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Freedom of Speech Being Thwarted?

In light of this week’s Occupy events, one has to ask: are our constitutional rights being thwarted? The student demonstrations, ranging on the continent from California to New York City, have ended with painful consequences. The mainstream media does not fully report on the events, and understandably so when one considers who pays them.

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Here is a Press Release from CUNY students: November 21, 2011
WE CONDEMN the use of police violence against CUNY community members who were protesting peacefully at the public Board of Trustees Public and Budget Hearing at Baruch College on November 21, 2011. We also reject the official statement1 released by the administration of the City University of New York regarding those events.

Police detained and expelled dozens of people… by tvnportal

STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF peacefully entered the Baruch lobby to attend the public meeting of the Board of Trustees and were immediately met by a line of police carrying large wooden truncheons and blocking access to the building. Students who were on the official roster of speakers were also denied access. At no time did the students, faculty, and staff attempt to push past the massed police officers, nor to confront them physically in any way. The police directed us to the first-floor overflow room where the meeting would be televised live. Knowing that our voices would not be heard in the broadcast room, we decided that we would hold an assembly in the lobby and allow people to tell their stories and testimonies of experiences as students at CUNY. Most of us sat down on the ground so that speakers
could stand and be heard.

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The police attacked us shortly after we sat down and began pushing us toward the wall, responding to our peaceful, lawful protest with physical confrontation. The suggestion provided in the CUNY administration’s statement that anyone “surged forward toward the college’s identification turnstiles, where they were met by CUNY Public Safety officers and Baruch College officials” is a categorical lie, and this is documented in video footage of the events (see below). As the officers continued to push us away from the public meeting, they blocked all exits from the lobby but a single, revolving door, through which we were forced to walk one at a time. Many of the peaceful protesters were shoved violently by the campus police, jabbed and struck in their ribs with wooden truncheons, and left badly bruised. At least one student was struck in the face. It was a miracle that no one was more seriously injured. Those who refused to leave were told that they would be arrested; when one person identified himself to officers as a CUNY faculty member and asked on what charge he would be arrested, he was not given an answer. Another officer blurted, “Because it’s a riot!”

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For more information, and for video footage of the events of 11/21/2011, please visit: http://cunyprotest.wordpress.com/ and http://studentweekofaction.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/press-release-bot-public-hearing/
###

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Professional Staff Congress (PSC) President Barbara Bowen called for an investigation of police response to non-violent student protest at last night’s Borough Hearing at Baruch College:

“The City University has a proud history of student activism and protest. Some of its most important advances have occurred because of collective action by students, faculty and staff. We have made it clear to the university that violent response to non-violent students protest is not acceptable. Students, faculty and staff must be allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly. We call on the university to conduct a full investigation of the police conduct last night. The results of the investigation should be immediately made public.”

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On the other side of the country, at University of California, unarmed and seated students were pepper sprayed in the face, resulting in the University’s Chancellor Katehi to cite the events as appalling.

She is quoted by The Guardian here: “I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident,” Katehi said on Sunday. “However, I pledge to take the actions needed to ensure that this does not happen again. I feel very sorry for the harm our students were subjected to and I vow to work tirelessly to make the campus a more welcoming and safe place.”

University of California system chief Mark Yudof said free speech ‘is a value we must protect with vigilance’. Photograph: Wayne Tilcock/AP

President of Trinity Washington University, Patricia McGuire, said in the Huffington Post:

“Disgust became horror when I realized that the image was domestic, and not in Zuccotti Park but on a university campus. The riot-geared police were university employees, people paid to protect students in order to advance the educational mission of the university. They wielded those pepper spray cans with the confidence of pest control workers applying Raid to roaches.

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Too many baby boomers today forget our heritage in the counterculture. Boomers proudly headed south in the early 1960s to lock arms for civil rights in Birmingham and Montgomery, risking the fire hoses of police hell-bent on stomping out the rising tide of protests. Later in that tumultuous decade, boomers waged sit-ins (the original “occupy” demonstrations) in their college presidents’ offices to demand justice for the poor and oppressed. We inhaled tear gas while marching by the hundreds of thousands on Pennsylvania Avenue to demand an end to the Vietnam War.”

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What about Peaceful Protest?

Both groups of East and West Students are asking their Chancellors to resign. This request stems from a request to instate a more democratic administrative system.

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Police Raid Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Over 70 arrests were made in the wee morning hours today in an ambushed attack on the Wall Street Protesters. At approximately 1am, police in raid gear insisted the protesters evacuate Zuccotti Park, where they have been stationed for weeks. The Constitution of the United States dictates the public’s Right to Assemble. Yes, it’s a privately owned park but available for public use. This protest consists of the general public, for the public.

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Ironically this comes during the week of the largest Student Week of Action scheduled for November 17th.

After passively “supporting ” the OWS movement, billionaire mayor Bloomberg seems to have recanted his position. To make matters worse, it seems there was a “media blackout,” according to the Huffington Post:

“Reporter after reporter — many using the hashtag “#mediablackout” — tweeted through the night, saying that police had either blocked them from seeing what was happening or had acted violently towards them. Some correspondents were also among the scores of people arrested by police.

At his press conference about the raid on Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said journalists were barred from covering the raid “to protect members of the press,” and “to prevent a situation from getting worse.”

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Why should democracy be covered up, in blackness, kept under guards from the general media? The protesters were given notice that occupation of the park “poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard to those camped in the park, the city’s first responders and the surrounding community.”

LA Times reports that over 5,000 books were thrown out in the raid. “More than 5,000 books in the Occupy Wall Street library were reportedly thrown away when police moved in to remove protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York early Tuesday.

NYPD raiding Zuccotti Park on Nov 15th 2011

During the police raid, Occupy Wall Street librarians tweeted, “NYPD destroying american cultural history, they’re destroying the documents, the books, the artwork of an event in our nation’s history,” Galleycat reports. “Right now, the NYPD are throwing over 5,000 books from our library into a dumpster. Will they burn them? … Call 311 or 212-639-9675 now and ask why Mayor Bloomberg is throwing the 5,554 books from our library into a dumpster.””

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The Village Voice has asked city officials what happened to the library books, but has not yet received a response.

Currently a judge has signed an order allowing protesters to return to Zuccotti Park with their belongings; further court action is expected Tuesday.

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A Revolution is at Hand

Occupy Wall Street has been going on for weeks now (since September 17th to be precise), gaining the attention of millions through social media sites and limited National media attention. At first it seemed as if news channels scoffed at the perceived “feeble” attempts of left-wing liberals to protest the greedy corporations that led us to an economic future with no future. That’s the thing with protests: first they are ignored, then scoffed at, then finally, taken seriously. And this 20-something educated generation is now looking at their massive college debt and employment rejections and noticing…something just isn’t right.

Wall Street

The generation primarily conducting these now global protests are the so-called “apathetic” generation: the social media, internet obsessed, cell phone era, post-radical civil rights movements kids. Now it seems they’re stepping up and not backing down. What was considered (and expected) to be a short-lived attempt at protest has now gained global attention, using social media as a tool in spreading the language of non-violent protest.

“Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.”

The Christian Science Monitor says, “As the movement spreads, political analysts and social scientists are asking whether this is the sort of social unrest that emerges only in hard economic times and recedes in better days, or is a sign of a new political movement emerging on the American landscape.”

“The movement has also attracted the attention and support of more traditional liberal organizations, such as organized labor, he notes. This group includes the United Federation of Teachers and the Transport Workers Union, some of whose members defied a New York City police request and refused to bus protesters arrested Saturday for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution from ivarad on Vimeo.

Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution from ivarad on Vimeo.

But it’s not always a sunny day at the protests: over 700 protesters were arrested on October 2nd, 2011 while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. Some say it was an intentional “trap” by the NYPD to split half the march of protesters, proceed to block them in, and proceed with arrests. The rest of the protesters continued to march over the pedestrian side of the bridge with no legal repercussions.

The New York Times reports: But many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.

“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us onto the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who marched but was not arrested.

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Currently there is a plan for a National Student Walk-Out on Wednesday, October 5th and a Community/Labor March to Wall St against Corporate Greed and the Big Banks** at 4:30pm. The labor march will take place at: NY City Hall (250 Broadway) to Zuccotti Park (map)

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