BLOOMBERG VS. OCCUPY: Round 1 Occupy #ows
A timeline:
A big bank protest is planned for the 15th of October (see video)
- To block the bank protest, Mayor Bloomberg initiated a plan to evict the Occupation from Liberty Square on the 14th of October. He claimed the city needed to “clean” the park.
- In recognition of the threat, the Occupy movement gathers its strength. It makes a widely reported call to come to the park on the morning of the 14th to block the eviction.
- Occupy then rapidly delegitimizes the complaint. It starts to deep clean Liberty Square with powerwashers, brooms, and mops (they even hired a dump truck). It even offers to let cleaners into the square to clean 1/3 of it at a time.
- With the complaint delegitimized, the Occupy movement goes on the offensive. It personalizes the eviction move (already inside Bloomberg's OODA). It finds Bloomberg. He's at a gala dinner at Ciprianis (a Wall Street restaurant). They surround the restaurant and try to enter it to deliver a petition with 310,000 signatures. Bloomberg hides, departs from the rear.
- Surprise! The deputy mayor announces that the eviction is cancelled.
Phi Beta Iota: Strongly recommended with all of the comments that represent a maturing discussion of what #OWS is about–it is NOT against capitalism and it is NOT in favor of income redistribution. Rather, it is against the institutionalization of greed and the rigging of the system to exclude, disenfranchise, and impoverish the 99% that the system is supposed to nurture.
