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Within 24 hours of protesters at Zucotti Park in New York being evicted from their Occupy Wall Street encampment, a New York State Supreme Court judge announced that they did not have a right to camp in the park. Justice Michael Stallman ruled that the protesters didn’t show “they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zucotti Park along with their tents, structures, generators and other installations.” By late evening yesterday, thousands of people had “re-occupied” Zucotti Park for a General Assembly meeting, although they weren’t allowed to camp overnight. It is now being reported that before the New York raid, police departments from as many as 40 cities participated in a conference call to discuss with one another how to oust the encampments that have sprouted up all over the country. Many of those arrested yesterday still remain in custody. Occupy Wall Street’s website is reporting that over a 100 people marched to New York’s 1st Precinct headquarters last night to denounce reported instances of women prisoners being harassed. Occupy Wall Street posted a response to the eviction saying, “We will overcome the obstacles placed before us. We will not be deterred. We will persevere. Our message is resonating across America, and our cause is shared by millions around the world. We are the 99%, and we want to live in a world that is for all of us — not just for those who have amassed great wealth and power. You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.”

Among the casualties of the Tuesday morning raid was the encampment’s library and its over 5000 books that Occupiers were able to browse through and check out. Sanitation crews apparently scooped up the books and took them away – it is not yet known what has become of them. Among the books that were saved at the last minute as word of the raid spread, by library volunteer Stephen Boyer, was an “Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology.” Boyer recounted what he did after he grabbed the anthology, saying that he “climbed atop a table in the park and read poems from the anthology. Immediately, the people of Liberty Plaza launched into action, a group of about a hundred protesters took to the kitchen and U-Locked/tied themselves down. After reading the third poem, the cops began to enter the park and I realized that I would most likely lose all of my possessions so I quickly grabbed a bag of my personal stuff, ran into the library and dumped a bunch of boxes of books onto the floor to make the cleaning up more difficult for the cops…”

Every movement has its artistic expressions. As Angela Davis said in the speech we aired yesterday, “art helps us to negotiate our way through dimensions that we cannot yet articulate.” Today, we spend the hour focusing on the art and creativity of decades of progressive movements.

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