Occupy Thanksgiving

Occupy Wall Street protesters plan to celebrate Thanksgiving in Zuccotti Park today:

Occupy Wall Street protesters plan on marking Thanksgiving with a feast in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan on Thursday.

A volunteer with the demonstrators' public relations group says they will have meals and music for 3,000 people.

The food is being donated by restaurants and individual supporters.

They also say they will be abiding by state Health Department code by wrapping all the plates of food individually.

The music will be acoustic, because protesters do not have a permit for loudspeakers.

There will also be a canned food drive, with donations going to local food banks and pantries.

NY 1 also reports that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly is warning cops to leave journalists alone during anti-OWS actions, citing the police crackdown 0f journalists (including the arrest of five of them) during last week's Zuccotti Park raid as a problem:

Police officers are being ordered to back off the media after several journalists were arrested at Zuccotti Park.

In a letter to station houses, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says officers should not unreasonably interfere with media access during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

He says those who do not follow the rule will face disciplinary action.

The police department came under fire for arresting several journalists and blocking others from gaining access to the park when it was being cleaned out.

This is a joke on the face it.

Kelly led the police action during the raid - you can be sure that HE WANTED the media shut out, shut down, kept away and otherwise unable to witness for themselves or take video and photos of the brutality the police planned to engage in to move protesters out of the park.

Kelly (and his boss, the mayor) are trying to shift blame from themselves to cops in the ranks or mid-level brass for the media crackdown.

But cops in the ranks and mid-level brass didn't order a total shutdown of the subways, a no-fly zone over Zuccotti Park (which kept helicopters from both the CBS and the NBC affiliates from flying over the park and taking pictures from above), and a two block barricade away from the park that kept journalists out of sight of the raid.

Kelly ordered these things, or his boss, the mayor, did.

Either way, the point is the same - Ray Kelly is full of shit on the media crackdown stuff.

His boss, the mayor, a media mogul who owns a major business TV and radio network as well as a major business magazine, understands that they don't want to antagonize the media people too much on this OWS stuff.

After all, the corporate media has so far most dutifully reported the OWS protests using the frame the establishment wants - they're no-good, down and dirty unemployed hippie scum who need to take baths and get jobs and stop making the city spend so much money on overtime and pepper spray.

Just witness how the coverage of the Day of Action last Thursday went.

But the mayor knows that in order to keep the media people on his (and thus, the establishments' side), they have to at least pay lip service to respecting journalists and the job they are supposed to do.

That's all this Kelly declaration is - jive ass bullshit meant to fool people into thinking these fascists won't engage in another media blackout when the chips are down and their cracking heads in.

But you can be sure they won't think twice of repeating any of what they did back at the Zuccotti raid.