We got word just after 1 a.m. Tuesday [15 Nov 2011] that New York City police were raiding the Occupy Wall Street encampment. I raced down with the \u201cDemocracy Now!\u201d news team to Zuccotti Park, renamed Liberty Square. Hundreds of riot police had already surrounded the area. As they ripped down the tents, city sanitation workers were throwing the protesters\u2019 belongings into dump trucks. Beyond the barricades, back in the heart of the park, 200 to 300 people locked arms, refusing to cede the space they had occupied for almost two months. They were being handcuffed and arrested, one by one.<\/p>\n
The few of us members of the press who managed to get through all the police lines were sent to a designated area across the street from Zuccotti Park. As our cameras started rolling, they placed two police buses in front of us, blocking our view. My colleagues and I managed to slip between them and into the park, climbing over the trashed mounds of tents, tarps and sleeping bags. The police had almost succeeded in enforcing a complete media blackout of the destruction.<\/p>\n
We saw a broken bookcase in one pile. Deeper in the park, I spotted a single book on the ground. It was marked \u201cOWSL,\u201d for Occupy Wall Street Library, also known as the People\u2019s Library, one of the key institutions that had sprung up in the organic democracy of the movement. By the latest count, it had accumulated 5,000 donated books. The one I found, amidst the debris of democracy that was being hauled off to the dump, was \u201cBrave New World Revisited,\u201d by Aldous Huxley.<\/p>\n
As the night progressed, the irony of finding Huxley\u2019s book grew. He wrote it in 1958, almost 30 years after his famous dystopian novel, \u201cBrave New World.\u201d The original work described society in the future where people had been stratified into haves and have-nots. The \u201cBrave New World\u201d denizens were plied with pleasure, distraction, advertisement and intoxicating drugs to lull them into complacency, a world of perfect consumerism, with lower classes doing all the work for an elite.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrave New World Revisited\u201d was Huxley\u2019s nonfiction response to the speed with which he saw modern society careening to that bleak future. It seemed relevant, as the encampment, motivated in large part by the opposition to the supremacy of commerce and globalization, was being destroyed.<\/p>\n
Huxley wrote in the book: \u201cBig Business, made possible by advancing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State\u2014that is to say, by a small group of party leaders and the soldiers, policemen and civil servants who carry out their orders. In a capitalist democracy, such as the United States, it is controlled by what Professor C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite.\u201d Huxley goes on to write, \u201cThis Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country\u2019s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the People\u2019s Library volunteers, Stephen Boyer, was there as the park was raided. After avoiding arrest and helping others with first aid, he wrote: \u201cEverything we brought to the park is gone. The beautiful library is gone. Our collection of 5,000 books is gone. Our tent that was donated is gone. All the work we\u2019ve put into making it is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg\u2019s office later released a photo of a table with some books stacked on it, claiming the books had been preserved. As the People\u2019s Library tweeted: \u201cWe\u2019re glad to see some books are OK. Now, where are the rest of the books and our shelter and our boxes?\u201d The shelter, by the way, was donated to the library by National Book Award winner Patti Smith, the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll legend.<\/p>\n
Many other Occupy protest sites have been raided recently. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan admitted to the BBC that she had been on a conference call with 18 cities, discussing the situation. Another report noted that the FBI and Homeland Security have been advising the cities.<\/p>\n
A New York state judge ruled late Tuesday that the eviction will stand, and that protesters cannot return to Zuccotti Park with sleeping bags or tents. After the ruling, a constitutional attorney sent me a text message: \u201cJust remember: the movement is in the streets. Courts are always last resorts.\u201d Or, as Patti Smith famously sings, \u201cPeople Have the Power.\u201d<\/p>\n
_____________________<\/p>\n
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.<\/em><\/p>\n Amy Goodman is the host of \u201cDemocracy Now!,\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of \u201cBreaking the Sound Barrier,\u201d recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n