I'm Amy Goodman with Democracy Now's Nermeen Shaikh.
Thank you, Amy.
And welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world.
Defiant Occupy Wall Street protesters streamed into Zuccotti Park late Tuesday in a bid
to rebuild their cause less than 24 hours after police forcibly removed them from their
camp.
A fired up crowd of several hundred joined in the first General Assembly since the surprise
eviction.
The eviction had occurred around 1 a.m. with hundreds of police storming the camp and dismantling
tents, tarpolines, outdoor furniture, mattresses and signs.
They arrested over 200 people, including about a dozen who had chained themselves to each
other and to trees.
Even as protesters returned Tuesday evening, they were banned from bringing backpacks, tents
and sleeping bags with them.
A judge ruled yesterday afternoon that the city had the right to enforce rules against
camping gear in the park.
Justice Michael Stolman found the city, at least for now, can ban the protesters from
pitching tents and unrolling sleeping bags in the park.
Democracy Now Was It Occupy Wall Street last night to talk to some of the protesters as
they regrouped after the raid.
The
evaluate where we stand as a movement and I think this is a wonderful opportunity for
us to grow and to strengthen from it and I think we've been ultra within the law and
like we've always played by their rules and now that they've thrown this at us it's just
good that we get a chance to show how intuitive and how ingenious we are as a movement.
I can only see girls from here and I think people have come back not with a vengeance
but with a lot of hope, strength, energy and just more love for each other.
This causes us to refocus a whole lot so I'm really grateful for them cleaning the park.
If you look right over here starting from nothing tonight we have already received several
maybe a couple hundred books of donations so you know the people's library is strong,
the people are donating and taking the books already within a matter of hours of reopening
the park.
We're just passing out food, they don't allow us to have a kitchen anymore inside the park
so we've now set up one just to block down and we're passing stuff over the fence so
that people can get food.
My name is Brian Freud, I'm a physician assistant.
Since we lost so much yesterday we are afraid to lose more, our resources are limited now
so right now we're making sure that if we need to pack up and leave in a hurry we can.
What we're doing is we make sure we have our emergency necessary supplies in case things
get out of hand, people get pepper sprayed, we have solution plus basic essentials, bandages,
ice packs, thermal blankets, all the necessary things for bumps, bruises, cuts, sprains,
dehydration and just making sure people take care of themselves.
I'm a student at NYU Law and at one point I remember we were walking quite slowly and
the group kept saying slow down, slow down, we're not in a rush to get back there, this
is our time, not theirs and the cops behind them were pushing with their batons and shoving
the lawyers, skilled people with their batons saying walk faster, the law is you have to
walk faster than us, which I'm here to inform them is not in fact the law.
I come from a very conservative state, I'm from Indiana and I think I've always been
quite respectful of the police, I recognize that they're doing an increasingly difficult
job but I think this experience has shaped the way that I think about the police, it's
shaped the way that I perceive our government and honestly when I first came to law school
I was perfectly content during corporate work but after watching this I just feel increasingly
compelled to actually do something with my life to effect change and to just stop this
unnecessary and aggressive and just disgusting and despicable behavior by government officials
and our police officers.
My name is Ray Lewis, I'm a retired police captain from the Philadelphia Police Department
and the reason I'm down here is because I'm tired of seeing suffering of so many people
while you have one percent who is accumulating all this wealth on the backs of all the workers.
The police are the 99 percent, unfortunately they don't realize it but what they are are
basically just enforcing the laws of the dictators which is the one percent and they're having
their healthcare cut, their pensions cut and their salaries reduced and they don't even
realize it.
We are the 99 percent, we are the blood of this country, this country can't live without
us, let's take control.
One of the huge misconceptions is that all the movement is in this park, movements in
our head is an idea, like it's what happens while we're here, you know the conversations
we have that we take with us everywhere, working groups are still 100 percent functional and
we have this wonderful thing called the internet, I don't know if the cops have heard about
it but they can't shut that down, they can try but like you know we still have access
to the ideas we have and we still have the ability and the opportunity to share the
ideas we have.
The first amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out but it does not give
anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others nor
does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law.
There is no ambiguity in the law here, the first amendment protects speech, it does not
protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for more on Wall Street and similar movements around the nation
and the world, we're joined in New York by two guests, when we come back from break we'll
talk to Marina Citron who's just returned from Greece and Jeff Charlotte, who's one
of the organizers of Occupy Writers, back in a minute.
