Naomi Wolf Arrested At Occupy Wall Street Protest

By Margaret Hartmann | October 19, 2011 | 1:30pm

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A familiar face was among the dozen or so people arrested last night at Occupy Wall Street. Naomi Wolf, who writes for the Huffington Post, was attending an event where New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was presented with the site’s “Game Changer of the Year Award.” About 50 protesters showed up and when Wolf heard police telling them they needed a permit to use a megaphone, she intervened to say that the permit requirement wasn’t true. Wolf was warned several times that she’d be arrested for demonstrating without a permit, and when she didn’t back down she was cuffed.

On her Facebook page, Wolf writes:

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Here is video of the arrest. You see that I was standing completely still and speaking very calmly to the officer, on a sidewalk that the permit specified protesters could march if they did not obstruct foot traffic which they were not; they were in single file and there was about twelve feet on either side of them/us. My arrest was for ‘disorderly conduct.’ PLease decide for yourself if my completely still position, calm voice and compliance with what I knew to be the terms of the permit can be construed in that way.

In another post, she adds:

Also: some press reports say that I was arrested because I ignored police warnings to get off the sidewalk or that I was arrested for using a megaphone without a permit. Both of these are untrue. I told the protesters that the NYC permit requirement that states that using a megaphone is illegal (though the officer who arrested me used a megaphone) is an unverifiable untransparent requirement because it is basically made up by the administration, permits can be denied with no recourse for any reason, and that we have the right to freedom of speech and assembly. I also did not ‘ignore’ police warnings to get off the street. I DISAGREED with them because I knew the law and I knew that they were misinterpreting or misrepresenting the permit in question. There is no requirement in the permit to ‘get off the street’ if you are not obstructing traffic.

During the dispute, an officer well versed in cop clichés actually told her to “tell it to the judge.”

Image via Mike Shane/ANIMAL NewYork.