11:04 pm Oct. 12, 201119
Wall Street may not be occupied for much longer.
Two days after Mayor Michael Bloomberg said protesters could stay in Zuccotti Park "indefinitely" if they followed the law, the mayor visited them tonight to say they had to be out of there by Friday, according to the mayor's office. The reason given by the mayor tonight was that the park needs to be cleaned.
The request to clean the park is coming from the company that owns it, Brookfield Office Properties, on whose behalf the chief executive wrote a two-page letter to the NYPD asking for help "to clear the Park" and to "assist" on an "ongoing basis" to keep the area safe and clean.
In the Oct. 11 letter to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, Brookfield's C.E.O., Richard B. Clark, said the four-week old "trespassing of the protesters" has created "a health and public safety issue that must be addressed immediately."
One safety issue, according to Clark, is that if the "underground lighting" has been "cracked, water could infiltrate the electrical system, putting occupants of the Park at risk of an electrical hazard."
Clark also said a woman complained to the company that she had been "verbally abused in front of her 5-year-old child" and "that she had a package stolen from her as she tried to cross the Park."
"In light of this," Clark wrote, "we are again requesting the assistance of the New York City Police Department to help clear the Park so that we can undertake work at the earliest possible time. We will defer to the Department's judgement on how best to accomplish this, but the Department intervention is necessary both to ensure our ability to comply with our obligations as owners and to make the Park safe for the neighborhood and public."
After the cleanup, Clark said he would like to see "the Department assist Brookfield on an ongoing basis to ensure the safety of all those using and enjoying the Park."
The park in question is open to the public but is privately owned, meaning that it has effectively been up to Brookfield to decide how long the demonstrators would be allowed to stay there. Participants have been camped out in Zuccotti Park since Sept. 17.
How great is this?
As long as an angry mob gathers to protest some WASP financiers outside their own homes, Bloomberg grants a permanent stay for these aimless twits... taxpaying residents be damned.
One nut stands up with a "Jews run Wall Street" banner, and he has them run out the very next day!
From this debacle to closing down Broadway so bums can sit in the middle of the street, The nation delights in the nuttiness-on-parade, not to mention the paper-thin skin of your Billionaire Mayor. Good vote on that one New York.
This proves the occupiers point.
Private property rights interfere with personal rights.
If mayor Bloomberg would just use his government powers to take the park away from it's owners and give it to the 99% to care for everything would be A-OK.
The occupiers could do their own cleaning, and their own policing, and they would go out and get jobs to raise the money necessary to maintain the park. Well, err, well maybe they would let the former owner do the cleaning and repairing at the former owners own expense, just to be nice.
Of course anyone who lives nearby and agrees with the protest would still be able to use the park as long as they did not inconvenience the occupiers so that is really not an issue.
Rules?
Who needs rules?
Everyone should be allowed to camp out in the park.
Tourists who want to avoid paying for a hotel room should be able to setup tents and sleep there. After all it is a public park.
Tea Party members who disagree with the "occupiers" should be able to setup tents and sleep there. After all Tea Party members are also members of the public and they also have a 1st Amendment right to speak.
The media needs to cover this so they should be allowed to sleep there.
After all, Jesus was able to feed huge crowds with one loaf of bread, so the occupiers can allow an unlimited number of people to set up tents and sleep in this one small park, right?
No need for rules in this small park, once the 99% is in charge the park will work, much, much better for all.
I guess Bloomie caught someone bringing salt into the park
I have a solution.
The occupiers can have their mommies and daddies come in and clean and maintain the park for them.
This works great for adult children who move back in with their parents, it should work great for the occupiers as well.
See, these little problems are simple to solve once the 99% are in charge.
simple solution, fully paid 1-way bus trip to big open field in Woodstock, NY, catering and tents upon arrival.
Hmmm....I thought that when Bloomberg ordered the park cleared for washing that he was referring to the protestors, not the park itself. Go figure...
Good ole Bloomy! 1st he tells Dem to get the hell out as you're costing NY businesses money. 2nd he gets beat down by OBummer and his gang into letting Dem stay indefinitely. 3rd now the OWS kids are showing America how unAmerican they are (bunch of filthy destructive racist little commie freeloaders) and that's got to stop!
God forbid the filthy commie protesters should clean their own filth. Gimme, gimme, gimme, take, take, take, that's their mantra. Typical parasites.
Maybe after they clean the Park they'll take to protesters over to Saks 5th avenue and clean them up too. At the TAX PAYER EXPENSE of course:-)
How can he give permission for them to stay? A private company owns the park! Hmmmm. Probably an example of things to come from our government. Redistribution on property?
Hmmm...Bloomberg only seemed to have a problem with the communist Occupy crowd when they went all anti-semetic on him..
Guess moving them out for their own "health & safety" is his final solution...
I'd suggest they occupy an active set of train tracks.
Learn the facts before you open your mouth. This isn't a "private park" ... the property is owned privately but the public must be given 24 hour access to it per an agreement signed when the US Steel tower was built. The tower was allowed to exceed the maximum zoned height in exchange for some of the footprint being turned into this park. Most of you appear from your comments to be conservatives. Do you have respect for contracts? The contract here states that the public gets to use the park.
Also, to anyone complaining that this interferes with other people using the park (the "good people" who are defined as: not the protesters) ... Last I checked, we're guaranteed a right to the freedom of assembly and the freedom of speech. We are not, however, guaranteed the right to sit exactly where we please, at any time we please, in a park. Nor are we guaranteed the right to walk our dogs without smelling hippies. So until someone comes up with a claim of harm that outweighs the rights of free assembly and speech, I'm gonna have to say GROW UP! I find it exceedingly ironic that all of you are complaining ABOUT THE PROTESTERS' COMPLAINING! Wow. Do you have no sense of the absurd? No self-awareness? Apparently not.
Recycled kids with zero real world experience, unrealistic expectations, everyone owes me something because I exist crowd. How amazingly unoriginal, next!
"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
yes i do believe that existing grants you some inaliable rights, and that when something is wrong, it should be fixed. Is it unrealistic to assume that you can exercise your rights?? or that corporations can't buy politicians? that said if OWS is trashing the park, they need to work to avoid that, but they shouldn't have to leave the park no matter what.
Make these pigs clean up their own mess. Bunch of losers.
Just leave Friday, let the city pick up all the roach joints and empty beer bottles, and you can return Saturday.
well damn