ows/john knefel

[wookietv]

hi forums... i don't know if this has been talked about on the show recently. i've missed the last few episodes. but i figured i would post something to bring people here the news if they hadn't seen on twitter.

on monday, there was a national ows event 'd12'. on the west coast and the gulf coast, there was an attempt to shut down the sea ports at about 1/2 dozen cities. here in ny, there was a solidarity march to the goldman sachs building (the owner of the specific ports they tried to shut down).
After protesting outside the building for a little while, the crowd of about 3-400 people slowly trickled into the Winter Garden (atrium at the bottom of the World Financial Center building). it was done that way to give the impression that the protest was over for the day and not have all hundreds rush in at once.
The crowd mulled about for a while in the atrium, and soon the brass band with us kicked off a big party-like atmosphere. protesters started dancing around. A protester went up to the 2nd floor overlooking the main area and hung a banner down.
As the people were dancing, the police's presence rapidly grew, eventually creating a wall around them. at this point i was inside this circle too, live tweeting the event. but seeing this, i moved more to the perimeter of the room. it seemed that the protesters saw this too, and started planning their escape up an escalator to that 2nd floor area. the police started creating a wall and moved to get everyone out of the building, slowly pushing forward.
Not sure what sparked it exactly, but it quickly became a chaotic situation. Police seemed to be targeting arrests of media/journalists. anyone with a laptop livestreaming the event, cell phone cameras, etc. i'm not sure exactly how i escaped being arrested, since that chaotic pic was taken right next to police tackling a few people.
but it was soon after that, that i turned around to see about 10 people so far sitting along the far wall in handcuffs. They were much more aggressive this time around, both in action and in words, slamming people to the ground or walls indiscriminately. One person that i witnessed getting particularly irate with the police response was a ny times reporter who was shoved into a glass door. here's another ny times freelancer also having issues with the police
but to cut to the chase, john was arrested as you saw in that last pic at around 11:30am monday and was just released from his arraignment at about 1am wed. yes, he was held in custody with 16 other people for about 37 hours for taking pics/videos with his phone.
Molly did a spot on Keith Olbermann's show tuesday discussing the arrest. you can watch it here
The video clips they edited in there come from this video that one of the other usual ows livetweeters, @diceytroop made. around the 6 min mark is where you can see john getting thrown down to the ground.
if you want to follow john on twitter, he's @johnknefel. molly is @mollyknefel.
mine is @wookietv...

anyway, there's some katg family ows news....

p.s. they're still so cute while being arrested

[JackFetch]

Another one in the clink.