Salon.com > New York City http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Jon Huntsman for New York City mayor? http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/yes_jon_huntsman_please_run_for_mayor_of_new_york/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/yes_jon_huntsman_please_run_for_mayor_of_new_york/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 17:36:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12922107 Yes, Jon Huntsman should definitely run for mayor of New York, because I never tire of watching Jon Huntsman get rejected by voters. The best part of a Jon Huntsman campaign is when his well-heeled supporters very sincerely and tragically argue that the fact that no one wants to vote for Jon Huntsman is a sign that the Republic itself is in peril. They would get so sad and melodramatic when he got 10 percent of the vote.

Now, there is no evidence that Jon Huntsman is planning for run for mayor of New York City, but one of his annoying daughters tossed this one out there last night:

Why not? I mean sure he has never lived in New York and has no connection to the city, but why not?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/yes_jon_huntsman_please_run_for_mayor_of_new_york/feed/ 9 Michael Bloomberg plays the endorsement game again http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/michael_bloomberg_plays_the_endorsement_game_again/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/michael_bloomberg_plays_the_endorsement_game_again/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 16:16:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12913471 Mitt Romney yesterday had a "private" (well-publicized) meeting with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg that was a pretty obvious attempt by Romney to win the for-some-reason "coveted" Bloomberg endorsement. Mayor Bloomberg is not actually the hugely popular and universally respected national figure that anti-partisanship zealot pundits think he is -- only around 20 percent of Americans viewed him favorably in 2010, and a 2011 poll says he'd get a mere 10 percent of the vote in a three-way presidential race -- but those anti-partisanship zealots represent an important constituency of "rich people who run the media," so a Bloomberg endorsement would be a strong signal that Romney is moderate and wise and prudent and so on.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/02/michael_bloomberg_plays_the_endorsement_game_again/feed/ 5 New York’s dying signs http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/new_yorks_dying_signs/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/new_yorks_dying_signs/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:50:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12814281 Vernacular Typography is the creation of graphic designer and Brooklyn native Molly Woodward, who has spent the past decade taking photos of the city's "found lettering." All over the city, and the world, local signage is disappearing and being replaced with mass-produced signs and the brands of global corporations. Molly is trying to preserve it--and she has a Kickstarter campaign to help do that.

I asked her a few questions about "endangered local signage."

How are you defining "Vernacular Typography"?

I guess it should technically be Vernacular "Lettering," but I define Vernacular Typography as the found lettering that exists in the built environment and surrounds us everyday. It doesn't have to be pretty or use an existing typeface, it's just any visual representation of language.

How do you think New York City's vernacular typography differs from other cities around the country and the world?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/new_yorks_dying_signs/feed/ 1 NYPD must spy on all Muslims to protect us from Iranian photographers http://www.salon.com/2012/03/22/nypd_must_spy_on_all_muslims_to_protect_us_from_iranian_photographers/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/22/nypd_must_spy_on_all_muslims_to_protect_us_from_iranian_photographers/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 19:22:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12723321 The NYPD is less a "police department" than a secretive and unaccountable international intelligence-gathering organization with a large minority-frisking division and the firepower of a mid-sized army. Lately they have been facing a bit of criticism for their style of intelligence-gathering, which seems to be done with more gusto than concern for civil liberties or... accuracy. Sometimes the NYPD's muscular-but-stupid approach to spying gets them in trouble with the FBI. And when the organization that fights terror by recruiting shady weirdos to try to trick random Muslims into saying "jihad" into tape recorders says your practices are counterproductive and out of line, they are probably pretty counterproductive and out of line.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/22/nypd_must_spy_on_all_muslims_to_protect_us_from_iranian_photographers/feed/ 46 White police officials: “We are the real victims here” http://www.salon.com/2012/03/19/white_police_officials_we_are_the_real_victims_here/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/19/white_police_officials_we_are_the_real_victims_here/#comments Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:40:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12699951 New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Sanford, Fla., police chief Bill Lee have both "come out" as victims of insidious prejudice. Speaking to New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica, Kelly had a bit of a laugh at how upset people get over his department's policy of constant harassment of black men.

The other day, Kelly started to hear it from City Council members about his department’s aggressive efforts to reduce the ridiculously high numbers of minorities in the city being victimized by gun crimes. You probably know that fight ended quickly when Kelly went back at them asking for their own solutions.

Talking about all of it Sunday, he said, “Sometimes it sounds sometimes like people are more comfortable stereotyping me.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/19/white_police_officials_we_are_the_real_victims_here/feed/ 65 Mayor Bloomberg personally cheers up Goldman Sachs http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/mayor_bloomberg_personally_cheers_up_goldman_sachs/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/mayor_bloomberg_personally_cheers_up_goldman_sachs/#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:06:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12683361 On Wednesday, accomplished table tennis player Greg Smith announced in a New York Times Op-Ed that he was quitting his job at investment firm Goldman Sachs, because the firm's "culture" has become, at some point in the last 12 years, "toxic." Goldman Sachs responded with a spirited P.R. campaign in which it claimed that Smith was not actually a very important person to the firm, and a leaked memo from Lloyd Blankfein in which he argued that Goldman could not possibly be evil because a recent internal survey proved that Goldman employees enjoy working at Goldman.

Despite that very good spin, Goldman Sachs lost $2 billion worth of market value as its shares fell 3.4 in trading over the course of the day ("oh man, some guy says Goldman Sachs is evil? I HAD NO IDEA" -- the market). Thankfully, one hero stands ready to defend Goldman Sachs from public scorn: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/mayor_bloomberg_personally_cheers_up_goldman_sachs/feed/ 37 16. Andrea Peyser http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/16_andrea_peyser/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/16_andrea_peyser/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10319141 If you haven't spent much time reading the papers in New York City, you may not be familiar with Andrea Peyser. But you may have noticed the woman in the first row of Anthony Weiner's carnivalesque meltdown of a June press conference announcing his online flirtations who spent an inordinate amount of time shouting uncomfortable questions to the soon-to-be-former congressman about the whereabouts of his wife. That's Peyser. She needed the material so that she could finish her 10th column about how Weiner is history's second greatest monster, next to Eliot Spitzer.

Peyser is the New York Post's resident joyless puritanical scold with a particularly Murdochian obsession with sex. Week in and week out, her column -- which has expanded to become an entire page in the physical paper -- details precisely which women are hookers, sluts, gold diggers and tramps (hint: most women, besides some wronged wives) and which men are whore-mongers and perverts (every Democratic politician alive).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/15/16_andrea_peyser/feed/ 6 The creepy taxi cab ride I’ll never forget http://www.salon.com/2011/12/11/the_creepy_taxi_cab_ride_ill_never_forget/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/11/the_creepy_taxi_cab_ride_ill_never_forget/#comments Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10306155 When I got into the back of that taxi, I was still in a good mood. It didn’t matter that I’d waited an hour at Port Authority that morning, with ticket in hand, only to learn that the bus to Middletown, Conn., had stopped running because the driver had retired. It didn’t matter that I’d sprinted across Manhattan to catch a train to New Haven, only to find out that no one could give me a ride from New Haven to Middletown, and that a taxi would cost $70. I’d negotiated with the cabbies at New Haven’s Union Station until I found one who would take me there for $50. I’d scooted into the middle of the backseat and crossed my legs, yoga-style. The day’s sense of emergency had given me a thrill. As we pulled away, the warm air from the open window felt like summer.

So I chatted with my driver. I answered his questions about the conference I was going to, and he told me about the one-car taxi company he’d started himself after coming to America from the Dominican Republic. He asked how old I was. “Twenty-five?” he repeated, like a hundred other well-meaning cashiers and bartenders before him; being small and round-faced, I get this all the time. “I thought you were 14, 16, tops." He told me he had a daughter back home, for whom he worked long hours, especially now — this was June 2008 — when gas prices were so high.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/11/the_creepy_taxi_cab_ride_ill_never_forget/feed/ 155 Mayor Bloomberg’s army http://www.salon.com/2011/12/01/mayor_bloombergs_army/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/01/mayor_bloombergs_army/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10276465 Billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his own army! No, it's not a private security firm, like Blackwater. It's actually, according to the mayor, the New York City Police Department.

Bloomberg, again threatening vaguely to make that presidential run that the American people are decidedly not calling for, told MIT last night that he doesn't even need to be president, because all of his autocratic desires are fulfilled by running America's most populous city as his private fiefdom.

“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

I'm not entirely sure what he means by having his own "State Department." The city's independent nonprofit tourism agency, maybe? But he didn't mention that his army also comes with its own international (and questionably legal) intelligence-gathering apparatus, just like the CIA and FBI, except without any sort of oversight, congressional or otherwise.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/01/mayor_bloombergs_army/feed/ 20 What really cleaned up New York http://www.salon.com/2011/11/19/what_really_cleaned_up_new_york/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/19/what_really_cleaned_up_new_york/#comments Sat, 19 Nov 2011 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10231735 If you compare New York in 2011 to New York in 1990, it seems hard to believe that it's the same city. In the 1970s, '80s and early '90s, New York was viewed as one of the world's most dangerous metropolises -- a cesspool of violence and danger depicted in gritty films like "The Warriors" and "Escape From New York." Friends who lived here during that time talk of being terrified to use the subway, of being mugged outside their apartments, and an overwhelming tide of junkies. Thirty-one one of every 100,000 New Yorkers were murdered each year, and 3,668 were victims of larceny.

Today, in an astonishing twist, New York is one of the safest cities in the country. Its current homicide rate is 18 percent of its 1990 total -- its auto theft rate is 6 percent. The drop exceeded the wildest dreams of crime experts of the 1990s, and it's a testament to this transformation that New Yorkers now seem more likely to complain about the city's dullness than about its criminality.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/19/what_really_cleaned_up_new_york/feed/ 45 Occupy bid to reclaim Zuccotti rejected in court http://www.salon.com/2011/11/15/occupy_bid_to_reclaim_zuccotti_rejected_in_court/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/15/occupy_bid_to_reclaim_zuccotti_rejected_in_court/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:16:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10224251 A New York state judge has denied a request by lawyers for Occupy Wall Street to allow protesters to begin camping in Zuccotti Park again, following their eviction by the NYPD early Tuesday morning.

Here's the key passage from the ruling, which was handed down minutes ago:

The movants have not demonstrated that they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park, along with their tents, structures, generators, and other installations to the exclusion of the owner's reasonable rights and duties to maintain Zuccotti Park, or to the rights to public access of others who might wish to use the space safely. Neither have the applicants shown a right to a temporary restraining order that would restrict the City's enforcement of law so as to promote public  health and safety.

Therefore, petitioner's application for a temporary restraining order is denied.

The Daily News notes this is almost certainly the beginning, not the end, of litigation surrounding the park:

The decision is likely to be appealed, so it was unclear if the city would immediately reopen the park to people without tents.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/15/occupy_bid_to_reclaim_zuccotti_rejected_in_court/feed/ 42 9/11 memorial: No link between Occupy, vandalism http://www.salon.com/2011/11/14/911_memorial_no_link_between_occupy_vandalism/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/14/911_memorial_no_link_between_occupy_vandalism/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10216528 More doubt is being cast on a New York Post story alleging that Occupy Wall Street protesters were responsible for graffiti at the new 9/11 memorial at ground zero.

"We know of no link between Occupy protesters and acts of vandalism," 9/11 memorial spokesman Michael Frazier tells me.

Frazier says he is seeking more information from the Post about its story, which was published last week and began like this:

The NYPD has moved three elite Manhattan homicide detectives and a deputy chief to the raucous Occupy Wall Street protest in response to a rash of sex attacks, thefts and vandalism — including graffiti scrawled on the nearby 9/11 Memorial, The Post has learned.

The story was picked up by conservative blogs despite an apparent lack of evidence that occupiers were involved in the incidents.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/14/911_memorial_no_link_between_occupy_vandalism/feed/ 5 NY Post links Occupy Wall Street to 9/11 memorial graffiti http://www.salon.com/2011/11/11/ny_post_blames_occupy_for_911_memorial_vandalism/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/11/ny_post_blames_occupy_for_911_memorial_vandalism/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:35:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10197361 Quick update on the New York Post's total war on Occupy Wall Street: The Murdoch tabloid is now claiming that Occupy Wall Street demonstrators defaced the new 9/11 memorial, despite absolutely no evidence that anything of the sort happened.

Here's how the story, which was written by Philip Messing and Bob Fredericks and ran under the headline "NYPD sends elite detectives to Wall St. protests," begins:

Send in the cavalry!

The NYPD has moved three elite Manhattan homicide detectives and a deputy chief to the raucous Occupy Wall Street protest in response to a rash of sex attacks, thefts and vandalism -- including graffiti scrawled on the nearby 9/11 Memorial, The Post has learned.

The 9/11 memorial is just a few blocks from Zuccotti Park, the heart of the Occupy Wall Street, and this latest outrage is certainly in keeping with the Post's description of the park as "a sliver of madness, rife with sex attacks, robberies and vigilante justice."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/11/ny_post_blames_occupy_for_911_memorial_vandalism/feed/ 163 The myth of the progressive city http://www.salon.com/2011/11/07/the_myth_of_the_progressive_city/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/07/the_myth_of_the_progressive_city/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10171928 If you've listened to a political pundit predict any election in the last 50 years, you've been told that there are Republican small towns whose politics are organized around the three G's (guns, God and gays) and there are Democratic cities whose politics are organized around the two L's (labor and economic liberalism). While this binary mythology is insulting for its hackneyed stereotyping and lack of nuance, it has at least half the story right -- in terms of sheer partisanship, many rural areas do tend to go red, and many urban areas do tend to go blue.

Where this story goes wrong is in its ideological suppositions about the cities -- and specifically, about Democratic cities. Sure, two or three decades ago, there may have been some truth to the notion that the American city is a union-driven bastion of populist progressive economics. But today, while cities may still largely vote Democratic, they are increasingly embracing the economics of corporatism. The result is that urban areas are a driving force behind the widening intra-party rift between the corporatist, pro-privatization Wall Street Democrats and the traditional labor-progressive "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/07/the_myth_of_the_progressive_city/feed/ 17 Hot chicks of the Gilded Age? http://www.salon.com/2011/11/05/hot_chicks_of_the_gilded_age/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/05/hot_chicks_of_the_gilded_age/#comments Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10160675 "The committee of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has definitely notified the executors of the estate of the late Peter Marié that his famous collection of miniature portraits of New York women will not be accepted as a gift by the institution."

So began a brief New York Times item published in late February 1903. Why did the Met decide to turn down this "famous" bequest -- a vast collection comprising tiny portraits of society "beauties" such as Emily Post, first lady Frances Cleveland and actress Maude Adams?

"There are two difficulties about the miniatures," Met director Luigi Palma di Cesnola bluntly opined. "In the first place, some of them are not art, and in the second place, they are not, considered as a whole, of the historical value that was claimed for them." ("It was said that the collection was of the most beautiful women in the United States," he added. "That is not true, for beautiful women are not confined to the 'four hundred,' and I could go out on Broadway and find women as beautiful as any in the collection.")

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/05/hot_chicks_of_the_gilded_age/feed/ 7 New York Post declares war on Occupy Wall Street http://www.salon.com/2011/11/04/new_york_post_declares_war_on_occupy_wall_street/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/04/new_york_post_declares_war_on_occupy_wall_street/#comments Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:17:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10161790 From the beginning, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post was never exactly friendly to the cause of Occupy Wall Street.

When the NYPD arrested hundreds on the Brooklyn Bridge in one of the watershed events of the young movement on Oct. 1, most of the media seized on the heavy-handed (and possible illegal) police tactics. The Post, on the other hand, led its story with an unnamed "Ground Zero construction worker" bashing protesters:

One irate driver, a Ground Zero construction worker, was livid.

“I work my ass off all day, and these goddamned hippies close down the Brooklyn Bridge so I can’t get home?” he said. “This ain’t right!"

A few days later, columnist Andrea Peyser sneered at the Occupy encampment at Zuccotti Park as "the planetary point where bitchery meets bellyaching."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/04/new_york_post_declares_war_on_occupy_wall_street/feed/ 143 Pacino’s violent new cop drama http://www.salon.com/2011/11/02/depravity_reigns_in_violent_new_york_cop_drama/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/02/depravity_reigns_in_violent_new_york_cop_drama/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10160587 The world's three great cinematic cities -- I mean Los Angeles, New York and Paris, and don't get all pissy with me if you want to argue for someplace else -- all provoke plenty of sentimentality. But I honestly think the Big Apple, with the intense feelings of love and hate it provokes in its denizens and exiles, has the others beaten in that category. Which brings us to this year's competition in the "25th Hour" Memorial Cup competition, to identify the grandest attempt at a cinematic allegory about the fate of New York in the years after 9/11. Recently I labored long and hard over a thoughtful piece about Kenneth Lonergan's long-delayed film "Margaret," and while almost nobody read my review, it was still a larger number than actually paid to see the movie. I have learned my lesson and promise to put in much less effort on this week's entry, a brooding, baffling cop drama called "The Son of No One" from writer-director Dito Montiel.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/11/02/depravity_reigns_in_violent_new_york_cop_drama/feed/ 4 NYPD mum on cops allegedly hurt in OWS http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/nypd_mum_on_cops_allegedly_hurt_in_ows/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/nypd_mum_on_cops_allegedly_hurt_in_ows/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:41:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10159794 Last week, a top New York police union official went on a media blitz putting Occupy Wall Street protesters on notice: any occupier who injures a police sergeant will be hit with a civil lawsuit seeking monetary damages, said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association.

In a New York Post op-ed, Mullins also said that "at least 20 officers have been hurt during flare-ups with protesters whose actions are becoming increasingly hostile and aggressive" -- a fact that he claimed had gone "mostly unreported."

But since Mullins made his claim -- which was picked up by many large media outlets -- both he and the NYPD itself have declined repeated opportunities to detail the injuries allegedly sustained by police officers.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/nypd_mum_on_cops_allegedly_hurt_in_ows/feed/ 19 Report: NYPD steers drunks to Occupy Wall Street http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/report_nypd_steers_drunks_to_occupy_wall_street/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/report_nypd_steers_drunks_to_occupy_wall_street/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:55:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10159669 (UPDATED BELOW)

There's a bombshell allegation buried in this story from Sunday's Daily News: The NYPD is reportedly telling drunks to hang out in Zuccotti Park, apparently as a way to undermine the credibility of Occupy Wall Street.

Harry Siegel reports:

But while officers may be in a no-win situation, at the mercy of orders carried on shifting political winds and locked into conflict with a so-far almost entirely non-violent protest movement eager to frame the force as a symbol of the oppressive system they’re fighting, the NYPD seems to have crossed a line in recent days, as the park has taken on a darker tone with unsteady and unstable types suddenly seeming to emerge from the woodwork. Two different drunks I spoke with last week told me they’d been encouraged to “take it to Zuccotti” by officers who’d found them drinking in other parks, and members of the community affairs working group related several similar stories they’d heard while talking with intoxicated or aggressive new arrivals.

…

“He’s got a right to express himself, you’ve got a right to express yourself,” I heard three cops repeat in recent days, using nearly identical language, when asked to intervene with troublemakers inside the park, including a clearly disturbed man screaming and singing wildly at 3 a.m. for the second straight night.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/report_nypd_steers_drunks_to_occupy_wall_street/feed/ 31 Cornel West arrested as OWS spreads to Harlem http://www.salon.com/2011/10/21/cornel_west_arrested_as_ows_spreads_to_harlem/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/21/cornel_west_arrested_as_ows_spreads_to_harlem/#comments Fri, 21 Oct 2011 21:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10134041 Occupy Wall Street headed to Harlem Friday afternoon in a solidarity march that ended with the arrests of a few dozen protesters including Princeton professor Cornel West -- just days after his arrest in Washington, D.C., at another demonstration.

The arrests, which occurred after marchers linked arms in front of a fortress-like NYPD station just off Frederick Douglass Boulevard, were a planned act of civil disobedience.

The march, which was planned by existing left-wing groups but was also endorsed Thursday by the general assembly at Zuccotti Park, focused on the NYPD's practice of "stop and frisk." That refers to the controversial – and, critics argue, unconstitutional -- practice of officers stopping city residents on the street and searching them.

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