Occupy Wall Street Has Regrouped And Is Forming New Plans Here

by Linette Lopez and Robert Johnson| Nov. 15, 2011, 11:04 AM

After getting kicked out of Zuccotti Park this morning, Occupy Wall Street has gone vagabond.
Or, as one of their spokespeople told us, it is now a "mobile occupation."

The protesters are now holed up in Foley Square (near City Hall and the Courthouses) and Juan Pablo Duarte Square (near Canal Street). The actual planning for today's activities is being done at Juan Pablo Duarte. They'll be thinking more long term at their General Assembly at 7:00 PM tonight in Zuccotti Park.

If the Mayor opens it, we suppose.

In the meantime, protesters are waiting to hear what the Court has to say about the decision a Judge made this morning that said protesters should be allowed to bring their gear back to camp. That will be handed down at 11:30 AM, so the protesters will be outside demonstrating.

And we'll let you know what happens there as soon as we find out.

Click here to see what a "mobile occupation: http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-wall-street-is-regrouping-and-here-are-their-plans-2011-11/zuccotti-park-is-clean-but-because-of-the-judges-order-the-mayor-decided-no-one-is-allowed-inside-1

Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-wall-street-is-regrouping-and-here-are-their-plans-2011-11

Juan Pablo Duarte Square Park

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/33983738

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Volume 17 • Issue 33 • Jan. 7 - 13, 2005



Downtown Express photo by Albert Amateau


Many Community Board 2 members like the new plan to expand and redesign Duarte Square on Canal St. The statue of Juan Pablo Duarte, a founder of the Dominican Republic, will remain in the center of the square and trees will be added. Trinity Real Estate, which is paying for the renovation, will demolish the building in the background and build a 22-story office building.

Duarte statue to remain center of his namesake square

By Albert Amateau


The new design for Duarte Sq., the brick triangle on the north side Canal St. at Sixth Ave., which calls for keeping the statue of Juan Pablo Duarte in the middle of the triangle near its present position, won a vote of approval this week from the Community Board 2 parks committee.


The new design, by Stephen Whitehouse of Saratoga Associates, was seen as a welcome change from the plan submitted more than two years ago as part of a complex land-swap between Trinity Real Estate, which owns the property on the west side of the square, and the Department of Parks and Recreation.


The old design called for moving the statue of Duarte, a founder of the Dominican Republic, to the southern apex of the triangle at Canal St. and away from a central open area where Dominican-Americans hold an annual commemoration. The previous design had angled paths with plantings between them.


The new design would add some green to what is now a barren brick triangle, provide an open paved area around the statue, and a fountain with jets at-grade “so that when they’re turned off you can’t see them,” Whitehouse said. More trees are planned for the north end of the triangle at Grand St. and on the south to soften Canal St. traffic’s impact on the park.


“You’ve addressed all the concerns we had and I congratulate you,” Tobi Bergman, a parks committee member, told Whitehouse and Robert Redmond, who will oversee the project for the Parks Department. Nevertheless, committee members at the Jan. 6 meeting hedged their approval by calling for more seating to be included in the new plan and for an adequate irrigation system to make sure the trees survive.


The Empire State Building is within the view corridor from Duarte Sq. to the north and the new Freedom Tower planned for the World Trade Center site will be within the view corridor to the south, Whitehouse noted.


As part of the land-use changes two years ago, a service road on the west side of the square, formerly the southern end of Sullivan St., was de-mapped and added to the Trinity Real Estate property across the street. It allows Trinity to replace its current three-to-eight-story buildings on the block with a 22-story building.


Trinity owns the de-mapped street but gives the Parks Department an easement and jurisdiction over the expanded area up to Trinity’s property line. The change, which went into effect at the end of 2002, expands the park area by 40 percent and adds 38 percent to Trinity’s zoning lot.


In return, Trinity will pay for the park project and also for the park maintenance. Redmond said the maintenance would be more than $30,000 a year.


Committee members were anxious about Trinity’s commitment to fund the maintenance. Adrienne Bernard, a lawyer for Trinity who attended the meeting, said the arrangement with the Parks Department would probably involve putting money in a trust controlled by Parks. “It would be for the life of the building, 80, 90, 100 years,” she estimated. We’ll do it anyway that Parks wants,” she said.


Richard Barrett, a member of the Canal West Coalition, noted that the plan had no trees in the area where the remnant of Sullivan St. used to be. “You can still see the ghost of the street,” he said.


The former street, however, has a sewer line beneath the surface and trees cannot be planted over it, Redmond said. It was designed to look like a park path, a broad park path,” added Whitehouse.


Other committee members suggested that the design should have considered Duarte’s relationship with the proposed Laight St. Park, a triangle on the other side of Canal St. Sidewalks around the Laight St. triangle, formerly used as a parking lot by police and Port Authority employees, have been built but the park has not yet been designed, Redmond said.


Bergman also regretted that an extremely tall light pole — about as tall as the eight-story Trinity building on the west side of the square, could not remain in the new Duarte Sq.


Committee members said they were pleased that the design did not make it look like the park was a part of the Trinity property. Trinity agreed two years ago that tenants on the ground floor of its future building fronting the park would not be permitted to put a sidewalk café on the park.


Albert@DowntownExpress.com


http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_87/duartestatue.html

Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street Has Already Set Up (Temporary?) Camp on Sixth Avenue and Canal

By Steven Thrasher Tue., Nov. 15 2011 at 9:58 AM

Steven Thrasher


Steven Thrasher

?Well, that was quick. When we started covering the Occupy Wall Street march at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge this morning, about 150 marchers were cruising by City Hall, around the same time Mayor Bloomberg was giving his press conference to rationalize the clearing of Zuccotti. Within an hour, the group had about doubled in size and relocated to the open plaza at Sixth Avenue and Canal Street. (We're not even sure what this space is called, although there's a large statue of Juan Pablo Duarte, the founder of the Dominican Republic.)

Within minutes of arrival, two structures were up, a construction wall was covered with signs, and a dozen people had climbed up on it.

Is this the begging of Occupy Wall Street 2.0? Or just a temporary base, like Hoth was for the Rebel Alliance?

This square seems to be a natural place for the Occupy Wall Street folks to regroup: it's large, it's open, and they've already found a dramatic way to decorate the space in a way that's impossible to ignore. Also, while this patch of Manhattan has a lot less foot traffic than Zuccotti Park, it has a huge amount of car traffic passing by, as it is located by the mouth of the Holland Tunnel.

On the march over, the protestors got a fair amount of support in terms of honking by drivers of the industrial vehicles that were passing by. An interesting moment occurred when a sanitation worker on a private sanitation vehicle was yelling his support. After getting some heckling, he had to say, "It wasn't me!" who had cleaned the park. (Protestors have to go to the Department of Sanitation to reclaim their belongings.)

It's fascinating how quickly the scene here is resembling Zuccotti. The medics were walking around with their kits the whole time, while others handed out food and water to their fellow protestors. When the marchers arrived, there was a yellow and black tent with the words "Occupy" and "Liberate" on it, which resembled some kind of mash-up of a Jewish chuppa as designed by a road safety specialist. A second one appeared within seconds. Drummers, a point of celebration and contention within this community over the past sixty days, occupied one of the tents. One of the drummers, though, defied the stereotype of a gentle hippie, screaming in an enraged tone at someone (who we presume had been at Zuccotti) "We're only here, because you don't know how to fxxxxxxg defend yourself!"

As of now, we can only see two helicopters overhead; there were five at one point during the march. The police seem to be hanging out at the perimeter of the gathering. A General Assembly seems to be starting, and they are discussing returning to Zuccotti Park at 11:30. Another flank is planning to head back there presently, in the kind of typical march pattern Rosie Gray identified some time ago.

There's the familiar scent of a certain weed in the air, too.

Here are some pictures of the march over and the beginning of this space's occupation.




Steven Thrasher
City Hall being guarded by NYPD in riot gear.




Steven Thrasher
Protestors crossing Canal Street.



Steven Thrasher
Protestors setting up at Sixth and Canal.



Steven Thrasher
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sthrasher@villagevoice.com | @steven_thrasher

Go to Runnin' Scared for more Occupy Wall Street and New York news coverage.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/11/occupy_canal_street.php

“Occupy Wall Street” Passes Near Scientific American‘s Office in New York City
By Robin Lloyd | November 15, 2011

I heard on the news this morning that the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan was broken up by police overnight and that protesters were set to march north today to the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Canal Street–one block from Scientific American‘s office in New York.

Indeed, when various SA employees and I independently surfaced from our subway commutes between 8 and 10 am, several hundred protesters and accompanying media, police and lookers-on were assembled off the intersection at Duarte Square (marked by a statue of Juan Pablo Duarte, a leader who helped establish the Dominican Republican’s independence in the 19th century).

Public health was one of the grounds for the protesters’ dismissal (they might return to their original site later today). Zuccotti Park was power-washed this morning and no doubt cleared of the debris that modern humans inevitably leave behind and the vermin that even Manhattan’s finest restaurants struggle to purge. “Zuccotti lung,” possibly a respiratory infection, has afflicted some of the demonstrators. Also, some reportedly use drugs. Most don’t. Some have fairly obvious mental illnesses. Most don’t. Some wear clothes of the sixties. Most don’t. Some were napping on bed rolls or slouched against a nearby fence, which seems reasonable if one has been roused by police in the middle of the night. Some were chanting something about the UN General Assembly. Overall, it looked and sounded like a gathering of highly socialized humans.

That’s not how insiders or outsiders tend to see it.

“You’re looking at the height of disorder,” a healthy-looking young man wearing a patch with a red cross on it told me through a couple light coughs as I asked him if there was a leader or spokesman to ask about the group’s latest plans. I offered him a cough drop. “No, thanks. We have ‘em.”

Later in the morning, the protesters marched some more and reassembled at Duarte Square, a co-worker told me.

Living outdoors and self-assembling into organized groups and communities is what humans have done quite successfully overall for most of our history. It’s not always pretty, but I’ve always been fascinated by how we make social order and civilization, on scales large and small, despite various adversities–bad weather, bad leaders, bad moods and ill health. Here’s how that looked this morning at Duarte Square.








About the Author: Robin Lloyd is responsible for editing and assigning stories for ScientificAmerican.com. She also manages Scientific American's Twitter feed, @sciam. Follow on Twitter @robinlloyd99.

Source: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/11/15/occupy-wall-street-passes-near-scientific-americans-office-in-new-york/

Occupy Wall Street protesters regroup in Duarte Park Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011 in New York after they were forced to leave and their encampment was taken down in Zucotti Park after nearly two months of occupation. The National Lawyers Guild obtained a court order allowing the protesters to return with their tents to the park, where they have camped for two months. The guild said the injunction prevents the city from enforcing park rules on the protesters. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)/ERIE TIMES-NEWS

Read more: http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111115/APF/1111151216

This is a very interesting event where people are protesting in a New York City park where a statue of Juan Pablo Duarte stands.
NYC, la otra Capital.
Juan Pablo Duarte organized Quisqueya's revolution against Haitian occupation; And here in New York City, roughly 170 years afterwards, a bunch of relatively free individuals occupy this park in a country that is neither under siege by foreign armed forces, oppressed, or under martial law. WHAT A DICHOTOMY?

But, the brightest side of this situation is our mentor Juan Pablo Duarte will be mentioned, and his statue seen tonight around the world; To me his presence is still relevant, and many will see this on their Nightly News reports.

Viva Duarte, Sanchez y Mella. Viva Quisqueya! Como se puede olvidar de ella?

There's not a shade of similarity; This is the contrast I saw in this event.

Duarte stood for freedom from occupation.
This mob wants to occupy to get stuff for free: Mobocracy.

Still, Duarte was all over the airwaves today, and I am happy that he was remembered.

Agreed