The NYPD cleared Zuccotti Park this morning, at 1:00 a.m. The obvious question for Mayor Bloomberg is why in the middle of the night? If your real concern was the “health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community,” wouldn’t handling it during the daylight hours have been more effective?
Count these as words I never thought I’d write: the Oakland PD handled this better than the NYPD. Who would have predicted that three weeks ago, when the OPD used tear gas and rubber bullets, wounded an Iraq war vet and tossed flash-bang grenades into the crowd of people trying to aid him?
The National Lawyers Guild has obtained a court order allowing protesters to return to Zuccotti Park.
Adding insult to injury, the NYPD trashed the OWS Library, which we wrote about just over a month ago. (It seems like much longer.)
Constantine von Hoffman argues that the Mayor has done OWS a favor. By evicting them, Bloomberg has returned the spotlight to a group that was in danger of fading away.