3/21: Union Square's occupation, active since the brutal NYPD police raid on Liberty Square on 3/17, is currently under threat of eviction. People are needed NOW to converge on the park and hold our public commons! Follow @OWSUnionSquare.

Live updates

• 6:07 AM: Park officially re-opened.
• 5:20 AM: via Twitter: ¨The NYPD have officially fled the scene of their crime.¨ Tonight, at least four people were arrested, books needlessly destroyed, and one woman knocked unconscious by police brutality -- all for the ¨crime¨ of laying down in a public park.
• 4:37 AM: Most police appear to be leaving in advance of the arrival of rush hour traffic when public wakes up. Occupiers return to park, laying down again. Chanting ¨goodbye!¨ at NYPD.
• 4:21 AM: Mainstream media on the scene. The District Attorney has also arrived. Union Square still blocked off. Police still moving Occupiers incrementally to allow sanitation to ¨clean¨ the park. Occupiers being slowly pushed out of the park. Occupier: ¨I really thought the police were going to be chill tonight about this. They were calm and rational earlier. Then they bumrush us, throw girl with head trauma around....¨
• 4:19 AM: Occupier: ¨The rest of the country is going to see this in the morning!¨ Chant: ¨Oppress us, we multiply!¨
• 4:10 AM: Heard on livestream: ¨Wake up [NYPD]; six months of beatings and we´re still here! We´re not going anywhere!¨
• 4:07 AM: Chanting: ¨You have no authority¨ at NYPD; ¨1 we are the people 2 we are united, 3 this occupation is not leaving!¨ Police officer seen with hand on pistol. Other police steal Occupier´s books and throw them away.
• 4:04 AM: EMT and medics approach woman knocked unconscious by police. Cops aggressively storm them, brutally rush into crowd, trample people, causing panic. People screaming. Peaceful protesters are being ATTACKED because they tried to give professional medical attention for head trauma! Injured woman was stepped on.

• 3:56 AM: Police rush the crowd, shoving and attacking people. Livestream briefly down, back up now. At least one person reported badly injured, now unconscious, after being grabbed and thrown to the ground by cops. Medics on the scene.

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Yesterday, members of the New York City Council decried the NYPD´s behavior on the March 17th re-eviction of Liberty Square. Today, Occupy Wall Street will call for the resignation of NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly for authorizing brutality and extreme abuse of police power. At 11am ET, we will march from Foley Square to a 12 noon press conference at 1 Police Plaza. Speakers will include victims of NYPD´s racist ¨Stop and Frisk¨ policies and targeted harassment of the Muslim community, as well as survivors of NYPD violence both within and outside Occupy Wall Street. We will also hear from family members of innocent people shot dead by NYPD in Queens.

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We´ve seen it everywhere people are rising up: governments are militarizing police, attacking their own people, criminalizing protest, and engaging in coordinated surveillance and disruption of social movements. The 1% and their puppets in government are waging a war on dissent.

Local governments across the world are arming their civilian police forces with body armor, automatic weapons, and military-grade ¨less lethal¨ technologies, ranging from sound cannons to ¨bean bag rounds¨ like the ones that nearly killed Iraq War-veteran Scott Olsen, who suffered a fractured skull after being shot in the head with lead-filled bags by the Oakland police during an Oct. 25 Occupy protest. More recently, a protester in Montreal lost an eye after police fired explosives into a crowd of students on strike against tuition hikes. In the United Kingdom, police are pushing for expanded use of tactics like water canons and chemical gas. Many of the same defense contractors getting rich selling tear gas and rubber bullets to autocratic regimes in the Arab world are happy to cut a profit by providing police with expanded weaponry.

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