The Latest News on Occupy Wall Street Under Siege: Judge Allows Occupiers Back In, 5K+ books destroyed, Journalists Arrested, Protesters Occupy Church Lot | Sojourners

The Latest News on Occupy Wall Street Under Siege: Judge Allows Occupiers Back In, 5K+ books destroyed, Journalists Arrested, Protesters Occupy Church Lot

WATCH LIVE VIDEO STREAMING FROM OCCUPY WALL STREET IN NEW YORK CITY

+ WARNING: May contain coarse language and violence. +

http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

 

CNN.com: Judge orders New York to allow protesters, tents, in park
A New York judge issued an order Tuesday morning allowing Occupy Wall Street protesters to return to Zuccotti Park, just hours after scores of police in riot gear ordered them out and tore down their tents.

The order from New York Supreme Court Judge Lucy Billings allows protesters to bring tents and other equipment back into the privately owned park where the now-global Occupy movement began.

Police, however, did not immediately let them in.

Read More HERE.

 

Huffington Post: Occupy Wall Street Library Destroyed
The NYPD has reportedly thrown out 5,554 books from the Occupy Wall Street Library during the raid to evict protesters from Zuccotti Park early Tuesday morning.

Read more HERE.

 

The Guardian: NYPD attempt media blackout at Zuccotti Park
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."

Read more HERE.

 

ThinkProgress.org: At Least Two Reporters Arrested During Occupy Wall Street Crackdown
Shortly before noon today, New York Daily News reporter Matthew Lysiak, who is covering New York City’s crackdown on Occupy Wall Street protestors filed a three word report: “I’ve been arrested.”

Julie Walker, a freelance reporter for NPR, was also arrested last night while covering the crackdown, despite the fact that she was wearing an NYPD-issued press pass. Walker spent three to four hours in police custody before she was released at 7am. To her credit, she immediately “went straight back to work.”

Read More HERE.
 

New York Times: At Least Four Journalists Arrested While Covering the Zuccotti Park Raid
At least four journalists, including a reporter and a photographer from The Associated Press, a reporter from The Daily News and a photographer from DNAInfo, were led out in plastic handcuffs.

A few of the detentions were done roughly -- one man was thrown on the ground by the police and officers kneeled on his back. But most were more routine.

Read More HERE.

 

New York Times: Occupiers Contemplate "Liberating" Church Property, Chased Out by Police

Later the protesters converged on a triangular space farther uptown known as Duarte Square, for the first president of the Dominican Republic, Juan Pablo Duarte. The city owns slightly less than half an acre of land there, on the eastern edge of the square. The western section is owned by Trinity Church, a major landowner downtown, and had been fenced off for the winter recently after an art installation was dismantled.

With dozens of police officers watching, protesters climbed to the top of the plywood fence and held a general-assembly-style discussion on whether to “liberate another piece of property,” and about an hour later — after some protesters said they had tried to obtain permission to enter the church’s lot — two protesters dressed in black appeared with bolt cutters. They quickly made an opening in the fence.

As the crowd poured in, police vans sped down Varick Street toward Zuccotti Park, where another group of several hundred protesters was trying to retake the space where they had camped out since mid-September. It was cleaner that it had been in some time: After the protesters were thrown out, workers using power washers blasted water over the stone that covers the ground.

Read More HERE.