"Last night, I watched lower Manhattan turn into a militarized lockdown."
http://www.truth-out.org/last-night-occupy-wall-street/1321366767Matt Renner
11/15/2011
"Last night, I watched lower Manhattan turn into a militarized lockdown. The park known as Liberty Square was apparently cleared by force, though I arrived 20 minutes after the police barricades encircled a two-block radius, kicked out all media and prevented all foot traffic on public sidewalks surrounding the park."
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"The police were prepared for this flood of bodies. Many subway stops were shut down, as was the Brooklyn Bridge. My go bag had been packed for weeks, waiting for just this moment. I laced up my boots, and spent an agonizing 20 minutes on the subway from Brooklyn.
Upon arrival in lower Manhattan, I struggled for about two hours to get to a position where I could see into the park, to no avail. From a block away, I saw massive piles of what used to be supplies dumped into waiting trucks. People's major concerns were two-fold: first, the health and safety of the occupiers locked in the camp; and second, the 5,000 books of the Occupy Wall Street library. What a picture it would be (maybe it exists) of police in riot gear gathering boxes of donated books and loading them into garbage trucks. A perfect metaphor for what appears to be the intention of last night's raid: destroying the body of knowledge that had been collected by a movement just two months old, which was built by collective effort, literally from the ground up."
http://www.truth-out.org/last-night-occupy-wall-street/1321366767http://www.truth-out.org/last-night-occupy-wall-street/1321366767