Ben Koatz, 17, Describes Arrest and Detainment Following Saturday's Occupy Wall Street Protest

[kpete]

'The Cops Started Agreeing With Us'
"I kept asking what I did wrong, saying I'm just a kid, I'm a minor, I want to go home
and do my homework." – Ben Koatz, high school student from Queens
arrested in Manhattan on Saturday
http://www.michaelmoore.com/

Occupy Wall Street
Ben Koatz, 17, Describes Arrest and Detainment Following Saturday's Occupy Wall Street Protest


Runnin' Scared: Can you tell me what happened to you on Saturday?

​Ben Koatz is a senior at Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan. He's 17, from Queens, and writes for the school newspaper. He's also among the 80-90 people arrested during Occupy Wall Street's march on Union Square this past Saturday. Ben gave us an account of his arrest for disorderly conduct and detainment that day that's the most detailed we've heard so far. He says that he "fell in love with the fact that Occupy Wall Street was a direct democratic process" and started going down to Zuccotti Park every day before the chaos of Saturday with some of his friends from school. (Keep in mind that this is the account of just one protester and doesn't necessarily speak to the experiences of others.)


We started around 12 or 12:30 in Zuccotti Park, which was renamed Liberty Park by the protesters. We started making our way up -- I wasn't paying attention to exactly what streets, but we made a lot of twists and turns based on which streets cops barricaded and where they led us. We made it to a couple blocks below Union Square when the police formed a line and split off the protest into two separate groups. There was one group of a couple hundred people, one of closer to a thousand people . I was part of the bigger group that made it to Union Square. People were joining us all the way up, it was totally peaceful. We were just doing what protesters do in a march. So we made it up to Union Square and made speeches and stuff, and chanted. After a while we decided we all wanted to go home, meaning back to Zuccotti Park. My legs were tired. We started chanting, "Let's go home, let's go home."

The police brought out the orange kettling nets as we turned around. They had used them a couple blocks before but they had basically been measured about it. Now they were using them to cause confusion. Kettling -- basically, it's like we were popcorn kernels, like we were stuck in a bag -- so we started agitating. It's my belief that it's the police really caused much of the chaos that broke out around Union Square.

We didn't know which way to go. Some people were yelling "this way!" and others were yelling "that way!"
................

Then the police started beating protesters. As you saw in the video, they maced those innocent women (ed: It was actually pepper spray). I saw them punch a girl who couldn't have been more than 16 or 17. They were dragging people by their hair.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/09/ben_koatz_17_de.php

[xiamiam]

1. k and r..thanks ..nt

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. Kettling. I get it.