#D17 Promises OWS Showdown With NYPD Saturday at Duarte Square

#D17 is the new #OWS.

A new showdown between the NYPD and Occupy Wall Street protesters looms as the movement heads back to the private space next to Duarte Square at noon on Saturday, Dec. 17 (hence the #D17 Twitter tag), after being excommunicated from the site last month by its owner, Trinity Church.

The OWS protesters were uprooted from Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan Nov. 15, and found themselves wanting for another public space, so they made their way to Duarte, a public park at the intersection of Canal Street and Sixth Avenue in SoHo.

The protesters gathered without incident for a couple of hours, then a number of them stormed over a wall separating the public park from the adjacent Trinity-owned lot. At that point, the NYPD swooped in and arrested anyone they could catch inside the private lot, including a couple journalists.

That day will be reenacted Saturday, as OWS plans--in large part via Twitter--to occupy the square once again.

On Saturday, December 17th--the three-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the birthday of Bradley Manning, and the one-year anniversary of the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi--the act that sparked the Arab Spring--Occupy Wall Street will liberate another space, reads an announcing statement for the event on OWS's New York City General Assembly site.

Another Occupy-linked Twitter user on Friday sent out a list of members of its vestry (a church board of sorts) sent out a list of their names, accusing many of them of being members of the 99 percent.

We are not against the church, Occupy organizer Shawn Carrie told Mother Jones. We are against the church aligning itself with Wall Street.

Trinity Church maintains that it will not permit them to set up camp on the site, which is slated to be home to a school one day and is not located in close proximity to the church's actual building in the heart of the Financial District.

Our community needs more people who volunteer in community service--and that is what Occupy Wall Street pledges to do, Keen Berger, the area's Democratic District Leader, told OWS in a statement later mailed to Mother Jones. Trinity and the Community Board 2 should welcome them at the Canal Street site with two provisos: That they help the local community, and that they leave when construction of the new school begins.

More information about #D17 can be found at the New York City General Assembly website. Follow @D17Reoccupy for live #D17 updates.

Some of the General Assembly's information is included below:

The space has public and private components. The public component has room to house both the needs of OWS and space for special events and other community entities:

§ Large circular meeting space where community meetings and large gatherings/concerts happen. A large inflatable dome will serve as heat and shelter for large meetings and can be removed when not in use.

§ A wide walkway that connects the two main entrances along which tabling for working groups and outside initiatives can happen.

§ Along two of the walls that fall within the public space there will be locations for public working groups such as Library, Arts and Culture (with a stage) etc., as well as other components of the practical functioning of the space that we want to make public: Bike generators, composting toilets, medic tent, etc.

The private areas are where people sleep, where sanitation lives:

§ 6 sleeping tents or other structures. Currently it looks like we'll move into the space with some geodesic domes (the military tents are still pending). They will be arranged in semi-circle to provide privacy without there being a grid of alleys.

§ Kitchen straddles the public and private and is next to the large meeting space.

§ Sanitation and toilets.

§ A separate entrance for shipping and receiving.

§ More private meeting area that also straddles private and public for working groups and other meetings.