Inside Police Lines at the Occupy Wall Street Eviction

[nadinbrzezinski]

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.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-police-raid-eviction?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+motherjones/main+(MotherJones.com+Main+Article+Feed)

[Avalux]

1. Democracy? Where? Not here. The Constitution is a worthless piece of paper. n/t