Occupy Wall Street: News Round-Up

[Trigger warning for police brutality.]

The Guardian—Occupy Wall Street: 'Pepper-spray' officer named in Bush protest claim:

A senior New York police officer accused of pepper-spraying young women on the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations is the subject of a pending legal action over his conduct at another protest in the city.

The Guardian has learned that the officer, named by activists as deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, stands accused of false arrest and civil rights violations in a claim brought by a protester involved in the 2004 demonstrations at the Republican national convention.

Boston Review—Why I Was Maced at the Wall Street Protests:

The white-shirted cops are shouting at us to get off the street as they corral us onto the sidewalk. One African American man gets on the curb but refuses to be pushed up against the wall of the building; they throw him into the street, and five cops tackle him. As he's being cuffed, a white kid with a video camera asks him "What's your name?! What's your name?!" One of the blue-shirted cops thinks he's too close and gives him a little shove. A white-shirt sees this, grabs the kid and without hesitation billy-clubs him in the stomach.

At this point, the crowd of twenty or so caught in the orange fence is shouting "Shame! Shame! Who are you protecting?! YOU are the 99 percent! You're fighting your own people!" A white-shirt, now known to be NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, comes from the left, walks straight up to the three young girls at the front of the crowd, and pepper-sprays them in the face for a few seconds, continuing as they scream "No! Why are you doing that?!"

The rest of us in the crowd turn away from the spray, but it's unavoidable. My left eye burns and goes blind and tears start streaming down my face. Frank grabs my arm and shoves us through the small gap between the orange fence and the brick wall while everyone stares in shock and horror at the two girls on the ground and two more doubled over screaming as their eyes ooze. In the street I shout for water to rinse my eyes or give to the girls on the ground, but no one responds. One of the blue-shirts, tall and bald, stares in disbelief and says, "I can't believe he just fuckin' maced her." And it becomes clear that the white-shirts are a different species. We need to get out of there.

WYNC—Protesters Dig in as Park Owner Seeks Their Eviction:

Following 80 arrests over the weekend, organizers of an anti-Wall Street demonstration are now facing possible eviction from the Lower Manhattan park that has been their unofficial base of operations for the past 10 days.

Hundreds of members of the group Occupy Wall Street have protested in Zuccotti Park, a space on Broadway and Liberty streets owned real estate company, Brookfield Properties, which is hoping the protesters will move on.

"The park is intended for the use and enjoyment of the general public for passive recreation," a spokeswoman for Brookfield Properties, Melissa Coley, said in a statement.

"We are extremely concerned with the conditions that have been created by those currently occupying the park and are actively working with the City of New York to address these conditions and restore the park to its intended purpose."

New rules were posted over the weekend forbidding the use of sleeping bags, lying down or storing personal property in the park. But protesters like Justin Wedes said they have no plans to move just yet.

"It seems like an attempt, a half-hearted attempt," Wedes said. "I almost want to say, to try to intimidate us to leave, but the reality is that we're deep into our work, and we're not planning to leave anytime soon."

Star-Ledger—Occupy Wall Street demonstrators send message: Where are the jobs? "Occupy Wall Street, a protest against bank bailouts and corporate greed, is what the tea party should have been—probably would have been—if the movement hadn't been hijacked by savvy conservatives, bankrolled by billionaires and fictitiously portrayed as an everyman revolt."

David Weidner at MarketWatch—Wall Street elites enjoy police protection: "If you want to know how a nation supposedly by and for the people has become uprooted, one only needs to see how common young people, who are suffering so badly in this recession, were humiliated further by trying to exercise their given right to peacefully protest."

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