Steve Bergstein, my friend and collaborator for many years, is a civil rights attorney who practices law in New York. He takes on the kinds of cases that address the issues raised in the Zuccotti Park protest hearings today (he is something of a ‘protest in the park’ specialist, truly a legal boutique), and this is his commentary from his legal blog (designed for other attorneys) called Wait A Second. The ‘second’ part is a reference to the Second Circuit of the federal courts, one of the best and the one he practices in. One technical note: an Article 78 proceeding is a lawsuit designed to make the State of New York or any governmental entities within the state follow their own laws. They are notoriously complex. — efc
A State Supreme Court Justice has ruled that the City of New York may prevent the Occupy Wall Street protesters from bringing tents and sleeping bags and other things into Zuccotti Park, where the OWS protests have taken place since September 17, 2011. The ruling denies the OWS request for a temporary restraining order.
The case is Waller v. City of New York, decided on the afternoon of November 15. As everyone knows, the OWS protesters have camped out at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan to protest the vast inequality of wealth in this country and other deficiencies of the capitalist system. For many protesters, the park was a home away from home. I visited the park in mid-October and found a lively scene with hundreds of people holding signs, reading books, playing guitar, pounding on drums and generally hanging around. I don’t know how these people planned on staying there through the winter, but it’s been a mild Autumn and the place was wall-to-wall people with a lot of tourists peeking around as well.