Parents For Occupy Wall Street: NYPD & NYC City Hall Breaks Kids Hearts

Parents for Occupy Wall Street, a collective community of parents & organizations in support of Occupy Wall Street met in Union Square Park on Saturday, December 10^th (The International Day of Human Rights) to create 5,000 paper hearts to be delivered to Mayor Bloomberg.  Each paper heart represented a peaceful protester that has been wrongfully arrested since the emergence of Occupy Wall Street movement.

We teach our children at home and in the schools that bullying is wrong and that the police are there to protect and serve the public. We tell them that just like in school, the Police Department have bullies as well, but that they are there to protect and serve us. 

We marched down to City Hall with our children eager to deliver our hearts and our message.  As we were not allowed onto the steps of City Hall due to renovations underway, we decided to tape the hearts onto the gates in front.  We as parents watched in disbelief and disgust as the NYPD tore down the children’s artwork, ripped their hearts, and broke the children's signs over their knees.   All of this can be viewed here: 

http://youtu.be/dAAbk3_VR8Y

We demand:

• That the NYPD apologize for their insensitivity by destroying the children’s artwork, as well as the many documented instances of brutal and unjustifiably violent engagements with civilians and endeavor to return to the honorable role of protecting and serving their citizens.  

• That NYPD commanding officers end all orders of violence and intimidation against peaceful protestors.

• That the NYPD Supervisors [white-shirts] remain in their role as supervisors and control those officers they are on the ground to oversee. On too many occasions we have observed supervisors leading acts of aggression against protestors, acting as instigators, looking to incite violence. On these occasions rank-and-file [blue-shirts] officers have lacked supervision with the result being many situations descending into chaos.

• Demand that the press, are allowed to freely document the Occupy movement without restriction, intimidation, arrest or physical assault; all of which have been widely observed.

• Demand that the escalation in the stop-and-frisk policy be ended; this policy is another example of NYPD bullying and statically proven racial intimidation.

#POWS encourages all parents of the 99% to stand united and march with their families and join with Occupiers, Students, Unions and New Yorkers of all walks of life to demand that our law enforcement officers act appropriately and responsibly when serving their public. We are not a ‘Police State’ and we do not accept being treated that way.

The NYPD’s attention should be focused on convicting the criminal actions of the Wall St. elites who crippled our economy with fraudulent investment scams. Since September 17th over 5,000 peaceful ‘occupiers’ have been arrested. Since the 2008 financial crisis 0 bankers have been arrested… These people brought our country to its knees, effectively robbed our treasury, and not one has been taken into custody. We have every right to ask the question: NYPD, who do you serve?

Contact: Kirby Desmarais             646.256.3943       Kirby@Everythingindependent.com