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benjamin becker, brooklyn bridge arrests, cassandra regan, class war, Constitution, economics, economy, free assembly, free speech, Human Rights Civil Liberties, karina garcia, marcel cartier, mass arrest, michael bloomberg, nyc, nypd, occupy wall street, ows, police misconduct, Resistance, unlawful arrest, yari osorio
Image by AP
By Rady Ananda
After the New York Police Dept. arrested over 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge last Saturday, six of those arrested filed a class action lawsuit on Oct. 4, alleging constitutional violations for intentional entrapment and false arrest.
“The NYPD engaged in a premeditated, planned, scripted and calculated effort to sweep the streets of protesters and disrupt a growing protest movement in New York,” plaintiffs charged in the complaint.
“After escorting and leading a group of demonstrators and others well out, the NYPD suddenly and without warning curtailed further forward movement, blocked the ability of persons to leave the Bridge from the rear, and arrested hundreds of protestors in the absence of probable cause.”
This contradicts police statements to the media: “They were warned not to walk on the roadway — the people that walked on the pedestrian walkway, there was no issue — the ones on vehicular roadway, they chose to anyway, and they were arrested.”
However, in this video, police can be seen leading protesters onto the Brooklyn Bridge roadway.
“This was a form of entrapment, both illegal and physical,” plaintiffs asserted.
The suit describes the entire event as a charade by the cops who filmed their use of a bullhorn to warn protesters to leave the bridge. Problem is, the bullhorn was inaudible and the cops had blocked both ends of the protest line.
Plaintiffs cite case law affirming that “the Constitution requires that any ostensible command must be heard by those who are expected to be bound by it.”
Instead, the suit clarifies that “the NYPD engaged in a performance, videotaped it, and sprang their trap. They then set their PR machine into motion, distributing widely edited videos of events to spin a false narrative of events to the public and media.”
Mayor Michael Bloomberg applauded the events, saying, “The police did exactly what they were supposed to do.”
Not only do such illegal arrests chill free speech, but they also invade the privacy of citizens engaged in free speech and assembly. Police collected the names, fingerprints and DNA of lawful protesters for the massive police state database. Each of those arrested can now worry their name will find its way onto the federal Terrorist Watch List, since the government considers lawful protest a form of terrorism.
Representing the entire class of those arrested, plaintiffs claim damages for violations of their 1st and 4th Amendment rights. In addition to seeking an undisclosed amount in compensatory and punitive damages, they also seek to have their arrests declared null and void and all records pertaining to the arrest sealed and expunged. If asked if ever arrested, plaintiffs demand the right to respond in the negative, given the arrest was illegal and unconstitutional.
Of note, a post on the JP Morgan Chase website confirms an unprecedented $4.6 million gift to the New York City Police Foundation, made prior to the mass arrest. The money was donated ostensibly as a “gift … to strengthen security in the Big Apple.”
Tod Fletcher and Fred Burks of PEERS and WantToKnow.info ask, “Now why would this huge bank be donating millions for security in New York City?”
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism also questioned the donation. “While this effort to supplement taxpayer funding has a certain logic, it raises the nasty specter of favoritism, that if private funding were to become a significant part of the Police Department’s total budget, it would understandably give priority to its patrons.”
Represented by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, the suit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and the City of New York was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Case No: 11 CIV 6957 (Garcia, et al. vs. Bloomberg, et al.).
PCJF recently won $8.25 million for a class action settlement in a similar case. During protests in 2000 and 2002, Washington, D.C. police arrested over 1,000 people using the same trap and detain tactic.
The NY Daily News reports that Mayor Bloomberg “has suggested the city is starting to grow weary of the protesters.”
Too bad. We grow weary of Wall Street crimes and our own joblessness, homelessness and exploitation-level wages for those who do have jobs.
Hail! Hail! Karina Garcia, Marcel Cartier, Yari Osorio, Benjamin Becker, and Cassandra Regan for fighting for our inalienable right to assemble and protest.
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Practical Populism 
One of the most glaring problems with the supporters of Occupy Wall Street and its copycat successors is that they suffer from a woefully inadequate understanding of the capitalist social formation — its dynamics, its (spatial) globality, its (temporal) modernity. They equate anti-capitalism with simple anti-Americanism, and ignore the international basis of the capitalist world economy. To some extent, they have even reified its spatial metonym in the NYSE on Wall Street. Capitalism is an inherently global phenomenon; it does not admit of localization to any single nation, city, or financial district.
Moreover, many of the more moderate protestors hold on to the erroneous belief that capitalism can be “controlled” or “corrected” through Keynesian-administrative measures: steeper taxes on the rich, more bureaucratic regulation and oversight of business practices, broader government social programs (welfare, Social Security), and projects of rebuilding infrastructure to create jobs. Moderate “progressives” dream of a return to the Clinton boom years, or better yet, a Rooseveltian new “New Deal.” All this amounts to petty reformism, which only serves to perpetuate the global capitalist order rather than to overcome it. They fail to see the same thing that the libertarians in the Tea Party are blind to: laissez-faire economics is not essential to capitalism. State-interventionist capitalism is just as capitalist as free-market capitalism.
Another symptomatic problem of the Occupy […] phenomenon is its own self-conception as an expression of “resistance.” Ever since the close of the Second World War, the concept of “resistance” has risen to prominence within the discourse of the Left, ennobled by the French experience of La Résistance during the Vichy regime. Unfortunately, the teleological valorization of resistance as a sort of virtue unto itself has had a rather perverse effect on protest culture over the last several decades. Instead of calling for a broader project of social revolution, activists have substituted the notion of simply “resisting” the forces of structural domination that surrounds us. Somehow — though the precise way that this operates is never made clear — this is supposed to “subvert” or “disrupt” the powers that be. “Resistance” thus becomes fetishized as a supposedly heroic act of defiance, no matter how effective or ineffective it might ultimately be.
Nevertheless, though Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy [insert location here] in general still contains many problematic aspects, it nevertheless presents an opportunity for the Left to engage with some of the nascent anti-capitalist sentiment taking shape there. So far it has been successful in enlisting the support of a number of leftish celebrities, prominent unions, and young activists, and has received a lot of media coverage. Hopefully, the demonstrations will lead to a general radicalization of the participants’ politics, and a commitment to the longer-term project of social emancipation.
To this end, I have written up a rather pointed Marxist analysis of the OWS movement so far that you might find interesting:
“Reflections on Occupy Wall Street: What It Represents, Its Prospects, and Its Deficiencies”
THE LEFT IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE LEFT!
thanks for this, Ross.
Methinks that OWS will have to ally with the Tea Party if We the People are ever going to reign in predatory capitalism
Also see Harvard Law Prof to Occupy DC: Work with Tea Party