Eviction
For many in Zuccotti Park, it began around 12:45 a.m., when all was calm and still. The moon peaked through light cloud cover and the air was cool enough to make the tents that had come to pack the park over the course of the occupation’s second month useful, if not necessary. It began with the shuffling of boots outside, possibly with the sight of swarms of police in riot gear getting into their pre-planned strategic positions before flipping on lights that lit up the sky to midday. For some heavier sleepers of the encampment, it began when those lights turned on, when the recorded loudspeakers began blaring, and when the officers began rousing everyone with warnings to immediately vacate the premises.
For those not asleep in Zuccotti, the text came at 12:59 a.m., interrupting conversations, pausing books and streaming video, and provoking naked and pajama-draped arms to reach up from beds and couches toward the screens of phones glowing in the dark early morning:
“OccupyNYC: URGENT: Hundreds of police mobilizing around Zuccotti. Eviction in progress!”
From all across the city they descended—one by one, two by two, group by group, coalescing into hundreds. Many walked, some over the bridge from Brooklyn. Others arrived by bike; still others exited subway trains and hastily paid cabs. Those gathering at Broadway to the north of Zuccotti, within an hour of the initial call, found scores of police and barricades at Cortlandt Street—close enough to see the massive red Joie de Vivre sculpture in the park’s southeast corner, but too far to witness what was happening to those who remained inside.
A group of bike activists had received a call slightly earlier, around midnight, just as their meeting was winding to a close. “There is a huge buildup of police in East River Park,” the caller declared, and a small group rode down. Worries about a raid had come and gone for weeks—they knew what such a build up meant. Riding downtown, past Maiden Lane, it seemed like hundreds of police were assembled. By the time the bicyclists got to Liberty Square, a little past midnight, there was no place to park. Some attempted to lock their bikes on Broadway, but a policeman said, “I wouldn’t park it here. If you can’t figure it out, use your eyes.” Looking up, one of the activists saw a policeman in riot gear with a baton in her hand. This was it—the eviction. They watched as police surrounded the park and turned on the flood lamps.
“Please get out of the park,” police shouted through megaphones while passing out leaflets explaining the park was to be cleared. “Whose park? Our Park!” some responded. Others started gathering their possessions. One videographer stood filming in the middle of Cedar Street, facing the park. “For your safety, we’re asking you to move,” police in riot gear demanded. The videographer replied, “I don’t see why I have to move. I am not scared. I am not blocking anything. I know my rights.” The citizen journalist, Barbara Ross, continued filming for another two hours, looking on as police pepper sprayed resisters, trashed books from the library, destroyed the park’s sacred space, which had represented several religions and spiritual beliefs, and completely demolished the two-month encampment. Two female police officers eventually forced her behind barricades on Trinity Place, where she was unable to see much of anything inside the square.
Police barricades surrounded the park, and by 1 a.m. no one was allowed past them. A wall of cops surrounded those in the park and started pushing a group to Liberty and Broadway, a block away and out of eyesight from everything. The New York Times and some other media were inside; they’d gotten there before the raid. All other regular press passes were denied by officers at the barricades, who said only NYPD credential press passes were acceptable to witness the park’s destruction. Six journalists were arrested; others were simply barred from entering or observing the scene. An older man wearing the bright green “Legal Observer” hat of the National Lawyer’s Guild claimed the city’s raid had violated not only the First Amendment right to assemble, but also the right to observe, as the barricades were strategically placed to force almost all watchful eyes to a blind periphery.
Some cyclists, hoping to save the bike-powered generators installed by the Sustainability Committee in the weeks before the raid, pressed the police line only to be pushed back—one was arrested. As the crowd grew, and as vans marked “Sanitation” made their way past, the police used pepper spray and, subsequently, phalanx of helmeted, baton-wielding officers, shouting in unison, “Move! Move! Move!” to literally push those gathered north above Fulton Street, where new barricades were established. Chants of, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and, “This! Is! A peaceful protest!” rang out, but the crowd was largely mired in confusion, speculation, and confrontation with the advancing police. One man, talking excitedly to all those in earshot, said: “I think this could shut down the city. It’s already shutting down Broadway. There are like 500 people in the streets right now!”
“When are you guys going to protect the people?” one man asked an officer. “Just doing their jobs ruining democracy,” a photographer commented as police pushed those gathered another block from the park. “Mic check! MIC CHECK! Something horrible is happening here! SOMETHING HORRIBLE IS HAPPENING HERE!” another shouted, using the voices of the crowd to amplify him. “The most upsetting thing was watching the tents get taken away,” a woman mused as she left the park, sleeping bag in hand. Many reported having been disoriented by the NYPD’s use of loud sound devices.
“Whose streets? Our streets!” some screamed. “We are the 99 percent!” another group shouted, all blocking any traffic down Broadway. The police spent the rest of the night pushing people further away, telling everyone they could not even occupy the sidewalks. Several police were asked about what was happening inside the barricades; one responded, “They’re clearing out Zuccotti Park…‘cause they’ve been there for two months.” Another officer responded that it was, “just time to go,” provoking one vocal activist to shout loudly, “Just following orders?” The officer replied, “Yep.” “Just like the Nazis did?” the activist responded. “Yep,” the officer replied, matter-of-factly.
After a few hundred had gathered, a young male voice rang out: “Mic check! MIC CHECK! Mic check! MIC CHECK! We are going to! WE ARE GOING TO! Rally! RALLY! At City Hall! AT CITY HALL! Backup plan! BACKUP PLAN! Foley Square! FOLEY SQUARE! We need to get together! WE NEED TO GET TOGETHER! So we can march in force! SO WE CAN MARCH IN FORCE! Thank you! THANK YOU!” Somewhere in the crowd a woman shouted, “Let’s go!” and the mass formed itself into a march, walking up Broadway to the chant of, “All day! All week! Occupy Wall Street!” then, “We! Are! The 99 percent!” before settling on the call-and-response: “Whose streets!? Our streets!”
The chants of those who heeded the call to defend Liberty Square soon echoed off the walls of City Hall, competing with screaming sirens and the sounds of churning helicopter blades to create a soft cacophonous soundtrack to the makeshift march. From Broadway the marchers turned right on Chambers Street and proceeded up Lafayette toward Foley Square—the site of the massive Community and Labor Rally that had bolstered the movement a little more than one month prior. In hot pursuit was the NYPD, that dispatched more than a dozen vans, lights flashing, filled with officers. The police caravan halted along Chambers Street as the protestors turned onto Lafayette, and dozens of officers wielding nightsticks rushed into Foley right behind them. The vans quickly followed and soon the marchers found themselves in the center of Foley Square, debating their next moves as police slowly filled the surrounding streets.
Perched high on the wall of the fountain at the square’s center, one marcher called again for the people’s microphone: “Mic check! MIC CHECK! Okay, if we stay here! IF WE STAY HERE! The police know where we are! THE POLICE KNOW WHERE WE ARE! If we keep moving! IF WE KEEP MOVING! We stay one step ahead! WE STAY ONE STEP AHEAD! I think we should keep moving! I THINK WE SHOULD KEEP MOVING! Unless anyone has their tents with them! UNLESS ANYONE HAS THEIR TENTS WITH THEM!” His call was followed by a brief public service announcement of the phone number for the National Lawyer’s Guild, which several marchers scrawled with pen or sharpie on their forearms, and by a brief debate over whether to stay or to continue marching. In short order, about half the crowd started marching out of the park, west on Worth Street, before turning north on Broadway—sticking to sidewalks at the insistence of the police, who made chase at nearly every turn, making intermittent arrests and splitting the diminished march north into fragments; some wound up near Washington Square, some near Union Square, and others re-converging at Foley.
Meanwhile, down on Broadway at Pine Street, hundreds, including many displaced occupiers, were still gathered. By 3 a.m., blocked by barricades and dozens of helmeted police, many stood in stunned silence as a steady line of dump trucks were filled and driven into the night. Others shouted lamentations as they watched: “My house is in that dump truck!” yelled one man. “They’re stealing our shit!” cried another, while a lone troubadour played a tenor guitar and sang Bob Dylan’s “When The Ship Comes In” over the barricades. Elsewhere, chants of “You’re sexy! You’re cute! Take off that riot suit!” and “Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!” rang out. In conversations muted by the murmur of the crowd and the growl of dump truck engines, journalists conducted interviews with the displaced while occupiers and their supporters began reconciling what had happened and speculating about the future. Many chatted in between texts and phone calls, connecting with friends and loved ones who hadn’t heeded the early morning call or who awaited news of their whereabouts after the eviction, but also with their fellow protestors at Foley Square and scattered throughout the streets of lower Manhattan. Still others mounted and wrote on police vehicles, and some inventive activists used bike gear to flatten their tires.
At around 5 a.m., the bulk of the park’s contents having been removed, the police made their push to re-open Broadway. Three young protestors, dressed in punk attire, stood at the police line making catcalls at a young female officer, short and blond. She gritted her teeth in response, flanked by two male officers who were both a head-length taller than her, and stared the cat callers down in disgust. Just as orders came in to clear the street, a lone protestor connected eyes with the officer, as if to say, “I’m sorry.” As she calmly walked him out of the street, the two chatted—she about her usual beat in upper Manhattan, he about his heeding the eviction call from Brooklyn. Meanwhile, as scores of officers pressed the restless crowd south, a muddled announcement was made that concluded with, “If you don’t leave the street, you will be arrested!” Several protestors responded by loudly humming Star Wars’ “The Imperial March,” a tune which quickly gave way to the chant, “All day! All week! Occupy Wall Street!” The chant started out slowly, almost half-time, but quickened with the pace of the NYPD’s sweep through the street. As the police line surged, pushing everyone out of the street and to the sidewalk outside Trinity Churchyard, several small altercations arose—some protestors pushed police back, only to be rapidly subsumed by a swarm of officers, while others hurled bottles and larger objects from afar. One young man leapt onto a police cruiser and jumped into a crowd of police, who quickly subdued him. Cries of, “Fascists!” “Who are you protecting!?” and “Shame!” rang out, as did appeals for the police to join the protestors—“They’re stealing your pensions too!” some shouted. But within a matter of minutes police had reclaimed Broadway. When the street was cleared and those who defied the police were arrested and gone, some officers turned to the task of changing their deflated tires, which kept the street blocked from morning traffic almost thirty minutes after all protestors had been cleared. As traffic resumed, most of those remaining made their way to Foley Square, where a General Assembly was already busy debating the movement’s next steps.
By 6 a.m. the bike activists had decided to call it quits for the morning and nearly all who originally heeded the call had disbursed. Only a few dozen remained, lingering among the many officers and the streams of press flocking for that perfect, post-raid sound bite. By then the barricades had been reduced, making it possible to see the sanitation and security workers scrubbing every inch of the emptied park. Police stood by, assuring the crowd that they could return within minutes, as soon as the crews were done cleaning. This turned out to be false—no one was allowed to re-enter the park until after 5 p.m. that day—and it was later reported that most involved were not informed at all, many not knowing of the city’s plan as being anything more than “an exercise” until given the orders to head downtown. The protestors who kept vigil as the sun came up faced being corralled even further, to one sectioned-off area of the sidewalk, with a few being arrested for refusing to move from the barricaded eastern sidewalk to the barricades on the west side of Broadway.
City officials were quick with their public relations, calling the eviction necessary for non-specific “health and safety” concerns, and spinning any negative press, such as initial reports of the destruction of over 5,000 People’s Library books, with their silver linings—Mayor Bloomberg quickly tweeted that all of the books were secure and would be available for recovery the following day. The truth, it seems, lies somewhere in between. Early in the morning of the raid, the Library Twitter account transmitted the following message: “The NYPD has destroyed everything at #OccupyWallStreet and put it all in dumpsters, including the #OWS library. Its time to #ShutDownNYC.” Stephen Boyer, who lived in Zuccotti Park for most of the two-month encampment, worked in its library, and helped create an OWS poetry anthology, was there that night, and said he could barely save the massive anthology, which has contributors—from the anonymous to the famous—from around the world, before being shoved from the park and witnessing the treatment of the books dumped into the backs of trucks. “Our library had over nine thousand books, and a little less than five thousand were taken that night,” he said, adding the rest of the books were stored in a nearby space lent to the movement. “I saved the anthology by strapping both [folders] to my back, and read from it during the raid.” When asked about the incident, Bill from the People’s Library was quick to add that the on-site computers, which were also said by the city to be recoverable after the raid, had all been “systematically destroyed.” A week after the eviction, representatives of the People’s Library, alongside the lawyer they retained for a suit against the city, issued a press release stating that only 1,275 books were recovered, with only 839 of these in any sort of readable condition. The city, they said, had trashed or destroyed more than 3,000 of the books seized.
But if the facts of the eviction were slow to come to light, one thing was perfectly clear as the sun rose on that cool November morning. For the first time in nearly two full months, Zuccotti Park was empty, but for a handful of Sanitation workers and armored police. Speaking in a news conference that morning, Mayor Bloomberg chastised the occupiers for having over-stayed their welcome—for failing to exercise “responsibility” along with their rights. “Now they’ll have to occupy the space with the power of their arguments,” he said. As he spoke, preparations were already underway to do just that and more.
For many in Zuccotti Park, it began around 12:45 a.m., when all was calm and still. The moon peaked through light cloud cover and the air was cool enough to make the tents that had come to pack the park over the course of the occupation’s second month useful, if not necessary. It began with the shuffling of boots outside, possibly with the sight of swarms of police in riot gear getting into their pre-planned strategic positions before flipping on lights that lit up the sky to midday. For some heavier sleepers of the encampment, it began when those lights turned on, when the recorded loudspeakers began blaring, and when the officers began rousing everyone with warnings to immediately vacate the premises.
For those not asleep in Zuccotti, the text came at 12:59 a.m., interrupting conversations, pausing books and streaming video, and provoking naked and pajama-draped arms to reach up from beds and couches toward the screens of phones glowing in the dark early morning:
“OccupyNYC: URGENT: Hundreds of police mobilizing around Zuccotti. Eviction in progress!”
From all across the city they descended—one by one, two by two, group by group, coalescing into hundreds. Many walked, some over the bridge from Brooklyn. Others arrived by bike; still others exited subway trains and hastily paid cabs. Those gathering at Broadway to the north of Zuccotti, within an hour of the initial call, found scores of police and barricades at Cortlandt Street—close enough to see the massive red Joie de Vivre sculpture in the park’s southeast corner, but too far to witness what was happening to those who remained inside.
A group of bike activists had received a call slightly earlier, around midnight, just as their meeting was winding to a close. “There is a huge buildup of police in East River Park,” the caller declared, and a small group rode down. Worries about a raid had come and gone for weeks—they knew what such a build up meant. Riding downtown, past Maiden Lane, it seemed like hundreds of police were assembled. By the time the bicyclists got to Liberty Square, a little past midnight, there was no place to park. Some attempted to lock their bikes on Broadway, but a policeman said, “I wouldn’t park it here. If you can’t figure it out, use your eyes.” Looking up, one of the activists saw a policeman in riot gear with a baton in her hand. This was it—the eviction. They watched as police surrounded the park and turned on the flood lamps.
“Please get out of the park,” police shouted through megaphones while passing out leaflets explaining the park was to be cleared. “Whose park? Our Park!” some responded. Others started gathering their possessions. One videographer stood filming in the middle of Cedar Street, facing the park. “For your safety, we’re asking you to move,” police in riot gear demanded. The videographer replied, “I don’t see why I have to move. I am not scared. I am not blocking anything. I know my rights.” The citizen journalist, Barbara Ross, continued filming for another two hours, looking on as police pepper sprayed resisters, trashed books from the library, destroyed the park’s sacred space, which had represented several religions and spiritual beliefs, and completely demolished the two-month encampment. Two female police officers eventually forced her behind barricades on Trinity Place, where she was unable to see much of anything inside the square.
Police barricades surrounded the park, and by 1 a.m. no one was allowed past them. A wall of cops surrounded those in the park and started pushing a group to Liberty and Broadway, a block away and out of eyesight from everything. The New York Times and some other media were inside; they’d gotten there before the raid. All other regular press passes were denied by officers at the barricades, who said only NYPD credential press passes were acceptable to witness the park’s destruction. Six journalists were arrested; others were simply barred from entering or observing the scene. An older man wearing the bright green “Legal Observer” hat of the National Lawyer’s Guild claimed the city’s raid had violated not only the First Amendment right to assemble, but also the right to observe, as the barricades were strategically placed to force almost all watchful eyes to a blind periphery.
Some cyclists, hoping to save the bike-powered generators installed by the Sustainability Committee in the weeks before the raid, pressed the police line only to be pushed back—one was arrested. As the crowd grew, and as vans marked “Sanitation” made their way past, the police used pepper spray and, subsequently, phalanx of helmeted, baton-wielding officers, shouting in unison, “Move! Move! Move!” to literally push those gathered north above Fulton Street, where new barricades were established. Chants of, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and, “This! Is! A peaceful protest!” rang out, but the crowd was largely mired in confusion, speculation, and confrontation with the advancing police. One man, talking excitedly to all those in earshot, said: “I think this could shut down the city. It’s already shutting down Broadway. There are like 500 people in the streets right now!”
“When are you guys going to protect the people?” one man asked an officer. “Just doing their jobs ruining democracy,” a photographer commented as police pushed those gathered another block from the park. “Mic check! MIC CHECK! Something horrible is happening here! SOMETHING HORRIBLE IS HAPPENING HERE!” another shouted, using the voices of the crowd to amplify him. “The most upsetting thing was watching the tents get taken away,” a woman mused as she left the park, sleeping bag in hand. Many reported having been disoriented by the NYPD’s use of loud sound devices.
“Whose streets? Our streets!” some screamed. “We are the 99 percent!” another group shouted, all blocking any traffic down Broadway. The police spent the rest of the night pushing people further away, telling everyone they could not even occupy the sidewalks. Several police were asked about what was happening inside the barricades; one responded, “They’re clearing out Zuccotti Park…‘cause they’ve been there for two months.” Another officer responded that it was, “just time to go,” provoking one vocal activist to shout loudly, “Just following orders?” The officer replied, “Yep.” “Just like the Nazis did?” the activist responded. “Yep,” the officer replied, matter-of-factly.
After a few hundred had gathered, a young male voice rang out: “Mic check! MIC CHECK! Mic check! MIC CHECK! We are going to! WE ARE GOING TO! Rally! RALLY! At City Hall! AT CITY HALL! Backup plan! BACKUP PLAN! Foley Square! FOLEY SQUARE! We need to get together! WE NEED TO GET TOGETHER! So we can march in force! SO WE CAN MARCH IN FORCE! Thank you! THANK YOU!” Somewhere in the crowd a woman shouted, “Let’s go!” and the mass formed itself into a march, walking up Broadway to the chant of, “All day! All week! Occupy Wall Street!” then, “We! Are! The 99 percent!” before settling on the call-and-response: “Whose streets!? Our streets!”
The chants of those who heeded the call to defend Liberty Square soon echoed off the walls of City Hall, competing with screaming sirens and the sounds of churning helicopter blades to create a soft cacophonous soundtrack to the makeshift march. From Broadway the marchers turned right on Chambers Street and proceeded up Lafayette toward Foley Square—the site of the massive Community and Labor Rally that had bolstered the movement a little more than one month prior. In hot pursuit was the NYPD, that dispatched more than a dozen vans, lights flashing, filled with officers. The police caravan halted along Chambers Street as the protestors turned onto Lafayette, and dozens of officers wielding nightsticks rushed into Foley right behind them. The vans quickly followed and soon the marchers found themselves in the center of Foley Square, debating their next moves as police slowly filled the surrounding streets.
Perched high on the wall of the fountain at the square’s center, one marcher called again for the people’s microphone: “Mic check! MIC CHECK! Okay, if we stay here! IF WE STAY HERE! The police know where we are! THE POLICE KNOW WHERE WE ARE! If we keep moving! IF WE KEEP MOVING! We stay one step ahead! WE STAY ONE STEP AHEAD! I think we should keep moving! I THINK WE SHOULD KEEP MOVING! Unless anyone has their tents with them! UNLESS ANYONE HAS THEIR TENTS WITH THEM!” His call was followed by a brief public service announcement of the phone number for the National Lawyer’s Guild, which several marchers scrawled with pen or sharpie on their forearms, and by a brief debate over whether to stay or to continue marching. In short order, about half the crowd started marching out of the park, west on Worth Street, before turning north on Broadway—sticking to sidewalks at the insistence of the police, who made chase at nearly every turn, making intermittent arrests and splitting the diminished march north into fragments; some wound up near Washington Square, some near Union Square, and others re-converging at Foley.
Meanwhile, down on Broadway at Pine Street, hundreds, including many displaced occupiers, were still gathered. By 3 a.m., blocked by barricades and dozens of helmeted police, many stood in stunned silence as a steady line of dump trucks were filled and driven into the night. Others shouted lamentations as they watched: “My house is in that dump truck!” yelled one man. “They’re stealing our shit!” cried another, while a lone troubadour played a tenor guitar and sang Bob Dylan’s “When The Ship Comes In” over the barricades. Elsewhere, chants of “You’re sexy! You’re cute! Take off that riot suit!” and “Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!” rang out. In conversations muted by the murmur of the crowd and the growl of dump truck engines, journalists conducted interviews with the displaced while occupiers and their supporters began reconciling what had happened and speculating about the future. Many chatted in between texts and phone calls, connecting with friends and loved ones who hadn’t heeded the early morning call or who awaited news of their whereabouts after the eviction, but also with their fellow protestors at Foley Square and scattered throughout the streets of lower Manhattan. Still others mounted and wrote on police vehicles, and some inventive activists used bike gear to flatten their tires.
At around 5 a.m., the bulk of the park’s contents having been removed, the police made their push to re-open Broadway. Three young protestors, dressed in punk attire, stood at the police line making catcalls at a young female officer, short and blond. She gritted her teeth in response, flanked by two male officers who were both a head-length taller than her, and stared the cat callers down in disgust. Just as orders came in to clear the street, a lone protestor connected eyes with the officer, as if to say, “I’m sorry.” As she calmly walked him out of the street, the two chatted—she about her usual beat in upper Manhattan, he about his heeding the eviction call from Brooklyn. Meanwhile, as scores of officers pressed the restless crowd south, a muddled announcement was made that concluded with, “If you don’t leave the street, you will be arrested!” Several protestors responded by loudly humming Star Wars’ “The Imperial March,” a tune which quickly gave way to the chant, “All day! All week! Occupy Wall Street!” The chant started out slowly, almost half-time, but quickened with the pace of the NYPD’s sweep through the street. As the police line surged, pushing everyone out of the street and to the sidewalk outside Trinity Churchyard, several small altercations arose—some protestors pushed police back, only to be rapidly subsumed by a swarm of officers, while others hurled bottles and larger objects from afar. One young man leapt onto a police cruiser and jumped into a crowd of police, who quickly subdued him. Cries of, “Fascists!” “Who are you protecting!?” and “Shame!” rang out, as did appeals for the police to join the protestors—“They’re stealing your pensions too!” some shouted. But within a matter of minutes police had reclaimed Broadway. When the street was cleared and those who defied the police were arrested and gone, some officers turned to the task of changing their deflated tires, which kept the street blocked from morning traffic almost thirty minutes after all protestors had been cleared. As traffic resumed, most of those remaining made their way to Foley Square, where a General Assembly was already busy debating the movement’s next steps.
By 6 a.m. the bike activists had decided to call it quits for the morning and nearly all who originally heeded the call had disbursed. Only a few dozen remained, lingering among the many officers and the streams of press flocking for that perfect, post-raid sound bite. By then the barricades had been reduced, making it possible to see the sanitation and security workers scrubbing every inch of the emptied park. Police stood by, assuring the crowd that they could return within minutes, as soon as the crews were done cleaning. This turned out to be false—no one was allowed to re-enter the park until after 5 p.m. that day—and it was later reported that most involved were not informed at all, many not knowing of the city’s plan as being anything more than “an exercise” until given the orders to head downtown. The protestors who kept vigil as the sun came up faced being corralled even further, to one sectioned-off area of the sidewalk, with a few being arrested for refusing to move from the barricaded eastern sidewalk to the barricades on the west side of Broadway.
City officials were quick with their public relations, calling the eviction necessary for non-specific “health and safety” concerns, and spinning any negative press, such as initial reports of the destruction of over 5,000 People’s Library books, with their silver linings—Mayor Bloomberg quickly tweeted that all of the books were secure and would be available for recovery the following day. The truth, it seems, lies somewhere in between. Early in the morning of the raid, the Library Twitter account transmitted the following message: “The NYPD has destroyed everything at #OccupyWallStreet and put it all in dumpsters, including the #OWS library. Its time to #ShutDownNYC.” Stephen Boyer, who lived in Zuccotti Park for most of the two-month encampment, worked in its library, and helped create an OWS poetry anthology, was there that night, and said he could barely save the massive anthology, which has contributors—from the anonymous to the famous—from around the world, before being shoved from the park and witnessing the treatment of the books dumped into the backs of trucks. “Our library had over nine thousand books, and a little less than five thousand were taken that night,” he said, adding the rest of the books were stored in a nearby space lent to the movement. “I saved the anthology by strapping both [folders] to my back, and read from it during the raid.” When asked about the incident, Bill from the People’s Library was quick to add that the on-site computers, which were also said by the city to be recoverable after the raid, had all been “systematically destroyed.” A week after the eviction, representatives of the People’s Library, alongside the lawyer they retained for a suit against the city, issued a press release stating that only 1,275 books were recovered, with only 839 of these in any sort of readable condition. The city, they said, had trashed or destroyed more than 3,000 of the books seized.
But if the facts of the eviction were slow to come to light, one thing was perfectly clear as the sun rose on that cool November morning. For the first time in nearly two full months, Zuccotti Park was empty, but for a handful of Sanitation workers and armored police. Speaking in a news conference that morning, Mayor Bloomberg chastised the occupiers for having over-stayed their welcome—for failing to exercise “responsibility” along with their rights. “Now they’ll have to occupy the space with the power of their arguments,” he said. As he spoke, preparations were already underway to do just that and more.