"Here's to the watchdogs, the whistleblowers, the nonviolent resisters. Those who fight for fairness and hustle to keep the planet honest. Theirs is not an easy stroll through the tulips."

As part of the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, New Zealand band Minuit have teamed up with New York photojournalist Nina Berman to produce "Stories For Boys: Occupy Edit," a people-inspired music video. These photos were taken at the height of the New York occupation, from mid-September to mid-November, as well as in Chicago for the NATO conference in May.

Berman, a veteran photographer and associate professor at Columbia University School of Journalism, is no stranger to being amidst chaotic situations with her camera, and her award winning images capture the expressions, purpose and character in people.

Minuit says that’s what drew them to her work and is also the essence of the Occupy movement.

“Here in New Zealand, Maori have a saying: ‘What is the most important thing? It is people, it is people, it is people.’ Nina’s photos over that ominous beat are spine-chilling.”

But for Minuit the video is not only about Occupy: “It’s for the watchdogs, the whistleblowers, the non-violent resisters who fight for fairplay and hustle to keep their communities honest. That is not an easy stroll through the tulips. Hug an activist today!”

A group of Occupy protesters -- the Guitarmy -- who marched from Philadelphia to NYC converged with local demonstrators at Zuccotti Park this afternoon, where two activists were arrested and a woman collapsed during a chaotic confrontation with the NYPD.

According to emails this evening, the woman on the ground is Mary, (No last name given, sorry.) she's an activist from Washington State who sometimes marches dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Mary participated in the week-long 99-mile Guitarmy march from Philadelphia, which reached NYC today. Conflicting reports on how she wound up on the ground, some say she was knocked down by police, but others say suffered heat stroke and passed out. Word now is that she was treated at the scene, released and is doing fine.

This next video is the arrest of one of the drummers who was one of many musicians at Zuccotti Park:

Apparently, all the chaos started as the protesters were about to enjoy a pasta dinner and security started carrying off the food, and I imagine all those marchers were pretty hungry about then, too.

Here's a photo of livestreamer Jeff's arrest (Jeff sometimes assists Tim Pool, @Timcast)

Tim Pool finished livestreaming for the night with one last update, here, where the tensions seem to have diminished with around 100 protesters still in Zuccotti Park and a huge police presence remaining. No word on the reason for the arrests earlier. Hopefully everyone will remain calm through the night. I'll check on updates in the a.m.

I previously reported on the Chicago police stopping and detaining Occupy journalists Tim Pool and Luke Rudkowski on May 20th during the #NoNATO protests, but in this video, a credentialed photographer is targeted.

Via:

Tracey Pollock, a credentialed photographer for The UpTake, is attacked by police in Chicago during an anti-NATO protest on Saturday. Before the attack, police were using their bicycles as weapons to force back the crowd which was staging a march without a permit.

Police had formed a barricade; as you can see from the video, there was some sort of incident along the barricade. Pollock tried to get closer to see what was happening when a police officer reached up, grabbed her lens and tried to rip her camera away.

The officer then pushed her over some bicycles.
Pollock was wearing a large press badge and as you can hear from the audio, even bystanders could tell she was part of the press. Protesters behind the bicycles pulled her to safety.

Pollock was bruised in the incident but not seriously injured. She says she never crossed the police barricade.

I shudder to think what might have happened if the protesters hadn't been able to reach Tracey. There is no doubt there is much government support behind such treatment of the media, and the brutality heaped on protesters as well. How else could they continually get away with it?