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When the NYPD raided the Occupy Wall Street camp in November, scores of activists and writers lost their personal journals as the police cleared Zuccotti Park.

The OWS librarians have recovered a number of these journals and are hoping to return them to their rightful owners. If you or someone you know lost a diary during the eviction, you can contact the OWS librarians directly.

Here’s more from the People’s Library: “If anybody lost a journal that is featured in either photo, please get in contact with me, hristo@doctor.com or 646-220-5655. It is my personal contact to ensure that it doesn’t get lost in the mass mailing list that we have for the library. To ensure it is yours, I would need some sort of verification, any kind that shows you are the rightful owner of the journal through knowledge of what is inside. Please spread this around to anybody that may have lost a journal on the night of the raid.”

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On Tuesday, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) librarians will offer a proposal to the OWS General Assembly–hoping to rebuild the library in Duarte Square, another New York City park.

Check it out: “The People’s Library would like $800 to purchase tarps, dollies, and plastic bins, and to provide transportation from SIS to the occupation of Duarte Square on December 17. All of our supplies, our computers, our bins and 80% of our collection was destroyed in the raid on Liberty Park on November 14. Since then we have received donations of books from around the world. We want to bring them to the people!”

The park was named after Juan Pablo Duarte, a Dominican Republic revolutionary who helped Dominicans fight for independence in the the 19th century. (Photo via)

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On the six month anniversary of the movement, the Occupy Wall Street organizers have sent a Twitter message to its 154,000 followers: “500+ RE-OCCUPYING LIBERTY SQUARE RIGHT NOW! JOIN US!”

Today activists filled Zuccotti Park once again. Occupy Wall Street librarian Stephen Boyer took the photograph embedded above and wrote a dispatch from the park: “Spring has come to New York City! Which means, if you’ve been hiding and resting this winter (like I did for a bit) it’s time to dust off your signs and hit the streets! The flowers are in bloom and job prospects are still scarce, so it’s the perfect time to fall in love and with Cupid’s arrow hanging out of your side, run around the streets of New York demanding a better world for you and your new found lover.”

A separate text message from the Occupy Wall Street organizers urged supporters to bring blankets and food to the park. The Daily Occupier has been live-blogging the protests and celebration near Wall Street today.

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On the six month anniversary of the movement, the Occupy Wall Street library briefly reopened before the police cleared Zuccotti Park. The librarians posted this message on Saturday night: “The People’s Library is once again open at #LibertyPlaza. 1,000 people here right now and staying all night.”

But by 12:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, the police had cleared the park–this video recorded some of the arrests. The New York Times described the violent scene: “At one point, a woman who appeared to be suffering from a seizures flopped on the ground in handcuffs as bystanders shouted for the police to remove her handcuffs and provide medical attention. For several minutes the woman lay on the ground as onlookers made increasingly agonized demands. Eventually, an ambulance arrived and the woman was placed inside.”

The occupation has now moved to Union Square Park, where organizers report that “several dozen” activists occupied Union Square last night. Here’s more from the site: “Over 70 people remain, now on Day 3. Although tents and tables are still banned, Occupiers have brought blankets and sleeping gear. Many are calling it ‘the new Occupation.’”

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These are the remaining books left in the Occupy Wall Street Library following a police action last night.

At 7 p.m. yesterday, the Occupy Wall Street librarians posted a picture of the newly rebuilt Occupy Wall Street Library in New York City’s Union Square Park. By 10 p.m., police had cleared out most of the library–leaving behind the books in the picture (embedded above).

Below, we’ve created a chronological collection of tweets from activists showing what happened to the library. The librarians tweeted a new chant today: “People got sold out, Books got thrown out!”

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Advertising on Facebook is a bit of a conundrum (for the social media giant, but not for brands. Savvy social media campaigns can get widespread advertising for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional media. The challenge for Facebook is when... Read the rest of this post

Occupy has forced its way into the news this past month, despite the worldwide embarrassment it's causing U.S. political and financial leaders. Our streets don't yet look like those of Greece, but that's what they must fear most: a movement against almost every tenet the privileges of our economic system stand on. [The photos on this post are from Occupy Miami, Madrid, Mexico, Oakland, L.A., So. Korea, Aztlán and more are viewable here.]

Keith Olbermann's nightly news show covered Occupy Denver on Monday, interviewing protestor Jeannie Harley on the police violence perpetrated on protestors: "We had a perfectly peaceful march, a perfectly peaceful rally, and it turned into something much worse," Harley said.

Sorry, Harley, Occupy could develop into a greater threat than the 60s or 70s movements, which were infiltrated, spied on, framed up on charges, incarcerated, beaten and even assassinated. The worst may be yet to come: "The situation we find ourselves in is absolutely unacceptable," said Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce President Joe Haraburda. "We have made our position clear.… We want Occupy Oakland closed."

Filmmaker, liberal activist Michael Moore stopped by to tell an enthusiastic Occupy Denver crowd of about 1,000 Thursday: "There is no leader to this movement. That's why it's such a large and growing movement."
"He said the rest of the country is watching the Occupy protest in Denver."

So I’m at a lovely Little Brown librarian preview earlier this week and the first special guest star of the day turns out to be none other than Daniel Handler a.k.a. Lemony Snicket.  A resident of San Francisco, I wasn’t sure why he was in town.  Turns out, he was on Rachel Maddow’s show talking about his recent Occupy Wall Street piece that had been making the internet rounds.  Maddow says that he’s a “cultural hero of mine” and then later that she is “dorking out” being in his presence.  The interview is great in and of itself, plus you get this fun bit at the start about what you do when the police have confiscated your generators.

Of course if I’d known he was in town I would have tried to hook him into saying hello at the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival festivities.  Hosted in my library I’ll be blogging about it rather soon.  It was rather epic, I have to say.  Everything from a children’s musical about the birth of the Newbery Award to kids singing the plot of The Westing Game to Katie Perry’s “Firework” (a song that seems to haunt Mr. Kennedy wherever he may go).  Of course we ran out of time so we never got to show this final video.  I present it to you now because it’s rather brilliant.  As Ira Glass imitations go, this has gotta be up there:

This next link is here only because Travis at 100 Scope Notes spotted it first.  According to Reuters, the Japanese have brought The Magic Tree House books to life on the screen.  Apparently Mary Pope Osborne has always resisted film adaptations but the filmmakers so wowed her that she gave them the rights.  The result pairs nicely with that recent Borrowers adaptation, also out of Japan:

In other news, Newbery Honor winner Kathi Appelt recently interviewed Caldecott Award winner Eric Rohmann about his latest hugely lauded Halloween tale Bone Dog.  Perhaps I should have posted this before Hal

There’s a student debt crisis in the U.S. According to the Project on Student Debt, two thirds of the 2010 graduating class were carrying some amount of student loan debt, averaging $25,250 in debt, up 5% from 2009. And that’s only undergrad... Read the rest of this post

The first installment of my new microcolumn, “The Historical Record,” ran in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday alongside some other quickies, including Lizzie Skurnick’s brilliant (and useful!) “That Should Be A Word.” This one concerns astrology, from Chaucer to Susan Miller.

A friend who, like me, is drawn to the stars, says astrology shouldn’t and possibly doesn’t work at all, that it’s just really easy for those of us who are attracted to and adept with metaphor to stretch the system to fit reality. I don’t disagree with her, exactly — of course I don’t, I’m a Gemini — but it doesn’t take more than a drink or two with friends before I’m pulling out my iPhone to look up their charts and their lovers’ charts and to ponder their synastry…

As I mentioned in the columnlet, Miller and I talked about Occupy Wall Street, which she attributes to a square between Uranus and Pluto that will recur into 2015; she believes the demonstrations will continue at least until then. (There was also a strong Uranus-Pluto aspect during the the Civil Rights Era, she points out. And the last time Pluto was in Capricorn, as it is now, the American Revolution happened.) “The universe always pushes us back onto the rails,” she says, predicting less government gridlock and a better housing market next year.

Like most of her readers, I became aware of Miller online, where the zodiac is big business these days. Many sites offer “personalized” computer-generated reports, round-the-clock transit predictions, and even phone consultations; Miller is more like a magazine columnist, posting general monthly forecasts for each star sign at her site, Astrology Zone. I asked her what she thinks about the explosion of Internet astrology.

“You need to know the provenance of the advice,” she said. “A lot of Internet advice is unsigned, which means there’s no yardstick.” She’s heard of many sites that “hire college girls — ‘A’ students in English — who have beautiful writing skills but no astrological background.”

What surprised me most was her response to my mention of Liz Greene, a Jungian analyst-astrologer I like whose “psychological horoscopes” are sold at Astro.com. “I don’t do psychological astrology,” Miller said. “I am very practical. I don’t presume to tell you what you’re thinking or feeling.” (But that’s my favorite part!)
 

My (waterless) chart, if you’re curious:

2011 will certainly be remembered as a year of uprisings and protest. Consider the “Arab Spring” and the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Complacency has no place in the present, but nor does violence, hopefully. From the 494 B.C. plebeians’ march out of Rome to gain improved status, to Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns in India, to the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 80s and uprisings and protests of 2011, nonviolent struggles have played pivotal roles in world events for centuries. Around each of these events a vocabulary, a lexicon, of power and struggle emerged. And Gene Sharp, the “godfather of nonviolent resistance” has been “one of the great pioneers of nonviolent theory,” according to Joseph Nye. “His writings have affected nonviolent resistance tactics around the world, most recently in Egypt. He distills…wisdom…readily accessible to activists, journalists, and researchers alike.” Below is some of that wisdom, an essay by Sharp from the recently published Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle. Let’s hope the lines of communication stay open and all parties keep it real.     -Purdy, publicity

You can also listen to an interview with Gene Sharp on today’s edition of WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show.

Our world is filled with conflicts. They often cause us grave problems. However, conflicts themselves are not the real problem. Conflicts are often positive and a given conflict can have meritorious purposes. Problems arise principally from the means by which conflicts are often waged: through violence.

Many political groups and virtually all governments operate on the unexamined assumption that the means of last resort and greatest effectiveness is violence, especially in a military capacity. Violence is certainly necessary to support certain objectives, among them oppression, dictatorship, and mass killings. If we oppose those objectives we need to think about how otherwise to act so that our actions truly weaken the possibility of oppression, dictatorship, or mass killings, and do not unintentionally contribute to their growth.

The choice to use violence is determined by our understanding of the nature of political power. We need to understand better both the power possessed by our opponents and the power available to those who reject their opponents’ objectives. Opponents in “no-compromise conflicts” are understood to be able to wield massive power. We know that the power they use for hostile purposes must be counteracted by equal or greater power. If it is not, the opponents’ objectives will likely be achieved.

Our opponents’ power is often understood to be strong, solid, and long-lasting. If we choose to act against our opponents with violence, it is because we believe that our capacity to wage violent conflict is needed—that is, our opponents’ power for hostile purposes cannot be successfully defeated without violence. But in choosing to fight with violence we have agreed to fight with our opponents’ best weapons. We think that extreme risks are justified because our opponents’ power is likely to triumph unless it is confronted by greater violence. We do not examine whether our understanding of power is accurate.

POLITICAL POWER DEFINED

In our quest for better understanding of what is possible in extreme conflicts, we must start by asking a fundamental question: What is “political power”?

Drawing on the insights of respected political theorists and analysts, we unders

In an angry essay on his blog, author and graphic novelist Frank Miller recently blasted the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Here’s an excerpt: “Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism. And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently – must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh – out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle. In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft.Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.”

Miller’s attack on the “unruly mob” generated thousands of responses around the Internet, including more than 5,000 quotes on his own site. Using Storify, we’ve collected some of the backlash to the post by the author of 300 and Sin City. (Image via)

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The NYPD have raided the Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park, tossing tents, tarps, pallets, sleeping bags and 5,554 books into dump trucks.

The Occupy Wall Street librarians have been tweeting the eviction all night: “NYPD destroying american cultural history, they’re destroying the documents, the books, the artwork of an event in our nation’s history … Right now, the NYPD are throwing over 5,000 books from our library into a dumpster. Will they burn them? … Call 311 or 212-639-9675 now and ask why Mayor Bloomberg is throwing the 5,554 books from our library into a dumpster.”

Even though the New York City camp has been cleared, these People’s Libraries are popping up around the country. We are building a list of Digital People’s Libraries, if you want to contribute. (Photo via nic221 on Flickr).

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By Sharon Zukin

Until the early morning of November 15, a few hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters spent the chilly nights of a glorious autumn camping out in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s disapproval with their politics and under the New York City Police Department’s anxious eye, the occupiers captured public attention in a remarkably peaceful way. Regrouping for the winter, they will take stock of what they have achieved so far and the work that remains.

Though the occupation was initially ignored by mainstream media after it began in September, the protest movement attracted favorable attention both nationwide and internationally. Arrests flared in other U.S. cities, notably Oakland, California, where protesters tried to recall a famous general strike of 1946 by marching to the port. But unlike in Oakland, and Portland, Oregon, the encampment at Wall Street survived the constant threat of being rousted by police action on the one hand and cold weather on the other without death, disaster or dishonor.

An official order to clear Zuccotti Park was squelched in October by the intervention of local city council members and other politicians—some of whom, not coincidentally, plan to run for office in the 2012 elections. Many local labor unions support the movement, suggesting that alliances may be possible across “police and firefighter” lines. This kind of alliance recently won a referendum in Ohio overturning a state law that would have limited public unions’ collective bargaining rights.

In Zuccotti Park protesters formed a tiny city within the city. Food, clothing and books were donated and handed out. Electric generators that were confiscated by the fire department were returned after volunteer attorneys complained on the protesters’ behalf. For public safety the occupiers relied on volunteer security guards who used nonviolent techniques to confront, isolate and occasionally expel troublemakers. Women and transgender protesters could, if they wished, sleep in separate tents. Before November 15, few people were arrested by the police for allegedly committing sexual or physical assault.

New Yorkers quickly became accustomed to this remarkably peaceful microcosm of urban life. On sunny weekend afternoons tourists thronged Zuccotti Park and its celebrated neighbors, the World Trade Center site on one side and the financial district on the other. I have never seen Lower Manhattan look more vibrant.

But Occupy Wall Street was only one of Manhattan’s tourist attractions. To put support for the movement’s proposed reforms in a realistic perspective it is suggestive to look at other sites in the city and the desires that they apparently fulfill.

Nearly 50 million men and women are visiting New York City this year. Nearly 50,000 of them ran in the recent New York City Marathon sponsored by ING Bank .

While protesters occupied Zuccotti Park in tents, the average price of a hotel room in New York City is $250 and the hotel occupancy rate is 0 Comments on Memo from Manhattan: Occupying Wall Street—and Fifth Avenue as of 1/1/1900