Showing posts with label Reuters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reuters. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Occupy Wall Street protesters seek to block Twitter subpoena


Occupy
Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Occupy Wall Street activists rest during a protest at Zuccotti Park in New York July 11, 2012.
NEW YORK -- An Occupy Wall Street protester who took part in a mass protest in New York last year is accusing a judge of overstepping his authority by ordering Twitter to hand over the demonstrator's tweets and account information to prosecutors.
Malcolm Harris, a Brooklyn-based writer, filed a civil proceeding on Monday seeking to block the judge's ruling.
Harris was arrested during a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge last October and charged with disorderly conduct in a case that is one of a handful in which authorities have sought to use social media to prosecute defendants.
Criminal Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino has rebuffed separate attempts by Harris and Twitter to quash a subpoena served on the company by the Manhattan district attorney's office seeking Harris' tweets for September to December.
Harris claims the information sought by prosecutors is akin to surveillance records, because computer logs will show his location when he connected to the site.
"In this case, anyone reviewing the information and material Twitter has been ordered to turn over will know each time - between September 15 and December 30, 2011 -- Harris logged into his Twitter account, where he was when he logged in, how long he remained there and both what he did and who he communicated with while he was logged in," Harris' lawyers wrote in a memorandum accompanying the petition.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney's office have said in court papers that Harris' tweets could demonstrate he knew police had ordered protesters not to walk onto the bridge roadway.
Harris' lawyer, Martin Stolar of the National Lawyers Guild, and other lawyers for the arrested protesters have said police appeared to lead the march onto the roadway before suddenly arresting hundreds of them.
Sciarrino ruled in April that Harris did not have the standing to challenge the subpoena, since Twitter owned his tweets. In June, he rejected Twitter's argument that turning over the tweets violated Harris' privacy and free speech rights, saying the tweets were publicly posted without any expectation of privacy.
Twitter has filed a separate notice of appeal, though it has not yet submitted its formal brief.
Criminal defendants typically are required to wait until the end of criminal proceedings before filing appeals. But Stolar said Sciarrino's ruling threatened Harris' privacy and required an immediate response.
Harris' filing also seeks an order requiring Sciarrino to recognize his standing to challenge the subpoena on free speech grounds and the Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches.
The Manhattan district attorney's office declined to comment on the filing.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Check for restrictions at:http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp.
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Friday, June 15, 2012

For one protester, 'Occupy' becomes a way of life


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Activist Austin Guest guides other protesters in front of a police line in New York May 1, 2012. REUTERS-Andrew Burton

By Edith Honan
NEW YORK | Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:14am EDT
(Reuters) - Seven months after Occupy Wall Street's eviction from Zuccotti Park, the round-the-clock encampment in lower Manhattan that was once the movement's center, one protester has created his own version of the communal living experiment in Brooklyn.
The spacious apartment in Crown Heights where Austin Guest, a 31-year-old Harvard University graduate, lives with another seasoned protester is a far cry from the crowded, chaotic Zuccotti Park of last fall, where hundreds of protesters camped out each night.
Nevertheless, inspired by Zuccotti, with its free meals and free books, Guest said he and his friends are pursuing an Occupy-like experiment in mutual aid.
In the apartment, for example, the protesters follow a code of conduct designed to prevent one person from dominating a conversation. Guest, who majored in performance and media studies at Harvard, said he has had to "unlearn" the sometimes "impenetrable" rhetoric of the Ivy League.
"I was trained to speak in, like, five paragraphs at a time, with really clearly delineated, bulletproof arguments. And that kind of communication doesn't leave a lot of space. That's the point. It's impenetrable. And that's not how we talk in OWS," he said.
FEWER TENTS, MORE TABLES
Guest, a California native with a slight build and a beard who prefers his trademark cap tilted to one side, called the Occupy movement "the best thing that ever happened to me."
It is not clear how many other Occupy Wall Street alumni continue to protest in New York on a full-time basis. Several hundred protesters packed into Times Square on May 15 as part of a coordinated action timed to JPMorgan Chase's shareholder meeting. Several dozen people regularly congregate in Union Square, especially on Friday nights. And there are several communal-living arrangements in Brooklyn.
At the same time, an analysis by Reuters earlier this month found that donations have slowed to a trickle, while the movement's social media popularity, a key indicator of its strength, has fizzled since its zenith last fall.
"We're finding less people living in tents, but we're finding more people sitting around kitchen tables, and more people meeting up in cafes," said Ed Needham, a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street. "There's an awful lot of decentralized organization going on."
Guest, who is white, moved to the predominantly black neighborhood of Crown Heights on June 1. He and another protester, Marisa Holmes, split the $1,400 monthly rent while they look for a third roommate to lower their costs. A number of other Occupiers come and go but don't pay rent.
Outside Guest's apartment building, one Crown Heights resident expressed support for his new neighbors.
"In my opinion, most of the people who were occupying Wall Street were upstanding people," said Johnnie Godette, who works for a local education organization called Foundations for Life. "Them coming here to move and diversify the neighborhood is definitely a good thing."
LOAVES AND SUSHI
Several times a week, Guest bicycles to wealthier Brooklyn neighborhoods, like Park Slope and Cobble Hill, where he and other protesters help themselves to the bread and vegetables that gourmet shops deem spoiled or unfit for sale.
On a good night he might find trays of sushi stacked neatly in an oversized trash bag or still-fresh-looking loaves of bread from Caputo Bakery.
Last September, when the Occupy Wall Street encampment sprang up in Zuccotti Park, Guest was working a few blocks away as an online community organizer. He began dropping in on the camp every night. By November he had quit his job and committed himself to the movement.
Some features of the movement that have frustrated other supporters, such as the refusal to set out concrete goals and a disdain for electoral politics, Guest sees as refreshing.
"Every organization ... that I have ever worked for is just trained to say, 'Oh yes, well, at some point we all have to be realistic,'" said Guest. "And I said, 'No. I don't want to.'"
"BIG GIANT TRAUMA"
Guest struggled with convention at Harvard as well. Antics tied to his experimental theater work and academic problems that he described as writer's block, prompted school officials to ask him to leave, twice. He graduated in 2007, eight years after enrolling.
Toward the end of his time at Harvard, Guest and several friends showed up at the university's career fair, dressed as superheroes, to protest the participation of U.S. military recruiters. Guest, in Captain America garb, was kicked out before he could approach the recruiters.
These days, Guest spends most of his time planning protest actions and refining the model of group living and self-reliance inspired by his experience at Zuccotti Park. He earns money by working for a friend's moving company and by doing freelance community organizing.
Guest said there is "no going back" to the life he knew before Occupy - a full-time job in Manhattan and a comfortable apartment in Prospect Heights.
"The world is a big giant trauma right now. And this community that I'm in is something that tries to build pockets of healing," he said. "All you have is other people. That's what this is all about. It's people who care for each other against an unaccountable system that doesn't have to listen.
"It's like, are we going to live in a world where we throw each other under the bus every chance we get, or are we going to live in a world where we take care of one another?"
(Editing by Dan Burns, Douglas Royalty and Prudence Crowther)
Posted by firesprinklers at 10:22 AM 0 comments
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Monday, April 9, 2012

Occupy Wall Street Groups Unite Over Foreclosures


First Posted: 04/ 9/2012 1:50 pm Updated: 04/ 9/2012 4:36 pm

* Occupy groups working in several cities

* Foreclosure crisis inspires middle class

* Some banks cooperate, wanting to avoid publicity

By Nick Carey

April 9 (Reuters) - Mercedes Robinson-Duvallon turned 83 in February, but there was little time for celebration.

On her birthday, as she sat in a wheelchair recovering from surgery, sheriffs' deputies arrived to evict her from the Miami home where she has lived since 1966. A year earlier her property had moved into foreclosure after she defaulted on a refinanced loan.

Robinson-Duvallon says she would be homeless now but for the intervention of about 40 members of Occupy Fort Lauderdale, a Florida branch of the national movement that is protesting income inequality and corporate greed. The group took over her lawn and house and even baked her a birthday cake.

The deputies decided to let her stay.

"I owe the Occupy people," said Robinson-Duvallon, who is now challenging the eviction in court. "This has all been so horrible, I can't tell you how many times I've cried and cried."

What happened in Miami is also occurring in Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, as local Occupy groups pursue an issue they believe has emotional resonance among America's struggling lower and middle classes.

Fighting foreclosures and evictions, activists say, gives the disparate movement a unifying focus and embodies its anti-Wall Street message. It also has offered a way for Occupy - up till now a largely white, middle-class movement - to broaden its reach to minorities.


Interviews with Occupy activists in 11 states show groups from coast to coast have taken up foreclosure fights through rallies, home occupations and court appearances. Matt Browner Hamlin of occupyourhomes.org, a national group focused on this cause, counts "more than 100 Occupy groups" that have taken direct action or formed foreclosure working groups.

Cheryl Aichele of Occupy Los Angeles said activists there have helped a dozen homeowners thus far and have many more requests. "This cause," she said, "brings together everything that we are fighting against - corporate greed, bank bail outs, a corrupt judiciary and corrupt government."

There is little evidence that the banking industry is taking notice, however.

Robert Davis, executive vice president of an industry lobby group, the American Bankers Association, said, "It is unlikely that protests are going to have any bearing on the court process" where foreclosures often are challenged.

He said banks rely on law enforcement to quash eviction protests that constitute "unlawful occupation of a property ... They need to be removed so the property can be sold."

In Cincinnati, a group called Occupy the Hood has found the issue a rallying point in the city's East Price Hill neighborhood, an ethnically mixed, working-class area hard hit by the economic downturn. Average neighborhood home values have fallen 41 percent since 2002.

Amid chants of "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out," Rigel Behrens and other activists in Cincinnati recently conducted a "foreclosure tour," visiting seven boarded-up homes.

"Abandoned homes are the most obvious, physical manifestation of what is wrong with our system," said Behrens.

Those who have watched the Occupy movement since its September beginnings say the foreclosure focus may help it recover from a slump that followed forced shutdowns of encampments in New York, Washington and other cities.

"The Occupy movement seems to have lost some of its punch," said Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida political science professor. "Focusing on an issue that affects the working class and leaves people feeling alienated is potentially a good strategy. If they can make it work."


FINDING COMMON GROUND

Activists in Cincinnati and elsewhere say foreclosures are a serious political issue in minority neighborhoods, where the five-year-old housing crisis cast a long shadow.

Housing counseling groups have cataloged how black Americans and Hispanics - even those with good credit - were more likely to end up victims of predatory lenders.

Millions of Americans lost their homes in the downturn and around one in four American homeowners is "under water" -- owing more than their homes are worth.

Again, minorities suffered disproportionately, studies show. A recent study by the non-profit Woodstock Institute, examining properties in six Chicago area counties, showed 17 percent of those located in predominantly white areas were under water. In predominantly black and Hispanic areas, the number soared above 40 percent.

In Minneapolis, Anthony Newby, a black housing counselor, appealed to the Occupy group to take on the case of struggling black homeowner Monique White.

"It was very much a conscious decision to approach the Occupy movement," said Newby, now a member of Occupy Homes MN. "The African-American community has been dealing with hardship for decades. But it was new for those white kids on the plaza who were falling out of the middle class for the first time."

In Atlanta, Occupiers say fighting evictions began as an impromptu battle that became a long-term strategy.

"This is a strategy to generate tangible wins and build a broader base for the movement," said Tim Franzen of Occupy Atlanta. "You don't have to go to a park downtown to make a difference. You can go two doors down and help your neighbor."


"BANKS DON'T LIKE BAD PRESS"

Evan Rosen, a lawyer in southern Florida, said the interest of Occupy Fort Lauderdale helped in a foreclosure case he was handling. Occupiers showed up in court to back his client, which he believes influenced the judge's favorable ruling.

"I am not a religious man, but it felt like divine intervention," said Rosen, who asked that his client's name be withheld while negotiations with the lender continue.

Jeff Weinberger of Occupy Fort Lauderdale said the group has helped four homeowners avoid eviction.

"The banks really don't like bad press," he said. "So when we show up with the local TV station, it has an effect."

But Bobby Hull says the Occupy movement can only do so much; the rest depends on homeowners themselves.

"Occupy is a movement and the best they can do is to help us organize our communities," he said. "That's what it takes to win."

Hull, 57, faced eviction in Minneapolis when his health failed and his contracting business tanked.

Occupiers rallied for him in December, and he renegotiated his Bank of America mortgage, though he says he is under a gag order and cannot discuss his loan terms. A Bank of America spokesman confirmed a loan modification is underway.

Now, Hull and his neighbors have formed an "eviction-free zone" to fight foreclosures.

Occupy groups claim the response they get is overwhelmingly positive.

The first home on the "foreclosure tour" in East Price Hill was sold off in foreclosure for $1,347. It lost its roof and mildew is eating through the walls.

"It's truly great that these folks are doing something," said Ron Etter, nodding toward the Occupiers as they approached the next house on the tour. "No one else is."

Share your reports & photos from Occupy Wall Street events
If you've been to an Occupy Wall Street event anywhere in the country, we'd like to hear from you. Send OfftheBus your photos, links to videos or first-hand accounts of what you've seen for possible inclusion in The Huffington Posts's coverage.
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