Friday, 14 October 2011
Occupy Wall Street protesters set for Zuccotti Park showdown
The collection of sleeping bags, camping stoves and Macbook Airs that makes up the Occupy Wall Street stronghold in Lower Manhattan is about to be broken up. Four weeks after the first protesters took up residence at Zuccotti Park, what looks like a final showdown with the city authorities is looming.
The owners of the park, Brookfield Properties, appear to have had enough of their uninvited guests and have ordered a cleanup to begin at 7am on Friday.
On Thursday, representatives of the company distributed leaflets in the park saying that, following the clear-up, protesters will not be allowed to keep sleeping bags, tents, and other camping gear in the park. Nor will they be allowed to lie down on the benches or the ground. In effect, the camp is finished.
Police have said all along that they would enforce the wishes of the park's owners – Zuccotti is a private space that is open to the public under the terms of an agreement with the city authorities.
Occupy Wall Street protesters called for supporters to gather at the park from 6am on Friday to defend it from what they said was an eviction attempt. Police say they will move in to enforce the clean-up from 7am. Some sort of confrontation appears inevitable.
OWS spokesman Tyler Combelic told the ThinkProgress website: "We have decided that at 7 o'clock tomorrow, we will not leave the park. We are not opposed to cleaning it ourselves."
On Wednesday, protesters began cleaning up the park themselves.
The New York Police Department told the Guardian that the park would be cleaned in thirds on Friday, in an operation that was expected to last 12 hours.
Brookfield, the owners, said in the statement distributed to the park's occupants: "Zuccotti Park is a privately-owned space that is designed and intended for use and enjoyment by the general public for passive recreation. For the safety and enjoyment of everyone, the following types of behaviour are prohibited in Zuccotti Park: Camping and/or the erection of tents or other structures; Lying down on the ground, or lying down on benches, sitting areas or walkways which unreasonably interferes with the use of benches, sitting areas or walkways by others. The placement of tarps or sleeping bags or other covering on the property."
Occupy Wall Street said the statement by the owners amounted to an "attempt to shut down #OWS for good".
OWS said in a statement on Wednesday: "Last night Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD notified Occupy Wall Street participants about plans to 'clean the park' – the site of the Wall Street protests – tomorrow starting at 7am. 'Cleaning' was used as a pretext to shut down 'Bloombergville' a few months back, and to shut down peaceful occupations elsewhere.
"Bloomberg says that the park will be open for public usage following the cleaning, but with a notable caveat: Occupy Wall Street participants must follow the 'rules'. These rules include, 'no tarps or sleeping bags' and 'no lying down.'
"So, seems likely that this is their attempt to shut down #OWS for good."
Whatever happens, the protesters have made significant gains. They have forced the media to take notice of them, and they appear to have made inroads with public opinion.
A survey by Time magazine found that 54% of Americans have a favourable impression of the protests, with 23% reporting a negative impression. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, found 37% "tend to support" OWS, while 18% "tend to oppose" it. CBS News headlined a piece on its website: "Occupy Wall Street – more popular than you think".
Matt Wells @'The Guardian'
How Barack Obama went from cool to cold
In June 2002, during a budget crisis in Illinois, a state senator from Chicago's West Side, Rickey Hendon, made a desperate plea for a child-welfare facility in his constituency to be spared the axe. A junior senator from Chicago's South Side, Barack Obama, voted against him, insisting hard times call for hard choices.
Ten minutes later Obama rose, calling for a similar project in his own constituency to be spared, and for compassion and understanding. Hendon was livid and challenged Obama on his double standards from the senate floor. Obama became livid too. As Hendon has told it, Obama approached him, "stuck his jagged, strained face into my space", and said: "You embarrassed me on the senate floor and if you ever do it again I will kick your ass."
"What?" said an incredulous Hendon.
"You heard me," Obama said. "And if you come back here by the telephones where the press can't see it, I will kick your ass right now."
The two men vacated the senate floor and, depending on whom you believe, either traded blows or came close to it.
This is a rare tale of Obama both directly facing down an opponent and losing his cool. But during the past year many of his supporters have wished he would show such flashes of anger, urgency and passion more often (if perhaps a bit more focused and less macho and juvenile). He campaigned on the promise to transcend the bipartisan divide; many of his supporters would like to see him stand his ground against his Republican opponents. Having praised his calm-headed eloquence, some would now like to see more passion.
The presidency is not just the highest office in the land. It is in no small part a performance. To some extent Americans look to their president to articulate the mood and embody the aspirations of the nation, or at the very least that part of it that elected them. Presidents are not just judged on what they say and do but how they say and do it. It's not just what they achieve but how they are perceived, to the point where image trumps reality. Ronald Reagan raised the debt ceiling 17 times, ballooned the deficit, reduced tax loopholes and tax breaks. But he remains the darling of the Tea Party movement because he talked their talk, even if he didn't walk their walk.
With his soaring rhetoric and impassioned oratory Obama performed brilliantly as a candidate. But in office he has come across as aloof at a time of acute economic pain and insufficiently combative when faced with an increasingly polarised political culture. The former academic is regularly accused of taking too professorial a tone: talking down to the public rather than to them.
"Americans would like their president to be sick and needy," explains James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute and executive member of the Democratic Executive Committee. "Bill Clinton would shake literally tens of thousands of hands every Christmas. Each person he'd meet would say: 'I think he remembered me.' Obama doesn't like to do it. No real person would like to do it. And therefore he doesn't do it. And people resent that. They want their president to really need them. He doesn't. He's OK, he's relaxed, cool, calm. I'd love him to call me up like Clinton would … people like that, he doesn't need it."
But come election day next year he will need them. And with his approval ratings languishing in the low 40s, it looks as though they might not be there for him...
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Gary Younge @'The Guardian'
Wonky Protest Sign Highlights Growing Inequality
I think this is a huge step forward from the giant puppets of my college days:
I initially didn’t like the fact that Occupy Wall Street didn’t have real demands, but I think the 99 Percent Movement has grown into an incredibly useful platform for engagement and education.
Matthew Yglesias @'ThinkProgress'
Al Gore: Thoughts on Occupy Wall Street
“The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.”
“At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.”
From the economy to the climate crisis our leaders have pursued solutions that are not solving our problems, instead they propose policies that accomplish little. With democracy in crisis a true grassroots movement pointing out the flaws in our system is the first step in the right direction. Count me among those supporting and cheering on the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Via
Public Space, Private Rules: The Legal Netherworld of Occupy Wall Street
The three-plus-week-old protest has allowed New York to make use one of its least effective policies. Zuccotti Park is one of New York’s 500-plus “privately owned public spaces,” but most are so useless and unattractive that no one even thinks of them as parks at all.
The POPS program was creating in 1961 to add much-needed park space to Manhattan’s unrelenting street grid. The city offered a deal to real estate developers: create a public space on your property, and earn the ability to extend the building 20 percent higher. Zuccotti Park—originally known as Liberty Park before it was renamed after the CEO of its corporate owner—was built in 1968 under such an agreement.
Developers were quick to jump on the opportunity to squeeze more space (and thus profit) into Manhattan’s expensive, narrow land plots. Some buildings created two spaces: Zuccotti Park, for example, was built as part of the deal to construct 1 Liberty Plaza, across Liberty Street. That building got its height bonus for putting a typically useless and unattractive “plaza,” ringed with concrete pillars, around the structure itself. But in exchange for further special zoning permits, such as an exemption from a requirement that the building be set back for light and air, the company also built the park across the street.
For many years, the city government imposed no requirements on how the spaces were to be designed and decorated. Unsurprisingly, developers took that as license to do as little as possible. Thus, many POPS are nothing more than an empty swath of concrete in front of an office tower, breaking up an aesthetically consistent row of buildings. For examples of POPS at their worst, check out Park Avenue in Midtown or the building across Broadway from Zuccotti Park. A 2007 study by the New York City Department of City Planning, the Municipal Art Society and Jerold Kayden, a professor of urban planning at Harvard, found that 41 percent of POPS "are of marginal utility." At the other end of the spectrum, only "16 percent of the spaces are actively used as regional destinations or neighborhood gathering spaces..."
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Ben Adler @'GOOD'
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka On Occupy Wall Street and Mayor Bloomberg
Mayor Bloomberg runs the risk of standing on the wrong side of history tomorrow. It is clear that what is being threatened in Zuccotti Park is nothing but silencing the voices and stomping out the rights of Americans. Participants in Occupy Wall Street are now in their fourth week of declaring that “we are the 99 percent” because our system is desperately, decisively out of whack—the top one percent is pocketing massive profits and dominating our politics while everyone else struggles to make ends meet. It is shocking that Mayor Bloomberg feels like that’s a message that needs to be silenced. The AFL-CIO stands with Occupy Wall Street and the 99 percent of Americans just trying to level the massively unequal playing field.
Via
MoveOn MoveOn.org
BREAKING: "The park is clean. If the mayor wants to do something for America, he should clean up Wall St." -@DanielMintz. #OccupyWallStreet
Ex-NYPD cop sued for allegedly acting as pimp to a 13 year old
A teenage girl is suing a former New York City police detective who allegedly forced her to work as a prostitute. The lawsuit says Wayne Taylor, a former narcotics detective, forced the young runaway to work as a prostitute from the age of 13. The New York Post reported. She is suing Taylor and the New York Police Department for $25 million.
Taylor, who pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping, served 3 1/2 years in prison before he was released in January, the newspaper said.
Taylor, who pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping, served 3 1/2 years in prison before he was released in January, the newspaper said.
Meet Rick 'the Hipster Cop'
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