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BBC MUNDO RADIO
Published: Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Updated: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 00:09
This operation began in early July when activists angered by the exploitation and abuse of economic institutions began talking of carrying out a Tahrir Square protest in the financial district of downtown Manhattan. These talks and rumors started solely on Twitter under the hash-tag #OccupyWallStreet.
Occupy Wall Street became the name of the project being carried out on Wall Street describing the large group of people on Wall Street and the surrounding areas in protest of past and current evidence of widespread corruption and fraud against banks and corporations.
Since the Sept. 17, Twitter feeds coming in and out Occupy Wall Street has been overwhelming. Messages such as "How Many Wall Street Bankers Were Arrested by NYPD After Destroying Our Economy? None. They Were Rewarded $700 Billion" and "CNN's Anderson Cooper went all the way to Egypt to cover protests at Tahrir Square but won't go down the block to cover #occupywallstreet" continuously pour out of activist Twitter feeds daily as the protest reaches its 11th day.
Activists using Twitter to relay information from the ground to the public call themselves "The 99 percent". One of the central arguments for carrying out the protest is that 1 percent of the population control 50 percent of the planet's wealth.
One of the hurdles protestors said they have been facing is the fact that there has been barely any media coverage of Occupy Wall Street; what they call a "media black-out".
Another challenge for the group has been the mass arrests and police brutality by the New York Police Department.
Video evidence of this began circulating on Twitter around the fifth day of the protest of police using Tasers and mace on the activists.
According to ABC News, a NYPD spokeswoman today confirmed the group's claim that approximately 80 people were arrested Saturday.
Police began making arrests on individuals who were obstructing traffic, jaywalking, wearing masks and writing on the sidewalk with chalk, according the Occupy Wall Street Twitter.
"They just took two guys away from writing on the sidewalk with chalk," one of the men in the protest said in a YouTube video.
"He was in the middle of writing the word ‘love' when they arrested him."
Other videos show that police have been using a tactic termed by activists as "kettling", when authorities attempt to surround and divide protests to make more arrests and fragment the group.
In the video, police began using orange nets to trap groups of people and maced two young women.
"You can still leave without being arrested. Leave this corner," an NYPD officer told the demonstrators. Many were defiant until the end.
On the Occupy Wall Street website, the group stated that a small group of people were arrested and thrown inside a police van Saturday morning, one of which had a "possibly life-threatening" concussion.
The website also reported that people were being arrested for taking photographs of the arrests and brutality taking place. According to ABC News, the NYPD denied these claims.
Individuals who have been attending and spending the night in the liberated spaces have said they will remain in the occupying camp indefinitely until they begin to see their demands met.
Every afternoon, demonstrators participate in what they call a General Assembly where they discuss the events that took place that day and how they will proceed to take action.
There have been reports on Twitter of people in other countries ordering food and sending care packages to the camp in Zuccotti Park.
The group stated on their website that the protest was inspired by the uprisings and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, also called the Arab Spring. A group that is part of the Occupy Wall Street coalition called the first day of the demonstration on Sept. 17 the "US Day of Rage", named after the milestone in the Egyptian revolution on Jan. 27.
Day one of the protest began with more than 2,000 people; now the occupation has dwindled to a little more than 500 indefinite occupiers along with around 200 people staying throughout the day.
"We are the other 99 percent," an activist shouted through a megaphone in a YouTube video. "And we want our money back."
Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com
Wall Street Demonstrations Test Police Trained for Bigger Threats
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Demonstrators near Wall Street on Monday. On Saturday, the police forcibly ended an unauthorized march toward Union Square.
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
Published: September 26, 2011
When members of the loose protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street
began a march from the financial district to Union Square on Saturday,
the participants seemed relatively harmless, even as they were breaking
the law by marching in the street without a permit.
Related
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City Room: Video Appears to Show Wall Street Protesters Being Pepper-Sprayed (September 25, 2011)
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Big City: Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim (September 25, 2011)
USLaw.com, via YouTube
A video still of an episode in which a deputy police
inspector used pepper spray on four demonstrators on Saturday.
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Even as the loose protest movement known as Occupy
Wall Street seems unorganized, it poses a challenge to the police.
The Police Department’s concerns came up against a perhaps milder reality on Saturday, when their efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated: protesters were corralled by police officers who put up orange mesh netting; the police forcibly arrested some participants; and a deputy inspector used pepper spray on four women who were on the sidewalk, behind the orange netting.
The police’s actions suggested the flip side of a force trained to fight terrorism, in a city whose police commissioner acknowledges the ownership of a gun big enough to take down a plane, but that may appear less nimble in dealing with the likes of the Wall Street protesters. So even as the members of Occupy Wall Street seem unorganized and, at times, uninformed, their continued presence creates a vexing problem for the Police Department.
In recent weeks, police commanders have been discussing the riots in London this summer, and strategizing how they would stop a similar situation in New York, said Roy Richter, the president of the union in New York that represents officers of captain and higher rank. And since August, investigators with the Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have monitored the online efforts of activists to bring demonstrations to Wall Street, people briefed on the matter said.
The Police Department conducts an internal review of its response to every large-scale demonstration, and the protest on Saturday appeared to have resulted in the largest number of arrests since the demonstrations surrounding the Republican National Convention in 2004. The events of Saturday are certain to be examined, especially since so many protesters were recording the events with cameras; videos of the pepper spray episode, for example, offered views from several angles.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, defended the use of pepper spray as appropriate and added that it was “used sparingly.”
But Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, said that in the video clips he had seen, the use of pepper spray “didn’t look good,” although Mr. Vallone cautioned that he wanted to know if any interactions had occurred between the officers and the women in the minutes before pepper spray was used.
“If no prior verbal command was given and disobeyed, then the use of spray in that instance is completely inappropriate,” Mr. Vallone said. On Monday, several Web sites identified the supervising officer who used the pepper spray as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, a longtime commander in Manhattan. Like a number of other officers, Inspector Bologna is a defendant in lawsuits claiming wrongful arrests at protests staged during the Republican National Convention in 2004..
A police official who had spoken to Inspector Bologna following the incident confirmed that the inspector had used the spray. “He did his job and now he’s concerned for the safety of his family,” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to confirm the inspector’s name.
According to the Police Department’s patrol guide, officers may use pepper spray under certain conditions, including “when a member reasonably believes it is necessary to effect an arrest of a resisting suspect.” The guide also advises that the spray should “not be used in situations that do not require the use of physical force.”
The Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct, received 328 complaints in 2010 relating to the use of pepper spray, accounting for about 5.5 percent of the total number of complaints citing improper use of force.
In the past week, the review board has received more than a dozen complaints relating to officers’ interactions with protesters, said a spokeswoman for the board, Linda Sachs.
Although the Police Department has closely monitored the encampment of protesters in the Financial District and stationed officers there, there appears to have been little discussion between the police and the protesters.
Mr. Browne, the police spokesman said that the protesters never sought a permit for Saturday’s march.
The lack of communication between the two sides may have set the stage for the confrontation on Saturday near Union Square.
When groups have permits, “the department is pretty accommodating when it comes to street marches,” said Christopher T. Dunn, associate legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union. He added that some groups had perfectly good reasons for not wanting to engage with the police, and “that’s certainly their prerogative.”
In interviews, police officials described the lack of a permit and the fact that protesters were obstructing traffic as key factors in the arrests and the department’s decision to end the march.
“If you have a permit, the police will accommodate for things like diverting traffic,” Mr. Browne said. “If you take a street for a parade or protest without a permit, you are subject to arrest.”
Mr. Richter, of the police union, said that from the perspective of the protesters, the Police Department’s decision to suddenly end the demonstration might have appeared arbitrary.
“I can see it from a demonstrator’s view, asking, ‘What changed?’ ” Mr. Richter said. “But there comes a point when the command staff makes a decision that the crowd is too big, and we’re at a breaking point, and we have to take back the street.”
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