Unlike the infamous Clash song, Occupy Wall Street fought the law – and the law didn’t win.
That’s because the City of New York agreed in a settlement last week to pay $232,000 in legal fees and damages to the movement’s “People’s Library” at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan, despite the fact that the library was in a place the movement illegally occupied.
The OWS movement, which lasted several months in late 2011 and early 2012, was a worldwide protest against the world’s largest financial institutions and multinational corporations. The protestors alleged that these institutions had become so powerful that they were ultimately responsible for the worldwide recession that started in 2008.
The settlement money will be used to pay for the 2,800 books destroyed by the police back in 2011 when they raided Zuccotti Park – ground zero for the protest – as well as the legal fees for the lawyer representing OWS.
The suit alleges that when the police and sanitation workers cleaned out the park, they took all 3,600 of the books that made up the “People’s Library,” a pile of novels and history books that sat in the corner of the park. It also alleges that only 1,000 of the books were returned to the library afterwards.
The settlement also requires the city to pay out money to two other organizations connected with the library. Global Revolution TV will receive $125,000 to cover equipment damage and legal fees, while Time’s Up, an environmental nonprofit, will get $8,500 for damage to their “energy” bicycles.
“This is not just about the money,” Norman Siegel, OWS’s lawyer, told the New York Daily News. “It is about holding the city accountable.” Siegel made $185,000 in the suit.
Perhaps the city should consider taking it out of the more than $3.5 million the city already spent to clean up OWS!
