Kremlin’s Channel Highlights American Socialist’s Conviction

New Zeal

RT

Kremlin propaganda channel RT (previously Russia Today) highlights the recent conviction of Occupy Wall Street demonstrator Cecily McMillan.

An Occupy Wall Street demonstrator was found guilty of second-degree assault Monday in Manhattan following a months-long trial concerning a 2012 altercation she had with the New York Police Department.

Cecily McMillan, 25, now stands to face as much as seven years in prison behind bars as a result of Monday afternoon’s conviction.

As RT reported earlier this year, McMillan was participating in an OWS demonstration in New York City during the spring of 2012 when she was manhandled by the NYPD while being detained, and received multiples cuts and bruised ribs as a result. While handcuffed, McMillan — then 23 — suffered from a seizure for upwards of seven minutes before reportedly fainting.

According to police, moments earlier McMillan elbowed an officer in the face. She was soon hauled off in an ambulance, and eventually charged with a felony for allegedly injuring NYPD Officer Grantley Bovell. She insisted, however, that Bovell had grabbed her breast from behind, and the elbow she threw was not an attempt to assault a cop, but rather a reflexive response to the unwanted grope. Documents were shown in court of Bovell sporting a black eye after the incident.

The prosecution of course saw things differently:

Assistant District Attorney Erin Choi, the lead prosecutor in the case, testified during the trial that McMillan’s claims were “heinous,” the Village Voice reported, and that the woman “might as well have said that aliens came that night and assaulted her.”

“It is time for the defendant to answer for her own criminal actions,” Choi said during closing arguments on Friday, according to Joe Swaine at the Guardian. “Our founding fathers did not create a right to free assembly so people could commit crimes and hide behind their right to protest. This is a sacred right that should be preserved and protected.”

Stephanie McMillan is a Marxist, a leading member of the Gramsciist communist Democratic Socialists of America.

McMillan is a former senior at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. In addition to her participation in Young Democratic Socialists, previous political involvement includes co-founding and leading her campus’ FairWisconsin student organization, promoting LGBTQ rights, as well as organizing campus-wide political debates and small discussion groups. Before college, she was employed in Atlanta by Georgia PIRG, canvassing for community support on key environmental issues and helped campaign/canvas for far left Georgia State Senator, Nan Orrock.

While she remains a Marxist, Cecily McMillan will always have a friend in Moscow.

Comments

  1. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/15/us/new-york-couch-hidden-money/
    What do Fascist Socialist Communist Anarchist dream about? Free money? Redistribution of wealth?

  2. Well, what exactly is the point here? Pardon my saying so, but this really is a non-story. RT merely reported her conviction, so therefore….? Not sure what conclusions we’re supposed to draw from this fact. I looked over the RT story linked here, and it was substantially the same information presented here, so what exactly is the point? Lots of foreign news outlets covered this story. Is there some special lesson to be drawn from the fact that RT did?

  3. Since we’re simply reporting who reported the story, might as well note that the Wall Street Journal’s “MarketWatch”– which presents a more favorable picture of her and her situation than RT did in the link posted to GB:

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/she-fought-wall-street-and-now-shes-off-to-jail-2014-05-20

    (Particularly noteworthy: Her defense team was not permitted to cross examine the policeman she allegedly assaulted.. do you believe that’s fair?)

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