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The trial became a rallying point among people who sympathized with the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011 and 2012, which called attention to the gap between rich and poor and criticized the government bailout of big banks. Many of Ms. McMillan's supporters saw in her a potent symbol of the police crackdown that ended the occupation of Zuccotti Park and snuffed out the protest's momentum.
—James C. McKinley Jr. in The New York Times [4]
The trial was held at the New York City Criminal Court. McMillan was defended by Martin Stolar, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild. [21] [22] McMillan said that a bruise on her breast, shown in photographs at trial, was inflicted by Officer Bovell. Prosecutors argued that Bovell did not cause the injury. They said McMillan did not report the alleged assault at either of two hospitals where she received treatment on the night of the arrest, but that the pictures were taken days later by her personal doctor. [13] [23]
The trial lasted a month. On May 5, 2014, the twelve-person jury reached its verdict after deliberating for three hours. The jury found McMillan guilty of intentionally assaulting a police officer. [24] The court convicted her of second-degree assault, a felony that could have resulted in a prison term of up to seven years. [25] Justice Ronald A. Zweibel ordered her detained without bail until her sentencing on May 19. [26] McMillan was later sentenced to three months in prison and five years of probation; she was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation and treatment. [27]
McMillan served her sentence at Rikers Island Penitentiary. On May 9, members of the Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot visited McMillan on Rikers Island as part of a campaign by The Voice Project petitioning for leniency. [28] [29] A friend of McMillan said that McMillan was made to wait close to three weeks before receiving her prescribed ADHD medication, and that she was intermittently denied it afterwards. [6] McMillan said that after asking how she could obtain her medication, a corrections officer who had previously addressed her as "Vagina" answered, "Oh, you want your crazy pills?". [11] In one case, she said she was assaulted by the prison pharmacist for looking at his badge after he allegedly harassed her. She filed a complaint but did not take further action due to worries about retaliation. [30] [31] McMillan was released on July 2, 2014 after serving 58 days at Rikers. [32]
After her release, McMillan advocated for the rights of prisoners at Rikers. In an opinion piece for The New York Times, McMillan said that inmates were denied medical treatment, humiliated, and subject to random searches. [30] At a press conference, she called for "better access to healthcare, drug rehabilitation services and education inside the jail." [6] McMillan told Democracy Now! that "deplorable conditions existed in the prison," and expressed concern over the death of her friend Judith, who died shortly before McMillan's release. [30] [33] She viewed Judith's death as a potential case of medical malpractice, saying that Judith's pain medication had been switched to a dangerously high dose, and that requests to get Judith medical treatment after her condition declined were ignored. [30] [31] [33] [34] [35] [36]
In December 2013, McMillan was arrested and charged with obstructing governmental administration after she tried to intervene when a police officer asked two people in a Union Square subway station for identification. [2] According to the criminal complaint, she was accused of misrepresenting herself as a lawyer and urging the two people not to cooperate with police. [2] After she was acquitted of the charges in November 2014, her lawyer said, "Being annoying and obnoxious to the police is not illegal." [37]
In 2016, McMillan's The Emancipation of Cecily McMillan, a memoir, was published by Bold Type Books. [38]
Rikers Island is a 413-acre (167.14-hectare) prison island in the East River in the Bronx that contains New York City's largest jail.
Zuccotti Park is a 33,000-square-foot (3,100 m2) publicly accessible park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is located in a privately owned public space (POPS) controlled by Brookfield Properties and Goldman Sachs. Zuccotti Park is bounded by Broadway to the east, Liberty Street to the north, Trinity Place to the west, and Cedar Street to the south.
Molly Crabapple is an American artist and writer. She is a contributing editor for VICE and has written for a variety of other outlets, as well as publishing books, including an illustrated memoir, Drawing Blood (2015), Discordia on the Greek economic crisis, and the art books Devil in the Details and Week in Hell (2012). Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Barjeel Art Foundation and the New-York Historical Society.
Throughout the history of the New York City Police Department, numerous instances of corruption, misconduct, and other allegations of such, have occurred. Over 12,000 cases have resulted in lawsuit settlements totaling over $400 million during a five-year period ending in 2014. In 2019, misconduct lawsuits cost the taxpayer $68,688,423, a 76 percent increase over the previous year, including about $10 million paid out to two exonerated individuals who had been falsely convicted and imprisoned.
Mary Kerry Kennedy is an American lawyer, author and human rights activist. She is the seventh child of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. During her 15-year marriage to future New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, from 1990 to 2005, she was known as Kerry Kennedy-Cuomo. She is the president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a non-profit human rights advocacy organization.
The Voice Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit advocacy group focused on promoting freedom of artistic expression as an agent of social change. The project was founded in 2009 as a response to the Lord's Resistance Army Insurgency in Northern Uganda, but has since expanded programs into Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Russia, China, Afghanistan, Cuba, and the United States.
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial District, and lasted for fifty-nine days—from September 17 to November 15, 2011.
The following is a timeline of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), a protest which began on September 17, 2011 on Wall Street, the financial district of New York City and included the occupation of Zuccotti Park, where protesters established a permanent encampment. The Occupy movement splintered after NYC Mayor Bloomberg had police raid the encampment in Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. The timeline here is limited to this particular protest during this approximate time-frame.
The Occupy movement was an international populist socio-political movement that expressed opposition to social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of real democracy around the world. It aimed primarily to advance social and economic justice and different forms of democracy. The movement has had many different scopes, since local groups often had different focuses, but its prime concerns included how large corporations control the world in a way that disproportionately benefits a minority, undermines democracy and causes instability.
Timothy Daniel Pool is an American political commentator and podcast host. He first became known for live streaming the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests. He joined Vice Media and Fusion TV in 2014, later working independently on YouTube and other platforms, where he is known for promoting right-wing views.
The People's Library, also known as Fort Patti or the Occupy Wall Street Library, was a library founded in September 2011 by Occupy Wall Street protesters in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park located in the Financial District of New York City. It was temporarily evicted when Zuccotti Park was cleared on November 15, 2011, during which time 5,554 books were thrown away by the New York City Police Department. In April 2013, the Government of New York City was ordered to pay $366,700 for the raid, which was found to have violated the protesters' First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
The Occupy the Hood movement is a nationwide grassroots movement in the United States that is an extension of Occupy Wall Street and of the Occupy Movement generally. The movement started in response to how the Occupy Wall Street movement was developing after its initial encampment in Zuccotti Park. Occupy the Hood seeks to represent the interests of oppressed people and to bring people of color into the Occupy Movement. The movement has been especially active in its attempts to decolonize the Occupy Movement. Occupy the Hood was created by Malik Rhasaan, from Jamaica, Queens. Occupy the hood chapters exist in the U.S. cities of Atlanta, Boston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York City, New York, and other major metropolitan cities.
On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American man, was killed in the New York City borough of Staten Island by Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, after the latter put him in a prohibited chokehold while arresting him. Video footage of the incident generated widespread national attention and raised questions about the use of force by law enforcement.
Joshua Wong Chi-fung is a Hong Kong activist and politician. He served as secretary-general of the pro-democracy party Demosisto until it disbanded following the implementation of the Hong Kong national security law on 30 June 2020. Wong was previously convenor and founder of the Hong Kong student activist group Scholarism. Wong first rose to international prominence during the 2014 Hong Kong protests, and his pivotal role in the Umbrella Movement resulted in his inclusion in TIME magazine's Most Influential Teens of 2014 and nomination for its 2014 Person of the Year; he was further called one of the "world's greatest leaders" by Fortune magazine in 2015, and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol is a work of performance art by American artist Emma Sulkowicz. Released on 3 June 2015, the work consists of a website hosting an eight-minute video, introductory text and an open comments section. The video shows Sulkowicz having sex with an anonymous actor in a dorm room at Columbia University in New York City. It was directed by artist Ted Lawson in early 2015, while Sulkowicz was in the final year of a visual-arts degree at Columbia.
Kalief Browder was an African American youth from The Bronx, New York, who was held at the Rikers Island jail complex, without trial, between 2010 and 2013 for allegedly stealing a backpack containing valuables. During his imprisonment, Browder was kept in solitary confinement for 800 days.
Mariah Lopez is an American activist based in New York City. She has been a plaintiff in multiple lawsuits related to civil and human rights, and has lobbied for legislation and greater policy protections for LGBTQ people. Lopez is the executive director for STARR, a transgender rights advocacy group.
The trial of Cecily McMillan was held at the New York City Criminal Court.
Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco was a 27-year-old Afro-Latina transgender woman who died at Rikers Island, New York City's main jail complex, on June 7, 2019, in solitary confinement after staff failed to provide her with medical care that could have saved her life for 47 minutes following an epileptic seizure. After a six-month investigation, the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) and Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark claimed that staff members were not responsible for Polanco's death. Records indicate that officers had extensive knowledge of Polanco's epilepsy, she having already suffered multiple seizures at Rikers.
Cecily McMillan Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University Special Collections