Occupy Wall Street; Battle for New York

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is talking tough again, darkly hinting that he may have to take action to shut down Occupy Wall Street.


So it appears that his honour has found a new pretext to send the police in to clear the park. He has already sent his cops to arrest alleged law breakers in the encampment, accompanied by headlines urging "get tough".

As for homeless people, Occupy Wall Street security has reported that city correctional officials and some welfare officers have actively encouraged homeless people to go to a park where they will be fed and can sleep.

Occupy Wall Street has strict rules against drug use and alcohol use. But they can't always enforce them against people who have been encouraged to go to the park to, among other things, cause trouble.

In other words, city officials, who are expressing so much agitation are actually exacerbating the problems, and then pointing to them as a reason the occupation must be forced to end. The cops also have spies in the park and are monitoring developments closely. They had repeatedly refused to protect the park from the presence of predators - who they now blame on the protest.

Unfortunately, many media outlets are not interested in probing for the causes of problems and just focus on the effects.

Politics is what is driving the increasingly hard-line opposition, not pride in civic improvement.

A day before the mayor indicated that he may just have to "take action", he criticised the protesters for focusing on Wall Street. Congress is to blame, he insisted, politicians not financiers. Few media outlets noted that Bloomberg made his fortune on Wall Street and his news company serves its customers. This conflict of interest is blatant, but rarely noted.

The NY Daily News reported him saying: "I do believe in punishment." Koch then went on to blast the SEC for only fining Wall Street titans such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup for their financial misconduct. "What the hell do they care? That's the cost of doing business," Koch said of the banks. "I want to see somebody - some CEO, some CFO - punished criminally."

The reason Bloomberg doesn't like Occupy Wall Street is because he likes Wall Street (especially while his police are occupying the place).

Musician Boots Riley who is part of the organising effort said: "We're ushering in a new phase in organising. It's a one-day general strike. It's a warning shot. It's beyond saying that 'we are the 99 per cent'. This is showing that the 99 per cent can be organised, that we won't be limited to the rules and regulations that unions have confined themselves to in the last 60 years."

To date, this movement has survived snowstorms and police attacks. Its tougher challenges may have just begun.