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I left OWS a few hours ago and the mood is defiant, if a bit downcast. Almost every night for the past 2 weeks, I have helped out in the medical clinic to keep our supplies organized so we can treat our brothers and sisters in this Resistance against the Financial Oligarchy. We know that Bloomberg has engineered a pretext to shut down the occupation by claiming that sanitation crews need to come in to clean it while in the meantime he made it illegal to lie down or have a sleeping bag or a tarp in the park. The occupiers have seen fit then to scrub clean the park and move some of their equipment to take away Bloomberg’s pretext and expose his real aim for what it is. Because of the changes in zoning he pushed through, those in the encampment can only stand and be rained on tomorrow once they are supposedly allowed back in. I ask that you offer your prayers, well wishes, and support to these brave people who are not the last but merely the first to declare our freedom from the monsters who have destroyed our world and refuse to take responsibility for what they’ve done.
To those on the side of the Oligarchy I say this, when Greece falls and spawns a greater financial crisis, there won’t be just hundreds of us down there, there will be hundreds of thousands.
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Actually since ‘Liberty Park’ is privately owned I am really surprised that anyone at all ever was allowed to camp out there. The manager of the property could have at any point since people started occupying the park demanded people to vacate.
It has been known since before any plans were made for the protest that eventually the owner would refuse any over night occupation so obviously there must be an back up plan. lol go ask Lisa Fithian.
Actually, Liberty Park has an arrangement with the City that requires it to allow the City to run the park in exchange for loosening a zoning restriction on a nearby property as David Dayen noted here: http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/10/13/first-step-in-eviction-of-occupy-wall-street-advanced/
So to say this is a “private” park with the connotation that a private owner can exercise his/her private rights is more than a bit disingenuous. As I’m sure you know.
Thanks for that clarification. Nevertheless, in the end its status as a Privately owned property is going to be used, we all know that. A back up plan is needed, ASAP. We don’t want a violent forced removal like Boston. I’d hate to see this end the way the People’s Park situation did 40 yrs. ago @ U of Calif., Berkeley.
I did not state that the park was an “private park”. I am not opposed to the use of some park that I will probably never actually be able to visit.
Brookfield properties is by contract obligated to the parks security, sanitation, up keep and maintaining public access 24/7. The laws surrounding the privately owned public spaces in NYC are vague. And the organizers of OWS have exploited that gray area of law. It is also to be expected that the owners of the property will exploit the gray areas as well, for most likely not honest reasons.
The new restrictions are an example of that exploitation.
The people using the park may challenge those new rules of course. Which I encourage them to do. But the will be an argument against them since it is well known publicly that they intend on living in the park for a great deal of time. Such an challenge to the laws of privately owned public spaces in the short term will probably result in more control of those parks. Mostly because by tradition and example parks usually ban any camping inside the boundaries of parks. Because the the intended use of parks are not as living facilities, so that the spaces can be enjoyed by everyone equally. And also on the assumption that camping creates conditions that parks are not designed to withstand on a regular basses.
But there is no reason that OWS really needs to anchor themselves to one single space. The idea is to perpetuate the protest. Making a stand at an single location is not sustainable, hence my assertion that those organizing the occupation have other plans when it is no longer possible to hang out at this particular location. Most likely they will stick it out get some arrests under their belt and when the location is not viable for sustainability of the occupation, the base camp will be moved.
Ah, then forgive me for my curtness. I took your earlier comment to be a taunt. Yes I agree that if the location is made unsustainable, tactics will adapt and strategies adjust. However I was delighted to find out this morning that the order to move was rescinded for now. It wouldn’t have been fatal and I didn’t mean to convey that notion. It’s just that it would have interrupted the momentum of things and forced us to rebuild momentum instead of pushing further against the Oligarchy.
Sorry my fault, I didn’t offer you enough information in the first place. Since rereading my post I can see exactly why you got that impression.