Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Occupy Wall Street demonstrators said they intend to “raise a ruckus” with protests against economic inequality tomorrow, including plans to surround the New York Stock Exchange and bring their message to subway stations in the city’s five boroughs.
City officials say they expect tens of thousands of participants in a day of protest beginning at 7 a.m. in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. The movement lost its two-month campsite there yesterday when police evicted protesters to clear the park of tents, tarps and sleeping bags. The demonstrators intend to walk to Wall Street, then fan out through the subways, ending the day with a march across the Brooklyn Bridge from Foley Square near City Hall at about 5 p.m.
“We are certainly anticipating tens of thousands of people protesting, aimed at significant disruption of the daily lives of the city,” said Howard Wolfson, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s deputy for government relations, at a City Hall briefing. “Our forces will be deployed accordingly.”
Demonstrators plan to “raise a ruckus and clog up the works” in the city’s Financial District during the rally, said Mark Bray, a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street.
‘Reign of Terror’
“It’s time we put an end to Wall Street’s reign of terror and begin building an economy that works for all,” the group says on its website. “We will prepare to confront Wall Street with the stories of people on the front lines of economic injustice. There, before the Stock Exchange, we will exchange stories rather than stocks.”
When Zuccotti Park reopened last night, more than 1,000 protesters returned through designated entrances framed by metal barricades before disbanding to apartments and churches around the city, said Bray, 29, a doctoral student in history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Protesters also broke into groups to discuss the future of the movement, he said.
“We have not given up our commitment to the tactic of occupation -- the idea of having an outdoor space with tents,” Bray said by telephone. “The question is, ‘Should we occupy somewhere else? Should we have an indoor space?’ All sorts of things were thrown out.”
‘99 Percent’
The Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in New York Sept. 17, has spread to cities on four continents, including London, Sydney, Toronto, Rome and Tokyo. The demonstrators refer to themselves as “the 99 percent,” a reference to Nobel Prize- winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s study showing the richest 1 percent control 40 percent of U.S. wealth.
New York City police in riot gear swept into the encampment in the privately owned public park beginning around 1 a.m. yesterday. City cleaning crews in orange vests hauled away dumpsters full of the camp’s remains.
About 200 people were arrested, police said. Among them were journalists and Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a north Manhattan Democrat, who said he was thrown to the ground after attending as an observer.
After the morning’s raid, lawyers for the demonstrators failed to convince a judge to overturn the decision to evict.
“The court’s ruling vindicates our position that First Amendment rights do not include the right to endanger the public or infringe on the rights of others by taking over a public space,” Bloomberg said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “Zuccotti Park will remain open to all who want to enjoy it, as long as they abide by the park’s rules.”
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
Oakland, Portland
Officials have also shut down camps in cities including Oakland, California, and Portland, Oregon. A judge today ordered Boston to refrain from removing protesters from the city’s financial district between now and Dec. 1.
Protesters in New York said they remained unbowed by the city’s move to ban sleeping bags, tarps and tents. More than 150 had regrouped in the park with umbrellas today as rain blanketed the city.
“We’ve all realized that the movement’s a lot more than just a physical occupation,” Julien Harrison, a former college teaching assistant in Georgia who said he’s camped at the park sporadically since the occupation began, said by telephone. Harrison, 30, stayed with a friend in Manhattan last night.
‘The Best Thing’
Park expulsion “was the best thing that could have happened to us strategically” because “it looks bad for a system that continually uses violence against non-violence,” said Daniel Zetah, 35, from Minnesota, who’s slept in the park most nights. “It’s going to galvanize people” and inspire large numbers to attend tomorrow’s events, he said in a telephone interview.
After “sleeping on granite in a very loud environment, the threat of staying in jail for a night or two is no longer a threat,” Zetah said. Last month, police halted a march over the Brooklyn Bridge and took hundreds of activists into custody for blocking traffic.
The city has spent $6 million on the protests so far, excluding yesterday’s raid, said Wolfson and Caswell Holloway, deputy mayor for operations. Protesters won’t be allowed to encamp at any other city parks, Wolfson said.
“Our goal is to ensure that the city continues to run, that essential services get provided to get to and from work,” Holloway said today at the briefing. “Public safety is first and foremost.”
Nationwide Protest
New York’s demonstrators will be joined by advocacy groups and unions such as SEIU and AFL-CIO in a “nationwide ‘We Are The 99%’ day of action” tomorrow, Daniel Mintz, campaign director of MoveOn.org, said in an e-mailed statement. The online organization was founded in opposition to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment and became an advocate for health-care overhaul.
More than 300 events, one in almost every state, will call on members of the congressional supercommittee “to protect vital programs like Medicare and Social Security, and finally make the super-rich pay their fair share instead of supporting a deal chock full of job-killing cuts,” Mintz said.
Hundreds of protesters had slept in Zuccotti Park, near the World Trade Center and a few blocks from Wall Street. The one- square block space had hosted a medical tent, kitchen area serving three meals a day, library, comfort station doling out underwear, sweaters, pants and blankets, and tables offering media outreach and legal guidance.
Homeless Issue
Similar camps have cropped up in cities nationwide protesting high foreclosure and unemployment rates that plague average Americans while bonuses were issued by U.S. banks after they accepted a taxpayer-funded bailout.
Officials who’ve shut down encampments in other cities have cited an overtaking of the movement’s original core group of protesters by homeless, street youths and criminal elements. Deaths, sexual assaults, drug dealing and theft in the tent cities threaten public safety, officials have said.
Gideon Oliver, an attorney associated with the National Lawyers Guild who has represented some demonstrators, said that about 1,200 people have been arrested in connection with the New York protests since they began.
--With assistance from Chris Dolmetsch in New York, Charlie Stein in Boston, and Alison Vekshin in San Francisco. Editors: Mark Schoifet, Mark Tannenbaum
To contact the reporters on this story: Esmé E. Deprez in New York at edeprez@bloomberg.net; Charles Mead in New York at cmead11@bloomberg.net; Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.n
