#OccupyWallStreet

[hbcat]

Magnificent.

[lofter1]

When: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17
Where: At The Center
538 LaGuardia Place
NYC 10012

EVENT REGISTRATION

In an age of social unrest, political upheaval, and economic uncertainty, the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and around the country, has challenged the physical manifestation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly. New York’s Zuccotti Park has been at the center of a very public debate on democracy and class strife. Where can the public congregate at a time when public parks close at dark, and “POP’s,” privately owned public spaces, are in fact privately controlled? Where and how do people congregate today? Architects, urban planners, and civil liberties experts will put in context the state of public space today, and how design can play a role in our free expression through assembly.

Introductory Remarks:
Lance Jay Brown, FAIA, ACSA, Distinguished Professor in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York

Panelists:
Michael Sorkin, Principal, Michael Sorkin Studios; Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Urban Design Program at The City College of New York
Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
Rick Bell, FAIA, Executive Director, American Institute of Architects New York Chapter
Gregory Smithsimon, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Brooklyn College

Closing Remarks:
Ron Shiffman, FAICP, Professor, Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment

Organized by the Center for Architecture, Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, and the City College of New York School of Architecture.

[GordonGecko]

that is interesting - where can people legally congregate when parks close at night? Also I've always been interested in the constitutionality of requiring a permit to demonstrate, there must be some sort of enshrined rights to assemble that is not subject to a local government's discretion

[BrooklynLove]

That the industry is criminal, or your defense of it? Refer to the rest of your post. Or for that matter, any of your posts in this thread. Is that all you have to say about the issues?

Maybe the people agitating in all the squares and public places are doing it for the rest of us that can't. Maybe they're trying to get us to wake up.

Not really following you on the criminal industry point.

Honestly, I'm too busy trying to make my way than to spend time screaming for someone else to make it for me. The fact that the city has to pay extra money to increase police force, jail and court resources to deal with these babies makes me want to vomit.

[lofter1]

Be careful where those cookies get tossed -- hate to see additional public funds used to clean up another mess.

Funny how the total excess of governmental response isn't questioned -- as if it's accepted that those in charge know best how to use our money.

But now they've set the precedent that a battalion or more are required at every turn, and they can't back down from that position lest they (1) admit they've completely over-reacted & (2) show they really don't need more of the bazillion$ they've been taking to $ecure the Homeland.

[Ninjahedge]

Double edge Loft... They are defending the Homeland from the Homelanders and charging them for it!

[stache]

We have met the enemy and he is us?

[Bingo]

Check out the abuse of power from the NYPD on 12/3/11 up in The Bronx.

[hbcat]

Beijing. Moscow. New York.

Same police tactics.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Not really following you on the criminal industry point.

See my post #740.

All these, as you call them, babies are doing is shining a light on what has become a criminal industry, supported by a complicit government and police force. But they don't really know what to do. Who does?

Not knowing what to do about a problem doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. We were pulled back from a global economic precipice a few years ago, but what's changed? What have we learned?

I'm convinced that those running the criminal industry learned a lesson - No matter what we do, the government and the 99% will bail us out. At worst, we will escape relatively unscathed; at best, profit from it.

As I've asked, do you think such a social model is sustainable? What is down the road?

[Merry]

OWS Goes on Hunger Strike to Occupy “Lent Space”

by Kelly Chan



This past Saturday, Occupy Wall Street protesters began their hunger strike “as part of a continued effort seeking sanctuary on Trinity Church’s unused land.” As the New York Observer reports, following their eviction from Zuccotti Park last month, Occupy Wall Streeters have turned their efforts to occupy a new home, specifically an unused open space owned by Trinity Real Estate and Trinity Church.

Known as Duarte Square, the plot of land at the intersection of Canal Street and Sixth Avenue is curiously comprised of both public and private land. While Duarte Park is City-owned, the larger enclosed portion of the square is privately owned by Trinity Wall Street. Moreover, the private space so coveted by OWS protesters is currently licensed for use to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for a temporary architectural and art installation known as “Lent Space,” designed by social architecture advocates and the latest firm to overhaul MoMA PS1’s courtyard space, Interboro Partners.



Lent Space is characterized largely by its 7-ft-tall semi-permeable fence, which consists of a line of uniform, moveable plywood walls set on pivots to allow for different degrees of access. In classic Interboro form, the walls challenge their inbuilt notion of exclusion, not only by including an unglazed strip window at eye level, but also by doubling as inviting benches that can pivot to face one another in a tête-à-tête arrangement or turn away for greater privacy. By unlocking and pivoting different portions of the fence, the space seeks to facilitate an intermingling of disparate urban groups in the vicinity, from nearby office workers to “sidewalk mall” vendors selling fake handbags and t-shirts.





Though bound up in lofty ideas, the already discreet dose of social advocacy programmed in Lent Space has ground to a halt, as the installation is currently closed for the season. This means that its pivoting walls have their backs turned to the public, their benches definitively concealed, and the interior space more “interior” than ever in anticipation for the colder months ahead.

Thus, not only is Duarte Square a privately owned public space like Zuccotti Park, but it is also the site of a currently inactive work of “social” architecture. What could be a more ideologically appropriate home for the recently evicted OWS movement?

Determined to “liberate” Duarte Square, OWS hunger strikers emerged with an ultimatum to Mayor Bloomberg, asking for permission to occupy the space currently licensed to the LMCC or face a hunger strike, which began this past Saturday. If Bloomberg submits, it will be interesting to see Interboro’s project being pushed to its limits, swinging to its very extreme and becoming the embodiment of unfettered access.


[All images courtesy the architects]

http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog...99/lent-space/

[lofter1]

To add another twist, the area just outside the Lent Space plot and east of the pivoting Bench / Fence used to be a sidewalk -- purely public space in anyone's book. But part of the deal that Trinity cut with the city a few years back included de-mapping that little stretch of roadway that runs along the west side of Duarte Square, so the old public sidewalk is now on private property:

As part of the land-use changes two years ago, a service road on the west side of the square, formerly the southern end of Sullivan St., was de-mapped and added to the Trinity Real Estate property across the street. It allows Trinity to replace its current three-to-eight-story buildings on the block with a 22-story building.

[lofter1]

THE TAX-DODGING OWNERS OF ZUCCOTTI PARK OWE THE CITY $139,000 IN BACK TAXES

ThinkProgress

It turns out that the owners of Zuccotti Park — the historic site of Occupy Wall Street — have been engaged in some of the very same tax-dodging that many of the protesters were enraged about. The “city Finance Department says park owner Brookfield Properties and its parent company, Brookfield US Corp., currently owe the city more than $139,000 in unpaid business taxes from 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.”

[lofter1]

Bad Optics for Little Mikey ...

Bloomberg’s Girlfriend Was Paid $109,954 In 2009
By The Tax-Dodging Owners Of Zuccotti Park

ThinkProgress
By Zaid Jilani
Dec 5, 2011


Bloomberg with girlfriend Diana Taylor.

It has now been almost three weeks since New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg suddenly sent in riot police to evict the Occupy Wall Street encampment of Zuccotti Park. Today, revelations emerged that the owners of Zuccotti Park, Brookfield Properties, owe the city over $139,000 — four times the starting salary of an officer in the New York Police Department — in back taxes.

MichaelMoore.com notes this in the context of a major conflict of interest. Michael Bloomberg’s girlfriend — Diana Taylor — currently serves on the Board of Directors of Brookfield Properties. The site found that Taylor was paid a whopping $109,954 in 2009, having attended meetings only nine days a year, by Brookfield:



The fact that Bloomberg’s girlfriend netted a six-figure salary from a company that dodged a six-figure amount of taxes while it requested the city to crack down on protesters is discomforting, to say the least.

[lofter1]

One option: Don't pitch a tent. Wear a tent ...