Occupy Underground

Today Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Wall Street Librarians filed a federal lawsuit against Mayor Bloomberg, the City, and the NYPD for compensatory and punitive damages totaling $47,000 for the roughly 3,600 books that were confiscated—nearly 2,800 of them destroyed— during the raid of Zuccotti Park on November 17. "This is an important and potentially historic lawsuit," attorney Norman Siegel, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit says. "It not only addresses the seizure and destruction of the books, but it also seeks to show why, how, and who planned the raid on Zuccotti Park."

Siegel says the information on the planning of the raid should come out in discovery, and adds that the city should have been subject to a court hearing before seizing and destroying the thousands of books that made up the library—including Bloomberg's own book. "Every other city did it before they raided encampments, but not here. The city violated the civil rights of the librarians. The Bloomberg administration had the power to do what they did, but not the right."