Last night--the NYPD broke up the Zuccotti Park camp--including the Library.

I don't want to link to the clips regarding the police brutality or the unfairness of the police taking people's property to the dump so they couldn't get it back--it's true, but here's a clip of one of the librarians of the People's Free Library at Zuccotti Park from about a month ago:



This was a beautiful thing--over 5,500 books brought together by donors and maintained as a resource for a functioning temporary autonomous zone. And the police came and shoveled that beautiful resource into garbage trucks and it went to the dump.

It's just not possible to compact, incinerate, or dump an idea. The Occupy movement is something bigger than a place or a library, and yet, the way the library was disposed of is a symbol, in my mind, of what an event like the shutting down and moving out of the Occupy Wall Street protesters signifies.  It's an attempt to tamp down ideas. It's an attempt to break up communication.  It's a means to take apart a collection of facts and stories and meanings because they pose a possible threat.

I have no doubt that a new library will be built--just as the Occupy protesters will reassemble. But the books that were disposed of and will never be read again--like the protesters that once dispersed, either can't come back because of their situation or won't come back because they were made to be afraid?  Upset me. They deserved so much better than this overreaction to a little First Amendment freedom.