Occupy Wall Street Returns to Zuccotti Park

By Colin Moynihan, The New York Times

12 January 12

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nChYs5nYXM

pdated, 10:07 a.m. | Security guards working for Brookfield Properties took down a cordon of metal barricades surrounding Zuccotti Park on Tuesday evening, but entered the park later that night to enforce rules forbidding anyone to lie down.

The police arrested three people late Tuesday, a woman and two men, and charged them with trespassing, obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest.

More than 200 Occupy Wall Street protesters milled inside the park past midnight, celebrating the removal of the barricades, which some lawyers had said violated city laws.

Moira Meltzer-Cohen, 34, a law student from Bedford-Stuyvesant, said that she was in a meeting in a public atrium on Wall Street on Tuesday when word began circulating that the barricades were being taken down. She said she rushed to the park and saw security guards stacking barricades that had ringed the park since the police cleared an Occupy Wall Street encampment there in mid-November, forcing protesters to enter single file.

“People flooded in, and there was a lot of jubilation,” she said. “There was so much joy because the park had been caged for so long.”

Vestiges from the park’s recent past emerged. Protesters brought crates of books left over from a library that had been established at the park before it was cleared. They also ladled out meals from large containers, something that Brookfield guards had prevented over the last two months.

Ellen MoynihanLying down in the park is against the rules. But some protesters gave it a shot.

 

There was also some friction. A man who was seen directing security guards but would not give his name told protesters at one point that books were not permitted inside the park. A security guard told one man that drumming was not allowed.

The removal of the barricades came one day after lawyers for the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild sent a letter to the New York City Buildings Department objecting to security measures set up at the park by Brookfield.

The letter (see also below) said that zoning laws required Brookfield Properties to provide unobstructed access to the park. The letter also said that rules that did not appear in any written form - forbidding food or musical instruments, for example - had been used arbitrarily to keep some people from the park.

“The inconsistent and selective enforcement of constantly changing rules, and preemptive searches of individuals attempting to enter the park violates the terms of the special zoning permit which obligates Brookfield to maintain Liberty Park as a permanent open park for the public benefit,” the letter said.

Mark Lennihan/Associated PressBack in the park, unbarricaded: Adam Farooqui, an Occupy Wall Street protester, in Zuccotti Park early Wednesday morning.

 

One lawyer who signed the letter, Gideon Oliver, said on Tuesday night that he had not heard from Brookfield or the city but said he thought it was a “reasonable inference” that the letter had led to the removal of the barricades.

In 1968, the developers of an office tower next to the park were permitted to add 500,000 square feet to their building in return for providing a public space, which was first named Liberty Plaza Park. It was renamed Zuccotti Park, after a Brookfield executive, in 2006.

Several protesters said on Tuesday that it had been important to regain unfettered access to the park, which they described as a key meeting spot in the heart of the financial district.

“We worked very hard to vindicate our right to protest so that our outcry about Wall Street greed can be heard,” Bill Dobbs, an organizer, said on Tuesday.

Early on Tuesday night the police removed two people from a granite bench on the north side of the park, with an officer telling the men that the owners of the park did not want them there. But a few moments later, when seven people sat on the same bench, the police did not renew their objection.

Just before midnight, though, about a dozen protesters drew a different response when they curled up under silvery blankets at the northeast corner of the park, resting atop sheets of cardboard scavenged from nearby streets. A police lieutenant at the head of a column of officers announced that lying down was not permitted, adding that anyone who did so would be arrested for trespassing.

As the officers approached, the protesters picked up their blankets and cardboard sheets and moved toward the center of the park. At about 2 a.m., a security guard told a man and a woman lying on a granite bench there to get up. They did not immediately rise. Moments later both were arrested and led away.

At several points, guards and a police commander ripped pieces of cardboard from the grasp of protesters. One guard announced repeatedly that the cardboard was “padding” that was not allowed.

Meanwhile some protesters shouted for him to produce that rule in writing and others complained that their pieces of cardboard were meant to serve as signs.

http://www.nyclu.org/files/releases/NYCLU_letter_to_LiMandri_01_09_12.pdf