By putting up barricades and security checkpoints all over Lower Manhattan, which has not been done since 9/11, is this how the NYPD thinks it is going to serve and protect us ? Is it trying to protect us from our own Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Speech ?
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2012 Police State Watch: NYPD to Install Checkpoints, Demand ID in Lower Manahttan on OWS Anniversary Since when are Americans required to carry and show ID to the police to go about their daily business? Apparently since the 1% became sufficiently afraid of the 99% so as to regard the Constitutionally-guaranteed rights to assembly and free speech as security threats. This notice gives a flavor of what to expect for the September 17 celebrations of the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street (click to enlarge; hat tip nathan):
Note how NYPD filmed the evacuation of Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park :
Are NYPD Intelligence Division violating terms of the Handschu Agreement ?
On September 6, 2012, activists against the Fracking Pipeline that is proposed to run through the West Village organised a demonstration along the West Side Highway. At that protest, a white shirt police officer was caught video taping lawful political activities of the protesters. If the protesters were only engaged in lawful political activities on September 6, as it surely does appear, then does the monitoring of the protesters by the NYPD not violate the Handschu Agreement ?
The Handschu agreement is a court ruling from the case Handschu v. Special Services Division, 605 F.Supp. 1384, affirmed 787 F.2d 828, that brought about guidelines that regulate police behavior in New York City with regard to police monitoring of citizens' political activity (Wikipedia).
A large coalition of activist groups accused police of compiling information to punish and repress lawful dissent, according to Wikipedia.
Fran Lebowitz spoke about the intersection of Occupy Wall Street and Michael Bloomberg, and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
"The thing I have enjoyed the most, I have to say, about Occupy Wall Street, because I am a vengeful and superficial person, is to see Bloomberg not have any idea which way to go with this thing. ... We know how he really feels, because, I mean, this mayor is not even in the 1%. He's in the 1% of the 1%. We have a mayor, who is so rich, that he will not live in a place actually called Gracie Mansion. It's not nice enough for him, you know ? He has not in any way attracted the ire of these [activists], which is shocking to me. I mean, when I walk around and sometimes these kids talk to me, I say, 'Go to Bloomberg's house.' You know, the day that they went to rich people's houses, I said, 'Go to Bloomberg's house,' and those kids said to me,'No, no, no. He's O.K., he said we could stay.' I said, 'What are you talking about ? This isn't his city. Anybody can stay. This is not his estate.' ...
"And we've seen the new, doe-eyed Christine Quinn -- all of a sudden, champion of the people, you know, not in fact his henchman or henchwoman that she's been for the last 40 years of his mayoralty, who helped him overturn two elections in order to have this third term.
Two days after the Zucotti Park eviction, Ms. Lebowitz said, Mike Bloomberg "is a central villian in all this." In respect of Speaker Quinn, Ms. Lebowitz said, "She is an architect of this."
NYPD Continue To Arrest Protesters Engaged In Acts Of Free Assemblies.
NYPD arrested numerous protesters Wednesday night during a march organised in New York City to show solidarity with the student strikes in Quebec.
''One of the men arrested was kicked in the head by an officer while he was being held on the ground, two witnesses said. The police said that five people were arrested, all on charges of disorderly conduct, though this reporter saw at least seven people who appeared to be arrested,'' wrote the reporter Colin Moynihan, for The New York Times.
... For the most part, the mood of the two-hour march, which wound through Greenwich Village as far north as 14th Street, was calm, but there were a few moments of conflict, as police officers arrested people who they said had stepped off sidewalks at various spots and gone into roadways.
At one point, the marchers crossed streets several times as they circled from sidewalk to sidewalk at Mulry Square, where several streets intersect, tying up traffic, including police scooters. After more than five minutes of circling, a police commander prevented the group from continuing its tactic, and the marchers moved west with little complaint.
Moments later, though, according to two witnesses, an officer kicked a man who had been flung to the ground and was being arrested. ...
The requirement for "protest permits" in New York City, which bedevils the #OccupyWallStreet movement, can be traced back to Christine Quinn.
On September 24, 2011, what was then the eighth day of the #OccupyWallStreet protest, about 1,000 protesters went on an unpermitted march from Zuccotti Park to Union Square Park in Manhattan. Along the way, 80 people were arrested for various reasons, according to Gothamist :
The majority of the arrests, which were for disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration, blocking vehicular traffic, and one assault on a police officer, occurred around Union Square yesterday afternoon after nearly a thousand demonstrators marched down Broadway. Videos show NYPD officers corralling women with nets, indiscriminately discharging pepper spray, and tackling protestors.
How New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn figures into the arrests of what now numbers well over 1,000 #OccupyWallStreet protesters is a matter of historical record : just take a look at who approved the protest permit requirement in the first place. Not surprisingly, the development of protest permits in New York City can be ascertained by following the course of how Speaker Quinn sold out her liberal roots in pursuit of mayoral electability.
In 2006, multiple courts ruled the City’s assembly rules unconstitutional, and City Council was charged with fixing them. Instead of conducting public hearings and placing the matter into the hands of City Council, Speaker Quinn abdicated her responsibilities and allowed the NYPD to write these rules behind closed doors.
In February 2007, she rubberstamped the new rules into effect. Suddenly, it became illegal for 50 or more people to gather and process through New York City—unless they request and are given prior permission from the police.
Of course, the NYPD has a long history of attacking political groups, and one of their favorite tools is to deny permit requests of groups—like the organizers of the 2007 Trans Day of Action—who they don’t like.
Why do police decide who can assemble and who cannot? And since when do the police write rules? And why is all of this okay with Quinn?
Quinn so desperately wants to be mayor that she has sold the queer community and her constituents down the historical river for her own political gain. We’ll remind Quinn that she has her pot of gold, but she better not forgot the rainbow that led her to it!
A political enabler with aims to minimise, and even silence, dissent.
It should come as no surprise that Speaker Quinn "abdicated her responsibilities." When Speaker Quinn is faced with the dilemma between doing the right thing and picking what renders her with an immediate political advantage, Speaker Quinn always picks what is most politically expedient. Even those, who should be her most ardent base of support, leftist LGBT radical activists, know that Speaker Quinn cannot be counted upon to stay true to her liberal roots.
Speaker Quinn has a reputation for bluffing her way through critical public policy issues, like the hole in public health caused by the impending luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital. As has been written on this blog before, Speaker Quinn has mastered the art of the non-answer answer : "She likes to be evasive, but she is definitive about giving you the run-around. She doesn’t have to give you either a proverbial bait-and-switch or back-pedal, provided she never has to first give you any policy position with which to lure you."
But Speaker Quinn's evasiveness begins to wear thin amongst radical activists, who know that the only way to make our elected politicians deliver a tangible solution to a societal problem is by keeping them politically accountable. Here is where direct action protest organisers enter into the political equation.
A Gay City News news report, which is no longer available online, was copied on the Radical Homosexual Agenda's website :
On Wednesday night over 500 people filled the City Council chamber for a celebration of "LGBT Pride and the Journey to End Violence and Hate." Among those honored were NYPD Detective Kevin Czartoryski, the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, established in recognition of the brutal 2005 murder of a 19-year-old gay man from Brooklyn, and the Gay-Straight Alliance at Port Richmond High School in Staten Island.
Tony-winning actor Stephen Spinella opened the evening, and Speaker Christine Quinn, the first openly lesbian or gay leader of the Council, flanked in the front row by her partner, Kim Catullo, and her father Lawrence, recalled the city's decades-long struggle to achieve gay rights.
In the midst of her speech, half a dozen protesters from ACT UP and the Radical Homosexual Agenda unfurled protest banners from the balcony. They were criticizing a new police regulation requiring groups of 50 or more to first obtain a police permit. "You've criminalized the Dyke March and the Drag March," Tim Doody (pictured with Nina Resnick) of ACT UP yelled. Quinn allowed the protesters to have their say [for one minute], after which they were escorted from the building. There were no arrests.
Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, the chamber's other out lesbian member, who has been a vocal critic of the regulation, spoke up on Quinn's behalf. "My speaker cannot do anything until the Council is behind her," Mendez told the chamber.
''A Council Speaker Who Tightens the Purse Strings on Dissent''
Back on June 20, 2007, when activists with the Radical Homosexual Agenda were targeting Speaker Quinn over the NYPD's anti-assembly rules, activist James Wagner charged that Speaker Quinn had "made herself inaccessible" to activists, who had been seeking to meet with her about the requirement for protest permits. Mr. Wagner wrote that after the activists had been removed from the City Council Chambers, following their banner drop, Speaker Quinn said that she was "willing to meet with anyone who disagreed with her on the question of Police rules for assembly." But, as Mr. Wagner further wrote, Speaker Quinn's expression of willingness turned out to ring hallow : "For the record, I have been assured several times by those who know groups that have tried to engage her that she has repeatedly refused to do this in the past."
Sometime between the mass NYPD arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention and the 2008 revelation of Speaker Quinn's slush fund scandal, Speaker Quinn decided that the best way to campaign to become mayor of New York City was to hitch her wagon to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's gravy train. But because she does not have Mayor Bloomberg's billions, she was going to use taxpayer money to buy her way into higher office. When even The New York Times, with its many puff and fluff articles about Speaker Quinn's career, dares to report about how Speaker Quinn uses taxpayer money to stifle political dissent, you know that Speaker Quinn has begun to tread on thin political ice.
And now that activists with #OccupyWallStreet are confronting the use of excessive force of, and even brutality by, NYPD, those very activists are going to question Speaker Quinn's role in approving the restrictions on civil liberties caused by her rubber stamp on the NYPD’s anti-assembly rules. And once again, here comes another time when direct action protest organisers enter into the political equation.
Occupants in the building across from where Michael Bloomberg's campaign office is situated poured an unidentified white liquid on protesters, who had gathered to demonstrate against Bloomberg's ill-fated campaign for a third term. The protesters initially believed the unidentified substance to be egg whites. Because of the way the substance ran down on the protesters' clothing, the substance was later believed to be milk.
While the demonstration was small in scale, the exact motive behind the harassment was unclear. It was also not immediately known who was responsible for battering the protesters with the unidentified liquid, but the the police who were on site primarily focused on keeping the protesters away from Bloomberg's campaign office. One protester described the impact of the protesters having had what was believed to be milk poured on them as being, "cruel."
The unfortunate occurrence of this incident is, sadly, just in keeping with the assault on the freedoms of speech and assembly under Bloombo Dicto. It is as if this mayor, under his continuing decrees and fiats, carlessly and recklessly cares naught for the rights of all people to participate in the governance of this city. The London Independent, a publication free from the local bias and partiality of New York City politics, was able to deduce of its own accord that the method used by the mayor and the New York City Council to overturn term limits could appear as, "chicanery to some."
But why should we be surprised ? The mayor is running a campaign based naught on the issues but solely on the Hollywood celebrity endorsements of Matt Damon. At the end of the day, we hear Mike Bloomberg, King of New York, proclaim to the City: "I obscenity in the milk of thy opposition to my mayoral dictatorship."
This post was corrected from its initial version, due to information concerning the location of the protesters.
Freedom of Speech doesn't exist under Mike Bloomberg's version of New York.
"Shocking video clips of police brutality and arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg directed the NYPD to stifle Constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of assembly by stopping any 'protests' that may embarrass George W. Bush and the Republican party. Clips in this video are two days before the Convention even began, when police arrested 250 people during the Critical Mass bike ride, a non-partisan event which has occurred every month since 1994. Even more shocking, many of those being arrested had nothing to do with the bike ride, but had the misfortune of crossing the street while this was happening. Clips are from the documentary 'Watch This!' by Glass Bead Collective released under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC) license."
"Mr. Bloomberg knows that his reputation has taken hard blows in the fight over term limits. But he is apparently betting that the passage of time will restore whatever he may have lost in respectability." -- Clyde Haberman, The New York Times, October 27, 2008.
"Mr. Bloomberg's popularity is high, but his handling of protesters to the 2004 Republican National Convention, when thousands of demonstrators were swept off the streets and detained, is a black mark on his record for many New Yorkers and civil libertarians." -- The New York Times
"For more than a year before the convention, the Police Department monitored Web sites and sent undercover detectives around the nation to collect information on Bush opponents planning to demonstrate in New York. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said the operation helped keep order. " The New York Times, April 3, 2007
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