Above: Cecily McMillan with Rebecca Heinegg and Marty Stollar at counsel table.
Below are two articles describing the testimony of Cecily McMillan, the occupy protester on trial for assaulting a police officer. She testified that she was grabbed by someone from behind who pulled her down onto the ground by grabbing her breast. She does not remember hitting the officer with her elbow after she responded to having her breast grabbed. Below are two articles by The Guardian and The New York Times describing her testimony: “Cecily McMillan: I was labeled ‘Paris Hilton of Occupy Wall Street'”; and “Protester Says She Doesn’t Recall Hitting Officer With Elbow.”
Cecily McMillan: I was labeled ‘Paris Hilton of Occupy Wall Street’
Activist, on trial for deliberately assaulting a police officer as he removed protesters from Zuccotti Park in 2012, told court she was dismissed as mainstream by more radical protesters
By Jon Swaine in New York
The Guardian
Taking the witness stand for the first time in her trial for felony assault, Cecily McMillan told the jury that she advocated a course of peaceful demonstration and political engagement with the outside world that frequently set her apart from other members of the protest movement.
McMillan, 25, told the Manhattan criminal court that as soon as she became involved with Occupy in the summer of 2010, she urged her fellow campaigners to make a declaration that the organisation “stands against violence as a means of political action”.
“From the moment I showed up, I was very concerned that there was not some sort of mission statement – who we are and what we stand for – and particularly that we stand against violence,” she said, under questioning from her attorney, Martin Stolar.
McMillan, a graduate student at the New School, is accused of deliberately assaulting police officer Grantley Bovell as he removed Occupy protesters from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park late on 17 March 2012. She denies the charge and faces up to seven years in jail if convicted.
Bovell, 35, testified earlier this month that he was left dazed and in pain after McMillan elbowed him in the face. He received a black eye and said that he had suffered headaches.
McMillan is expected to claim when she resumes testifying on Wednesday morning that she instinctively swung her elbow at Bovell after he grabbed one of her breasts from behind. Her lawyers have said that she did not know he was a police officer and did not intend to hurt him.
McMillan said on Tuesday that her repeated attempts to codify an Occupy Wall Street platform – against public spending cuts, stop-and-frisk and student debt – were not well received. “I was not seen as very radical,” she said. “They called me a liberal, and I didn’t know that was a kind of backhanded term”.
Because her clothes were different, she said, “I was published in Mother Jones magazine as the Paris Hilton of Occupy Wall Street”. Amid giggling from her supporters in the public gallery, judge Ronald Zweibel said: “There is not to be any laughter in this courtroom during testimony”.
McMillan said that after becoming involved in political activism at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, she began working for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) on the group’s priorities of “healthcare, jobs, free higher education and workers’ rights”.
After being asked by curious DSA officials to visit the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street movement in Tompkins Square Park, she said, she became involved herself, inspired by the ongoing housing crisis and the public influence of corporations. However, she found significant opposition to her proposals for concrete demands.
“I think most of the people at Occupy Wall Street really wanted to cut themselves off from a violent society and to create a society anew in the park,” where healthcare and food were provided, she said. “They were not particularly interested in negotiating with what they viewed as a violent and decrepit and ultimately unsalvageable state”.
By contrast, said McMillan, she wanted to take the influence of “this beautiful experiment” to “the biggest possible level, the national level”, in an attempt to effect political change. McMillan is expected to be cross-examined by state prosecutors on Wednesday. They and McMillan’s lawyers are then due to make their closing arguments.
Protester Says She Doesn’t Recall Hitting Officer With Elbow
Cecily McMillan, the Occupy Wall Street protester charged with assaulting a New York City police officer, testified on Wednesday that she has no recollection of blackening the officer’s eye with her elbow. Having watched a video of the episode, though, she does not deny doing it.
“As I have no memory of my elbow coming into contact with the officer’s face,” she said, “I’ve watched it hundreds of times trying to make sense of what happened.”
On this ninth day of testimony, Ms. McMillan, 25, stood by her claim that she reacted during a clearing out of Zuccotti Park on March 17, 2012, after Officer Grantley Bovell grabbed her breast.
“All of the sudden I feel somebody grab me from behind, from my right breast, and pull me backward,” she said. “I was lifted in the air and then I felt my face slammed to the ground.”
Ms. McMillan said she had spent that St. Patrick’s Day on a pub crawl with a visiting friend. They took a cab to Zuccotti Park in the hopes of finding another friend, and a less crowded Lower Manhattan bar. The friend, Lara Wasserman, an opera singer, testified Wednesday that she and Ms. McMillan each had about seven beers in the four hours before the incident. When asked by a defense lawyer, Martin R. Stolar, if that was excessive, Ms. Wasserman said, “No, we went to school in Wisconsin.”
Closing arguments are expected to begin Friday.
Ms. McMillan, a labor organizer who faces seven years in prison if convicted, expressed remorse.
“I’m really sorry that officer got hurt,” she said. “People are doing their jobs; stuff happens.”
She added that part of what drew her to the protests at Zuccotti Park was the hope of pushing the city to negotiate better contracts for its police officers.
On cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Erin Choi hammered on records of Ms. McMillan’s medical examinations from the days right after her arrest. None specified that her breast was groped.
“It says I was abused,” Ms. McMillan said. “But it does not say specifically my breast.”
Earlier, Officer Bovell testified that he put his hand on Ms. McMillan’s shoulder to steer her out of the park after she refused a command to leave from a second officer. He also admitted to being suspended for several days by the Police Department for fixing traffic tickets in 2010.
An onlooker’s video of the episode appeared to show Ms. McMillan elbow Officer Bovell’s face, run several steps, and get tackled by several officers.
Of the thousands of people arrested at Occupy Wall Street, she is just one of a few who opted for a trial. She did so, she has said, because accepting the state’s plea deal to avoid jail would have put a felony on her record.
Ms. McMillan said while her memories of that day — the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street — are just “visceral blurs,” her interpretation of the video was that Officer Bovell grabbed her “forcefully from behind” and caused her knees to buckle just before she struck backward.
“I was a cheerleader; I know how to jump,” she said. “But I’m a completely nonviolent activist and I’ve been through extensive training to make sure that no part of my body could ever be used to hurt others.”
