Biblioclasm: or, You Can't Evict an Idea
Verso NY found itself in a strange situation last night: we were putting the finishing touches to our new book on the Occupy movement, written and edited by our comrades at n+1, at the very moment that NYPD were evicting Liberty Park. While doing so, the city authorities threw the 5,000-book People’s Library into a sanitation truck—joining, in their own sordid way, a tradition that stretches from the the sacking of the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad, through the Nazis burning Jewish books, to the destruction of libraries in Sarajevo and Baghdad in 1992 and 2003.
The Occupy movement has now spread its roots across the globe, with over 100 occupations in the US alone—and brutal evictions in other cities have tended to lead to new, stronger encampments, often within twenty-four hours. As I write this post, lawyers are fighting the city and NYPD in court, to allow protesters back in, with their belongings. The OWS general assembly met in Foley Square last night—and a new poll shows that a clear majority of New York voters support the 24-hour occupation. The Writers and Artists Affinity Group is planning to help restock the People’s Library, and Verso will of course be contributing (once again) a lot of books. As the protesters chanted last night: “You can't evict an idea.”
Occupy! will be published on December 17th, the three-month anniversary of OWS. Free, as far as possible, at your local occupation; on sale, for $14.95 or £9.99, everywhere else. You choose!