Tolerance, Censorship and the Occupy Wall Street Library
by Matthew Hyde
Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth
CS Lewis and Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and Tolkien. To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye, Spider-Man and Doctor Who. It’s strange how you can feel kinship, solidarity, with people you’ve never met through the books they read. I’m one of those nosy people who, when visiting somewhere for the first time, always checks out what’s sitting on their bookshelves, seeing if there are any matches with my own, searching for something that catches my interest.
The list above comes from the catalogue of the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street, a collection of over 5,000 books kept on-site at the protest since September this year. Yesterday, during the NYPD’s eviction of the protestors, from which press were barred, the library was gathered up, along with myriad other belongings, and thrown into a dumpster.
It’s an act that prompts strong emotions – you just don’t throw books into the trash. Beyond their content, the very physicality of books is symbolic of learning, information, knowledge, literature. Put them all together into a library and suddenly it raises the spectre of Alexandria and the House of Wisdom. Of course, this isn’t the same, but at the same time, maybe it’s reflective of the times in which we live. While this wasn’t a deliberate act of biblioclasm, together with actions like the media blackout it shows a sad disregard for education and freedom of expression. Moving the library would be one thing, but there seem to be conflicting reports as to whether or not the majority of books have been destroyed.
So while the destruction of the People’s Library is sad and disgusting, it’s also symbolic. Today is American Censorship Day, campaigning for internet freedom. It’s also the International Day for Tolerance, sponsored by the United Nations to promote freedom of conscience, belief, expression and opinion. Here in the UK, the High Court has ruled that protestors can mount a legal challenge against the closure of public libraries in Gloucester and Somerset. Suddenly the last 24 hours seem to be a moment in which a number of events come together to remind us that freedom of information, freedom of speech, aren’t to be taken for granted. Frightening as it sounds, people are genuinely keen to suppress those freedoms, not out of insane malice, but out of ignorance, apathy and greed. In the comfortable western world, they’re the more present dangers. After all, a movement that puts together its own public library is unlikely to be the sort of movement you need to pepper-spray and tear-gas, but still it happened, even if cameras weren’t allowed to see it
To Read the Rest and Access Hyperlinked Sources
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Josh Harkinson: Inside Police Lines at the Occupy Wall Street Eviction
[Important because it outlines the continuing institution of a new police tactic designed to eliminate media coverage of police actions against peaceful protesters: the "frozen zone."]
Exclusive Video: Inside Police Lines at the Occupy Wall Street Eviction
Amid this morning's crackdown on Zuccotti Park, I was one of the only reporters bearing witness.
By Josh Harkinson
Mother Jones
By about 4 a.m. today, New York City police had pushed the media out of Zuccotti Park and were preparing to evict the few dozen protesters who remained. Yet there I was, standing in the park amid a gaggle of high-ranking officers, quietly watching the whole thing unfold.
"You gonna occupy awhile?" one officer cracked to another.
"Yeah," the other guy smiled.
I stood next to them against a short granite wall, trying to avoid notice.
Like the other reporters who'd swarmed to Lower Manhattan to cover the eviction, I'd quickly discovered that the media was not allowed here. The police had created a one-block buffer zone around the park—in some areas two or three blocks—and were refusing to admit even the most credentialed members of the press. A New York Times reporter had already been arrested, a member of the National Lawyers Guild told me. I feared that Occupy Wall Street's big day was being censored.
As occupiers streamed out of the park, harried by baton-wielding cops, I resolved to get inside. Shielded from view by a car, I slipped under a barricade and came to another blockade across the street from the park's southeast corner, where I cut through a hole and was quickly approached by a police officer. "I'm not an occupier," I told him, holding out my business card.
"That's great, he said, pointing away from the park. "But you are going to have to wait on the other side of the street."
I waited, and when nobody was looking, I crossed back over as confidently as I could and entered a scrum of suit-wearing police brass and cleanup workers scrubbing the park's sidewalk. Nobody bothered to stop me as I strode up to the park's northern entrance and stopped against a wall, a few yards from where police in helmets surrounded the the remaining occupiers.
Next to me, an officer was telling an important-looking guy named Eddie about "the intel we've had over the past couple of months" about "the severely mentally retarded, the ones that are real fucked up in the head, and have been violent in the past." He went on: "They are a little off kilter. They're off their meds. They haven't had meds in 30 days."
"I'm only 24 hours off mine," Eddie joked.
"It's good for you, Eddie," the cop said. "You've got to come clean every once in a while."
As the two men talked, a sweaty-faced man wearing a neon vest over a business suit walked up and started tearing protest signs off the wall."I couldn't wait," he said. "Destroying things never felt so good."
"Really," someone said, almost inflecting the word as a question.
"They're fucking assholes," the guy in the suit shot back.
Another guy came up to Eddie. "How are we about hooking up the fire hydrants?" he asked. "We talkin' to somebody?"
"Do it. Do it," Eddie said over the roar of a garbage truck.
A few yards away, the last occupiers took turns waving a large American flag. Huddled inside the park's makeshift kitchen, they seemed as diverse as Occupy Wall Street: There was a shaggy punk in a spiky leather jacket. A young girl in a red sweatshirt that read "Unity." Clean-shaven guys wearing glasses. A shirtless occupier named Ted Hall, who has led an effort to hone the movement's "visions and goals." All of them surrounded a smaller group of occupiers who'd chained their necks to a pole.
To Read the Rest of the Report and To Watch the Video
More:
Slate: David Weigel - The Frozen Zone
Exclusive Video: Inside Police Lines at the Occupy Wall Street Eviction
Amid this morning's crackdown on Zuccotti Park, I was one of the only reporters bearing witness.
By Josh Harkinson
Mother Jones
By about 4 a.m. today, New York City police had pushed the media out of Zuccotti Park and were preparing to evict the few dozen protesters who remained. Yet there I was, standing in the park amid a gaggle of high-ranking officers, quietly watching the whole thing unfold.
"You gonna occupy awhile?" one officer cracked to another.
"Yeah," the other guy smiled.
I stood next to them against a short granite wall, trying to avoid notice.
Like the other reporters who'd swarmed to Lower Manhattan to cover the eviction, I'd quickly discovered that the media was not allowed here. The police had created a one-block buffer zone around the park—in some areas two or three blocks—and were refusing to admit even the most credentialed members of the press. A New York Times reporter had already been arrested, a member of the National Lawyers Guild told me. I feared that Occupy Wall Street's big day was being censored.
As occupiers streamed out of the park, harried by baton-wielding cops, I resolved to get inside. Shielded from view by a car, I slipped under a barricade and came to another blockade across the street from the park's southeast corner, where I cut through a hole and was quickly approached by a police officer. "I'm not an occupier," I told him, holding out my business card.
"That's great, he said, pointing away from the park. "But you are going to have to wait on the other side of the street."
I waited, and when nobody was looking, I crossed back over as confidently as I could and entered a scrum of suit-wearing police brass and cleanup workers scrubbing the park's sidewalk. Nobody bothered to stop me as I strode up to the park's northern entrance and stopped against a wall, a few yards from where police in helmets surrounded the the remaining occupiers.
Next to me, an officer was telling an important-looking guy named Eddie about "the intel we've had over the past couple of months" about "the severely mentally retarded, the ones that are real fucked up in the head, and have been violent in the past." He went on: "They are a little off kilter. They're off their meds. They haven't had meds in 30 days."
"I'm only 24 hours off mine," Eddie joked.
"It's good for you, Eddie," the cop said. "You've got to come clean every once in a while."
As the two men talked, a sweaty-faced man wearing a neon vest over a business suit walked up and started tearing protest signs off the wall."I couldn't wait," he said. "Destroying things never felt so good."
"Really," someone said, almost inflecting the word as a question.
"They're fucking assholes," the guy in the suit shot back.
Another guy came up to Eddie. "How are we about hooking up the fire hydrants?" he asked. "We talkin' to somebody?"
"Do it. Do it," Eddie said over the roar of a garbage truck.
A few yards away, the last occupiers took turns waving a large American flag. Huddled inside the park's makeshift kitchen, they seemed as diverse as Occupy Wall Street: There was a shaggy punk in a spiky leather jacket. A young girl in a red sweatshirt that read "Unity." Clean-shaven guys wearing glasses. A shirtless occupier named Ted Hall, who has led an effort to hone the movement's "visions and goals." All of them surrounded a smaller group of occupiers who'd chained their necks to a pole.
To Read the Rest of the Report and To Watch the Video
More:
Slate: David Weigel - The Frozen Zone
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