Public Health and Safety

As we reported last week, the Occupy Wall Street camp down at Zuccotti Park was raided in the early morning hours of Tuesday, November 15th. The occupiers were removed from the park, either obeying a city ordinance to clean the area, or disobeying the ordinance and removed forcibly by police. When the cleaning was done (tents, books, their personal belongings trashed or packed up and taken to a holding area where they could be picked up later), the occupiers were allowed to return, but no longer could bring tents or sleeping bags back into the park with them. The city, and notably Mayor Michael Bloomberg, rationalized their decision citing the encampments dangers to public health and safety. I wish the Mayor, and other city officials, were more concerned with risks to public health and safety in other areas of the city.

To Mayor Bloomberg's credit, I will say that his concern for public safety in this situation seems synchronous with some of his other social and political stances. He is a large voice in the Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign, and generally believes lax gun laws in urban environments leads to higher rates of crime and homicide. Though Republican, Bloomberg is not a climate science denier. He believes global warming is a serious threat to people, our children, and our world. Couple these things with his reasoning to effectively shut down the Occupy Wall Street camp, and it's easy to draw the correlations of his concern for the safety of the public. However, it still was not right to trash constitutional rights of citizens.

But more importantly here, we must ask the Mayor, or any right-wing pundit who seems to have no problem reporting and parroting the Mayor's excuse for raiding the camp: why does this "threat" to public health and safety of the Occupy Wall Street camp bear any more danger to lower Manhattan than crime in other parts of the city? Why doesn't the Mayor send a military-style police force into Bed-Stuy, Chelsea, or Midtown to "clean" that part of the city? Why doesn't the Mayor send a military-trained police force into the subway system to clean the crumbling platforms, the filth-covered drainage gutters between the tracks, or the rust-streaked white tiling on the walls? Most importantly, why aren't the police invading the buildings down at Wall Street not to arrest and disperse Occupiers, but to raid the offices of commercial banks whose practices are a threat to the public health and safety of America, whose packaging of mortgages into derivatives collapsed the economy, who skirted and lobbied Washington to waterdown Dodd-Frank so they could build another economic bubble just to see it pop again, to get bailed out and to hemorrhage even more money from the poor and middle class? The people on Wall Street represent a clear and present danger to the public health and safety of New York City, Mr. Bloomberg. Just ask Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, since he told the Congressional panel investigating the causes of the financial meltdown that "crises" should be expected "every five to seven years." If you take into account that every crisis only serves to hurt the poor and middle class while the rich get more well-off, then it seems to me like these crises are planned and actually the financial sector hopes for them. They get the bailout. America gets the bill.

Occupation's Coming Anniversary

With November 17th looming -- the 2 month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street -- it seems that Mayor Bloomberg has taken a preemptive strike against the protesters to try to thwart their planned Day of Action. Last night at around 1am, the NYPD raided the camp at Zuccotti Park/Liberty Square after issuing an eviction notice to the occupiers in order for the city to clean the park. The caveat: once the occupiers left, they would not be able to return to the park with tents. Naturally, this was the Mayor's way of attempting to effectively end the protests. And as any one could have guessed, some protesters would refuse such an order. Reports are mixed right now, but it seems that anywhere from 70 to 200 people were arrested, including one New York City Councilman. There were also several journalists arrested, my brother's girlfriend included, who was detained after being kettled by police. But was this the right move on the Mayor's part? The movement had begun to dwindle, losing the eye of the media, and still without much cohesion. The movement looked stagnant, ready to dissolve away. From watching the local community boards in alliance with the protests, it seems that Bloomberg has only awakened the beast once again.

Already there has been legal push back from the National Lawyers Guild, who immediately sought a court order to allow the protesters back into the park, which was never an issue, but more importantly, that they would be allowed to bring their tents back with them. The NLG argues the protesters right to free speech and to peaceably assemble, as granted in the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, were violated. (They have now been denied privilege to bring tents into the park.) But barring that, the Occupy movement isn't much concerned with the law. It's the "Law" that has for too long been used to benefit the richest people in this country and to silence the rest. Laws have lead to the widest gap in income inequality this country has ever seen. Laws have lead to the reduction of worker's rights in lieu of granting personhood to corporations. Laws have allowed countless individuals to be jailed for stealing food to feed their families, while corporate executives and CEOs get off scott-free, with maybe a bare minimum fine and often no admission of guilt for committing massive fraud, money-laundering, illegally foreclosing homes, and many other egregious white-collar crimes committed over the past decade.

And what has Bloomberg now proved by his -arguably- desperate attempts to silence and break-up the Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park? Has he shown that indeed the Occupy movement has validity in what they are protesting, that the system is so corrupt even our right to freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble are no longer infallible? He has only provided the Occupiers with more "belly-fire" for civil disobedience. They will not be deterred by simply removing their tents. They will not be silenced.  Their voices grow louder. They will be more broad and more bold. They will use this to further their cause against the moneyed corruption that has overtaken our government, our way of life, and our very democracy.