Occupy Wall Street: Major Museums And Organizations Collect Materials Produced By Occupy Movement [LATEST UPDATES]

By CRISTIAN SALAZAR AND RANDY HERSCHAFT, The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) -- Occupy Wall Street may still be working to shake the notion it represents a passing outburst of rage, but some establishment institutions have already decided the movement's artifacts are worthy of historic preservation.

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More than a half-dozen major museums and organizations from the Smithsonian Institution to the New-York Historical Society have been avidly collecting materials produced by the Occupy movement.

Staffers have been sent to occupied parks to rummage for buttons, signs, posters and documents. Websites and tweets have been archived for digital eternity. And museums have approached individual protesters directly to obtain posters and other ephemera.

The Museum of the City of New York is planning an exhibition on Occupy for next month.

"Occupy is sexy," said Ben Alexander, who is head of special collections and archives at Queens College in New York, which has been collecting Occupy materials. "It sounds hip. A lot of people want to be associated with it."

To keep established institutions from shaping the movement's short history, protesters have formed their own archive group, stashing away hundreds of cardboard signs, posters, fliers, buttons, periodicals, documents and banners in temporary storage while they seek a permanent home for the materials.

"We want to make sure we collect it from our perspective so that it can be represented as best as possible," said Amy Roberts, a library and information studies graduate student at Queens College who helped create the archives working group.

The archives group has been approached by institutions seeking to borrow or acquire Occupy materials. Roberts said they were discussing donating the entire collection to the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University. Tamiment declined to comment.

A handful of protesters began camping out in September in a lower Manhattan plaza called Zuccotti Park, outraged at Wall Street excess and income inequality; they were soon joined by others who set up tents and promised to occupy "all day, all night." Similar camps sprouted in dozens of cities nationwide and around the world. Many were forcibly cleared.

Much of the frenzied collection by institutions began in the early weeks of the protests. In part, they were seeking to collect and preserve as insurance against the possibility history might be lost ? not an unusual stance by archivists.

What appears to be different is the level of interest from mainstream institutions across a wide geographic spectrum and the new digital-only ventures that have sprung up to preserve the movement's online history.

The lavish attention poured on the liberal-leaning movement has not gone unnoticed by conservatives.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, blogged sarcastically under its "Corruption Chronicles" about the choice by the Smithsonian to document Occupy.

"It looks like it's taxpayer-funded hoarding, as opposed to rigorous historical collecting," said Tom Fitton, president of the organization.

The Smithsonian said its American history collection also now includes materials related to the massive tea party rally against health care reform in March 2010 and materials from the American Conservative Union's Washington, D.C., conference in February.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University launched OccupyArchive.org in mid-October on a hunch that it could become historically important. So far, it has about 2,500 items in its online database, including compressed files of entire Occupy websites from around the country and hundreds of images scraped from photo-sharing site Flickr.

"This kind of social movement is probably more interesting to me, to be honest about it. And also so much of it is happening digitally. On webpages. On Twitter," said Sheila Brennan, the associate director of public projects. "I guess I didn't see as much of that with the tea party."

Curators and those in charge of collections at institutions said it was not too soon to think about preserving elements of the Occupy movement.

"We like to collect things as they are happening before the artifacts go away," said Esther Brumberg, senior curator of collections for the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan.

Brumberg said the museum had approached "Occupy Judaism" co-organizer Daniel Sieradski about a poster he had done for a Yom Kippur prayer service for protesters at Zuccotti Park that drew hundreds of people. The poster shows the silhouetted fiddler image from the Jewish musical "Fiddler on the Roof" astride the Wall Street bull.

Sieradski said it made sense that his poster should end up in the museum's permanent collection.

"What I think is great is that they are actually looking to build their collection around contemporary American Jewish history and maybe broaden what their offerings are to the public so that they can tell a more complete story," he said.

While there are no immediate plans to use the poster in an exhibition, Brumberg called it "just one of a number of instances of Jewish activism" that they are interested in and are trying to collect.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History gave a similar explanation for sending staff to Zuccotti Square during the encampment, where they were spotted picking up materials. The museum said it was part of its tradition of documenting how Americans participate in a democracy. It declined to allow staff to be interviewed.

"Historians like to take the long view and see how things play out," said spokeswoman Valeska Hilbig in an email, adding that staff wouldn't feel "comfortable" discussing the protests until some time had passed.

Staff at the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University set up a system to download and archive tweets about Occupy. So far, they have harvested more than 5 million tweets from more than 600,000 unique Twitter users. Ultimately the database will be made available to scholars, said Stewart Varner, the digital scholarship coordinator at the library.

The New York Public Library has added Occupy periodicals to its collection and is considering obtaining some protest ephemera.

And the Internet Archive, a massive online library of free digital books, audio and texts, has opened a mostly user-generated collection about the movement. As of Friday, the Occupy collection included more than 2,000 items, while its "Tea Party Movement" collection had fewer than 50.

Unlike other institutions focused only on collecting, the Museum of the City of New York is planning a photography exhibition on Occupy at its South Street Seaport Museum offshoot when it reopens in January.

Chief curator Sarah Henry said the museum will also include materials on the movement in a new gallery opening in the spring that focuses on social activism in New York City.

The New-York Historical Society has collected between 300 and 400 items from the movement, said Jean Ashton, the library director. Ashton recognized the contradiction inherent in an establishment institution collecting Occupy materials.

"There are probably people in Occupy Wall Street who the last thing they want is to have their materials in a library or museum somewhere," she said.

Roberts, the OWS member who is on the archives working group, said it was good that such institutions want to document the movement. However, she said they would prefer the institutions collaborate with the participants. "We know more about the movement and the stories behind the materials that have been collected," she said.

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Follow Cristian Salazar at twitter.com/crsalazarAP and Randy Herschaft at twitter.com/HerschaftAP

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From Free Speech Radio News:

Four activists from Occupy DC began a hunger strike two weeks ago, demanding full budget autonomy, full representation in Congress, and full voting rights for the District of Columbia. After 15 days, only one young man remains.

Listen to a segment about the hunger striker here.

Via Alternet:

It's not Syria or Bahrain, it's Boston.

On December 14, Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Goldberger submitted a subpoena to Twitter requesting user info and IP addresses for several users, and also displayed his lack of tech savvy by asking for the account info of a couple of hashtags -- keywords used on Twitter.

Read the whole story here.

Looks like everyone ate up the vegetarian lasagna that was served yesterday.

What was their crime? Trespassing. A Houston Chronicle blogger writes:

Occupy Houston and Occupy Austin protestors are facing felony charges for taking part in civil disobedience earlier this month outside the Port of Houston. The felony charges had at first been dismissed by a judge, but have now be reinstated by a Harris County grand jury empanelled by the Harris County District Attorney?s office.

There is little doubt in my mind that these charges are about scaring off further acts of protest in our county. This is an issue that should be of concern to politically involved people on all sides of the aisle. The rights of all are at risk when any group of people is singled out for excessive punishment by those in power.

These excessive charges should be recalled when anybody gets to thinking that incumbent Harris County DA Pat Lykos is somehow more moderate or reasonable than others who have held her office in recent years.

While we are all busy with the holidays, we cannot forget these Occupy patriots who are now facing serious jail time for charges that were at one point dismissed.

Read the whole piece here.

Activists are using reverse boycott to highlight the need to support local businesses. You can check information on the event here.

It was just one tent placed near the governor's office. Activists told the AP that they didn't think the protest was a good tactic. AP reports:

At least one member of Occupy Nashville set up a tent not far from the governor's office at the state Capitol overnight.

The tent was in a corner near the south entrance of the Capitol. Gov. Bill Haslam's office is just inside the entrance.

Nobody was in the tent when The Associated Press checked around noon Thursday, and during another check three hours later it had been moved back among others encamped on the state plaza across the street from the Capitol. It was not clear why it moved.

Occupy Nashville protester Ricky Adams, who is among those encamped on the state plaza, said the tent was set up at the Capitol Wednesday night.

AP reports:

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan says the city would try to prevent future shutdowns at the port if port officials picked up the $1.5 million tab for the hundreds of police officers that would be needed.

Quan also told the Chronicle that the city would probably not be able to prevent port closures anyway since a handful of protesters could sneak around police lines.

ABC News reports that activists are planning to target the presidential race. This may be a tactical change. Aside from a few events, namely the recent Occupy Congress action and various mic checking of conservatives pols, the organizers have insisted on targeting financial institutions and corporations. While activists say they will continue those activities, they seem to be willing to add new political targets to their portfolio. ABC News writes:

Occupy protesters have voiced their concerns at several presidential campaign events, including disrupting President Obama during a speech at a high school in Manchester, N.H., on Nov. 22, and occupying one of his campaign offices in Des Moines, Iowa, over the weekend. The Occupy protesters make it clear they do not endorse any particular candidate, and they do not discriminate based on party when it comes to criticism.

"I think the typical OWS person is really upset with both parties and the whole idea of a two-party system," Pete Dutro, an Occupy Wall Street finance committee member in New York City, said. "It basically has turned into a campaign club ... not about getting things done. It's about gathering resources to get elected."

This week, protesters heckled and held protest signs addressing Republican candidate frontrunners, Mitt Romney in Littleton, N.H., and Newt Gingrich in Des Moines. The candidates are campaigning in cities ahead of the first primaries. The Iowa caucus is on Jan. 3 and the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 10.

Dutro said protesters will broach campaign finance reform more frequently.

Do protests take a holiday?

Not Occupy Washington, D.C. The protest originally known as "Stop the Machine" will be holding a Christmas Eve holiday party at Freedom Plaza, where demonstrators have been camped out since early October. The program includes a concert featuring D.C. native Radio Rahim, an alternative hip-hop act called Leftist, D.C. rapper Arman Ali and blues musician Casey Lynch. The musical program will be followed by a big meal and caroling.

Meanwhile, separate protest group Occupy DC has a festive tree in McPherson Square as well as a red, yellow and green "Seasons Greetings from Occupy" sign set up near the park's statue of General McPherson. But no official Christmas activities are planned for the group, which is nearing the end of its third month in McPherson Square.

For more click here.

-- Arin Greenwood

The last major Occupy encampment in the Bay Area was peacefully cleared by Berkeley police this afternoon, SFGate reports:

The clearance followed an uptick in violence at the camp that included two sexual assaults and numerous drug and alcohol related incidents, police said.

On Wednesday, city officials warned the protesters, who had been camped at Civic Center Park since early October, that police would start enforcing the city's ban on overnight lodging within 24 hours. Most of the 150 or so protesters left voluntarily, but a few dozen remained early Thursday morning when police and public works crews arrived to begin clearing the park.

Read more here.

@ OccupyBaltimore : General Assembly is tonight at Current Gallery at 8pm, corner of Howard and Franklin!

Via the Florida Independent:

Occupy Tampa supporters are up in arms over the possible months-long detention of protester Timothy Sommers, arrested alongside 28 others at a Dec. 2 demonstration in Riverfront Park for trespassing and ?obstructing or opposing an officer without violence.?

While Sommers was originally released the morning after his arrest, a judge yesterday revoked his bond and today ruled that he remain behind bars till his March 2012 trial.

According to Mark Cox, a spokesman for the state attorney?s office handing the case, Sommers? bond was revoked because he had been charged with ? but not arrested for ? trespassing on Nov. 6.

?He reoffended,? Cox says, ?and the judge revoked his bond from the December incident and is going to hold him without bond.? According to Cox, the decision is ?not unusual.?

?That?s a complete injustice that he?s being held this long,? says Kelsy O?Morrow, a USF student who became active in the burgeoning Occupy movement because of anger at ?the state of our governemnt and the influence of money in politics.? O?Morrow was present at the Riverfront protest with Sommers, and was also arrested.

For more on the case, go here.

Occupy Albany is livestreaming now. Watch here.

Occupy Albany reported its own eviction via its website:

City officers attempted to take Info Tent. Occupiers have lifted the info tent, attempted to bring it into City Hall but were blockaded by Police. They are now marching the streets with hundreds of people? they are chanting things like ?We demand you separate, corporations and the state?, ?Banks got bailed out, we got sold out?, ?Jennings come out, face the people you kicked out?, ?All day, all week, occupy Albany?, ?We are unstoppable, a new world is possible??

Via the Times Union:

Protesters from Occupy Albany on Thursday evening left their dismantled tent site in Academy Park and marched through the streets, holding aloft their final structure.

Members of the Albany Police Department mounted patrol walked their horses about 100 feet ahead of the marchers.

The protest, which looped from city hall to State and Lark streets to Washington Avenue and back down to Academy Park, snarled rush-hour traffic.

The spur-of-the-moment march included protesters knocking on doors to ask residents to join their movement.

Earlier in the afternoon, workers from the city's Department of General Services dismantled the site. They were accompanied by about 10 police officers...

However, when city workers moved in to take down the final tent, a standoff between protesters and police began. Protesters then pulled up the tent themselves and began marching up Washington Avenue carrying the tent aloft.

Attorney Mark Mishler, a member of Occupy Albany's legal team, said the city went around the protesters' backs to get a court order from state Supreme Court Justice Joseph Teresi.

@ GazettePolitics : Albany police took TE last #OccupyAlbany tent. People got pepper sprayed. There are definitely arrests

Since police have evicted several occupy camps, activists have fought back in court filing cases in Texas, New York and Oakland. The AP reports:

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the lawsuits an important check on police power. She noted that authorities haven't been uniformly excessive around the country, but pointed in New York City to mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge - which are under litigation - as well as the pepper-spraying of several women and the dark-of-night breakup of Zuccotti Park.

She said that her group has been concerned for years about police tactics, but that the response to the Occupy movement shines a light on them in a way that "engages and offends a new sector of the public."

She predicted there will be other lawsuits about excessive force, civil rights violations and mostly likely people's rights to get back into Zuccotti, which she said police have blocked from public usage with their pens.

For more on the lawsuits, go here.

Tim Craig of the Washington Post is reporting on Twitter that there was just an arrest at Occupy DC in McPherson Square. The person arrested was apparently pulled from a tent and then tasered while resisting arrest; one officer has apparently been taken to the hospital.

On Wednesday, Dec. 21, the city of Providence and Occupy Providence attempted to reach an agreement to vacate Burnside Park for overnight protest.

As outlined in the letter displayed below, Occupy Providence agreed to stop camping overnight in the park so long as the city would agree to commit a public space to serve as a temporary daytime shelter for the city's homeless to congregate safely.

OfftheBus contributor Mary Pat Stone says Occupy Providence voted 33 to 11 to leave the park under this condition.

To share your own first-hand stories, photos or videos from Occupy or election events for publication through OfftheBus, email offthebus@huffingtonpost.com.

Via NBC's Miami affiliate:

The Coconut Creek family threatened with two eviction notices earlier this month will be able to spend the rest of the holidays at home after the Occupy Fort Lauderdale movement set up camp at the residence to support them.

Wells Fargo - which holds a second mortgage on the home - faxed a letter to the Bien-Aim? family letting them know that the eviction had been put "on hold? late Monday, just hours after the Occupy Fort Lauderdale members protested outside the house.

"They gave us the run around, but we finally pressured them into sending the information (to stop the eviction proceedings) to the Broward Sheriff?s Office, said Occupy Fort Lauderdale spokesperson Christine Weinbrecht.

Now, the Occupy movement vows to keep pressuring Wells Fargo until they reverse the eviction altogether and work with the family to settle an ongoing dispute. A march on one of the bank?s Fort Lauderdale branches is scheduled for Friday at 4 p.m.

The Austin-American Statesman presents a good rundown of what's at stake in the federal court case concerning two Occupy Austin activists:

The lawsuit stems from the arrests of plaintiffs Rudy Sanchez and Kris Sleeman in late October. Both were issued criminal trespass notices that banned them from City Hall for a year.

Assistant City Attorney Chris Edwards maintained that the temporary bans are appropriate and balance free speech and public safety. Officials have dealt with criminal activity, urination and defecation in the plaza where protesters have camped for months, she said.

Sanchez was arrested with 36 others shortly after midnight on Oct. 30 when city officials moved in to enforce new rules prohibiting the operation of a food distribution table. Sleeman was arrested at the plaza early the next morning on an outstanding traffic warrant and charged with criminal trespass. The two later successfully appealed the notices and were allowed to return to the plaza.

Attorney Jim Harrington, head of the Texas Civil Rights Project and who is representing Sanchez and Sleeman, spent a good portion of the day hammering the point that the city drafted a policy on the temporary bans on Nov. 1.

The lawsuit argues that before Nov. 1, the city had no written policy regarding how criminal trespass notices would be issued. But after that day, City Manager Marc Ott issued a bulletin establishing rules and procedures for such notices.

"The policy was drafted as a tool to manage the protesters," said Ryan Bates, who also represented the plaintiffs.

Via The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

St. Mark's Cathedral, while professing its love for social justice, has denied a request by Occupy Seattle to pitch tents as "offices" in the cathedral's parking lot, a few blocks north of the movement's recent Seattle Central Community College encampment.

The pre-Christmas no-room-in-the-parking-lot decision was made by St. Mark's governing Vestry, which has in the past allowed the Tent City homeless encampment to pitch multiple tents in the lot of the Episcopal cathedral.

"The heart of the cathedral community is in social justice, but legal and financial constraints made it unrealistic for us to approve the request," said the Rev. Canon Rebecca McClain, senior priest on the cathedral staff.

Los Angeles Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter is offering many of the Occupy L.A. protesters who were arrested during the Nov. 30 police raid on the City Hall encampment an opportunity to avoid trial. According to the Los Angeles Times, if the anti-corporate activists each pay $355 to American Justice Associates, a private company, the city will agree not to press charges.

Several Occupy protesters, many of whom are fueled by anger at what they perceive as corporate greed and the increased privatization of public services, have noted the irony of being asked to pay a private contractor for the program. The tuition will go to the company, not the city, officials say.

Click here for more info.

After receiving numerous complaints of "abuses" by officers, particularly toward members of the press, the New York Police Department has stepped up its media training, Capital reported.

[Deputy Inspector Kim] Royster has also personally met with groups of commanding officers to provide training on media guidelines, she said, and copies of a "media representatives summary" have been distributed to police at the sites of demonstrations.

The summary reminds officers that, "Information, assistance, or access should be rendered to whatever extent possible, when it does not: Pose undue risk to personal safety; Interfere with police operations; Adversely effects the rights of an accused or the investigation or prosecution of a crime.

"Members of the service will not interfere with the videotaping or photographing of incidents in public places," it continues. "Intentional interference constitutes censorship. Media access to demonstrations on private property will not be impeded by the Department unless an owner or representative indicates press is not permitted. The media will be given access as close to the activity as possible with a clear line of site and within hearing range of the incident."

For more, click here.

During a recent demonstration in Washington, D.C., several hundred progressives gathered on K Street were protesting the same outrage but had heated arguments over how to protest.

Their differences were emblematic of a key conflict facing Occupy Wall Street today. In its short three-month existence, the Occupy movement has received support and participation from prominent progressives, civil rights leaders, labor unions and other activists, perhaps more than the original protesters expected. But shared goals don't necessarily mean shared methods. The very independent Occupiers are now struggling to figure out how to work fruitfully with more established groups.

Click here for more.

-- Tyler Kingkade

Oakland city officials announced that an independent investigation will examine police activity at two separate incidents during Occupy protests in late October and early November. SFGate reports:

Police tactics including the use of tear gas while responding to Oct. 25 Occupy Oakland protests prompted the mayor, city administrator and police chief to seek an outside investigation alongside the police department's internal investigation, city spokeswoman Karen Boyd said.

Tom Frazier, a former Baltimore police commissioner and former San Jose deputy police chief, will be leading the probe with a team of three former police officers.

Read more here.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/24/occupy-wall-street-museums-organizations_n_1168893.html

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