When I woke up this morning, I was rattled by the email that Zuccotti had been cleared. I had been saying to people that the infrastructure of the place had been built up to the point that it couldn't be easily uprooted. But I guess I was wrong. There is some good helicopter footage at NYTimes of everything being piled up like trash at 2am or so. Unfortunately I ran out of free digital coverage from the Times because I was going through backlogs of David Brooks' articles yesterday.
What were the sections of the park that were torn up?
Library. My pictures of the OWS library have been viewed way more than usual today. People care about libraries and books. Reports of burned books and books thrown in trash appear to be untrue, maybe.
Medic Station. Jesse Jackson had stood in front of a previous attempt to take down the medic tent. Not so much luck this time. They had been giving out free flu shots in recent days.
Kitchen. There was a sign yesterday that said "stealing from People's Kitchen = stealing from the people." This sign has new meaning today.
Community Altar. There was a marriage there last Sunday. I hate to think of a sacred space being torn up like that.
The Liberty Tree was kind of like a totem pole but made out of hardhats from union guys and gals.
These won't be things that will be easy to reconstruct but I am sure that they will be rebuilt. Part of the larger effort to "rebuild lower Manhattan."
As I was writing this, I came to find that Judge Michael Stallman rejected OWS attempt to reclaim the park, even though Brookfield published/invented the park rules after the occupation. Minor setback I think.
