring of protests it has set aside a remaining $90,000 into a fund established to bail arrested protesters out of jail.

A report by Occupy Wall Street's accounting group for the week ending March 2 showed it had $44,828 in a general fund in addition to the bail fund and warned that "at our current rate of expenditure, we will be out of money in THREE WEEKS."

The report - posted on the group's website http:// www.nycga.net - showed $1,556 had been raised that week, while $14,942 had been spent on the group's kitchen, street medics, New York City bus and subway passes, and printing costs.

Occupy Wall Street Protests ALEC In What Activists Call Largest Coordinated Occupy Event This Year

NEW YORK -- In cities around the country today, hundreds of Occupy protestors gathered for what the movement described in a release as its "largest coordinated action this year."

Since a wave of nationwide evictions effectively ended the movement's tent-city phase three months ago, Occupy activists have been trying to regain momentum. It's unclear whether today's event lived up to those expectations, but its organizers presented it as an important step forward.

In Washington, D.C., police arrested between eight and 12 people outside the headquarters of agriculture company Monsanto, according to protesters. In California, protestors blocked the entrance to three Walmart distribution centers. In New York, about 100 people demonstrated outside of Pfizer and gathered in Bryant Park for a talk by journalist Matt Taibbi. There were smaller demonstrations in cities from Albany, N.Y., to Tulsa, Okla.

A hundred people doesn't approach the movement's turnouts at its height between September and November, but the New York event differed from earlier protests in several ways that could prove important for the movement's future.

Occupy Wall Street Demonstrators Arrested During New York City Protests

NEW YORK, Feb 29 (Reuters) - About 10 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were arrested in New York City on Wednesday during protests that failed to pull in big crowds or draw much attention on what organizers had hoped would be a nationwide day of revival for the movement.

As rain clouds gathered overhead, several dozen police officers on motorcycles escorted a group of about 50 protestors that marched from a park outside the New York Public Library to the world headquarters of Pfizer Inc and back. They denounced Pfizer as a corporation that lobbies for legislation to create tax breaks and other benefits for large businesses.

"Shame on Pfizer! You're a bunch of liars!" chanted the protestors as they milled around barricades in front of Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker.

Afterward, Pfizer acknowledged involvement with legislative organizations but said in a statement that its aim was strictly to "advance the health of all Americans."

Among those arrested was a bicyclist in the group headed back to Bryant Park outside the library. Police had no immediate information about the arrest.

JPMorgan Chase CEO: I Was Safer In Lebanon Than With The Occupy Protesters

For Jamie Dimon, the shelter of his Upper East Side mansion isn't enough to keep him safe from the Occupy protesters. Instead, the JPMorgan Chase CEO said he felt safer halfway around the world that October day when protesters occupied the sidewalk outside his Manhattan home.

"That particular day, I was in Lebanon, Beirut doing business over there and I was probably safer over there too," Dimon told Fox News.

In October, the protesters took their march to Dimon's home, along with the homes of other of super-rich New Yorkers including real estate developer Howard Milstein and hedge fund manager John Paulson. At the time, Dimon was likely meeting in the safety of Beirut's corporate conference rooms, but the city is in the volatile region of the Middle East -- violence currently raging in Syria is threatening to spill over into Lebanon.

Though Dimon was a target of the Occupy movement, he told Fox News that he agrees with some of their points.

Occupy Protesters Sue New York City Over Pepper Spray Incident

NEW YORK, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Two women caught on camera being doused with pepper spray by a New York police officer during an Occupy Wall Street march in September have sued the city, saying it failed to train police officers properly.

In a viral online video, Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna was shown pepper-spraying several protesters involved in a march in September, about a week after the Occupy Wall Street movement set up camp in a park in the city's financial district.

The video helped draw attention to the Occupy protests, which spread throughout the country last fall with calls for greater economic equality before the movement lost some ground as many U.S. cities evicted them from tent camp footholds.

Chelsea Elliott of Brooklyn and Jeanne Mansfield of Massachusetts filed the lawsuit last week in Manhattan federal court against Bologna, the city, the police department and other unidentified officers.

Bologna was docked 10 vacation days for "using pepper spray outside of department guidelines," police said in October.

The Manhattan district attorney's office opened an investigation into his conduct but has not released any results. A spokeswoman for the office declined to comment on Monday.

Aymen Aboushi, the lawyer for the two women, said he waited several months for the investigation to conclude before filing the suit.

"We've given them more than enough time to follow up on this," he said.

A spokeswoman for the city's law department said in an e-mail on Monday that the city had not received a copy of the lawsuit but would review it upon its arrival.

Original Article
Source: Huff 
Author: Joseph Ax 

Occupy Movement Regroups, Preparing for Its Next Phase

The ragtag Occupy Wall Street encampments that sprang up in scores of cities last fall, thrusting “We are the 99 percent” into the vernacular, have largely been dismantled, with a new wave of crackdowns and evictions in the past week. Since the violent clashes last month in Oakland, Calif., headlines about Occupy have dwindled, too.       

Far from dissipating, groups around the country say they are preparing for a new phase of larger marches and strikes this spring that they hope will rebuild momentum and cast an even brighter glare on inequality and corporate greed. But this transition is filled with potential pitfalls and uncertainties: without the visible camps or clear goals, can Occupy become a lasting force for change? Will disruptive protests do more to galvanize or alienate the public?

Though still loosely organized, the movement is putting down roots in many cities. Activists in Chicago and Des Moines have rented offices, a significant change for groups accustomed to holding open-air assemblies or huddling in tents in bad weather.

On any night in New York City, which remains a hub of the movement, a dozen working groups on issues like “food justice” and “arts and culture” meet in a Wall Street atrium, and “general assemblies” have formed in 14 neighborhoods. Around the country, small demonstrations — often focused on banks and ending foreclosure evictions — take place almost daily.

NYC Marches In Solidarity Following Oakland Mass Arrest

Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Oakland this weekend following activists’ unsuccessful afternoon effort to occupy a former convention center. Over a thousand protesters decided to head back to their former encampment outside City Hall, which is when police confronted the marchers and began arresting them en masse.

Those arrested included six journalists: Mother Jones’s Gavin Aronsen, independent journalist Susie Cagle, Kristen Hanes of KGO Radio, Vivian Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle, John C. Osborn of the East Bay Express, and Yael Chanoff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Hanes had credentials, though from San Francisco police, not OPD, and Ho did have OPD credentials.

Aronsen describes his arrest:

As I waited in line to be processed and transported to jail, Ho approached me with an officer who had released her from custody. The two explained to my arresting officer that I was with the media. “Oh, he’s with the media?” the officer replied, although I had already repeatedly told him as much and my credentials had been plainly visible all night. He appeared ready to release me, until a nearby officer piped in, without explanation: “He’s getting arrested.”

Occupy Wall Street: Protesters To Demonstrate Outside Courthouses

NEW YORK — Protesters plan to "occupy" courthouses in more than 100 cities across the U.S. on Friday to protest a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed most limits on corporate and labor spending in federal elections.

The grassroots coalition, called Move to Amend, said the protest will kick off petition drives to gain support for a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United v. FEC, a 2010 court ruling that allowed private groups to spend huge amounts on political campaigns with few restrictions. Occupy Wall Street activists are joining the protest.

"The courts created the idea that the corporation is a person with constitutional rights," said David Cobb, an Occupy the Courts organizer. "It's the justification for the whole corporate takeover of our government."

Activists in New York scrambled to move their protest after a judge ruled Thursday that demonstrators do not have a First Amendment right to protest in front of a federal courthouse.

Protesters had filed a lawsuit asking the judge to overturn the government's rejection of their permit application. The permit was denied on grounds that the courthouse poses unique security concerns.

In a statement late Thursday, Move to Amend said the rally would be moved to Foley Square, near the courthouse, and that activists would focus on organizing the protests rather than appealing the ruling.

Original Article
Source: Huff 

Zuccotti Park Barricades Removed: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Stream Back In To Former Camp

NEW YORK -- Barricades surrounding a park that served as a camp for Occupy Wall Street protesters were removed Tuesday, allowing protesters to stream back in.

The atmosphere was celebratory but calm on Tuesday evening as about 300 protesters began filling New York City's Zuccotti Park a couple of hours after the barricades were taken down and a day after a complaint about the barricades was filed with the city. Protesters milled around, eating lasagna on paper plates and playing chess.

Security guards who were previously guarding the barricades stood off to the side, along with a handful of police officers. It was a minor victory for the protesters, who have complained about financial inequality in demonstrations that gained traction across the globe.

"Word spread pretty quickly, and we ran down here," demonstrator Lauren DiGioia said. "It's hard to remember what it was like before the barricades were put up."

Police spokesman Paul Browne said the NYPD and Brookfield Office Properties, the park's owner, had been talking about removing the barriers last week. The decision was made to remove them Tuesday because officials felt they were no longer necessary, Browne said.

Brookfield spokeswoman Melissa Coley confirmed in an email that the barricades were taken down but declined to comment further. A Brookfield employee who refused to give his name told an Associated Press reporter: "The barriers are down, but the other rules are the same."