Friday, October 14, 2011

NY officials delay protesters' cleanup to avoid clashes

Officials in New York City today postponed a planned clean-up of the downtown Manhattan park where anti-Wall Street protesters set up camp a month ago, averting what many feared could have been a showdown with authorities.

Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said the private owner of Zuccotti Park, Brookfield Office Properties, decided last evening to delay the cleaning, which had been slated to begin at 7 am (local time). He offered no reason for the delay.

Protesters celebrated the postponement at the publicly accessible park, where the mood was festive.However, at least seven people were seen being arrested when several hundred people left the park and marched through the downtown financial district. A spokesman for the New York Police Department confirmed there were arrests but did not say how many or provide any details.

Many protesters had feared the cleaning would be an attempt to shut down the movement that has sparked solidarity protests in more than 1,400 cities. There were plans for global rallies on Saturday in 71 countries, according to Occupy Together and United for Global Change.

Protesters are upset that the billions of dollars in US bank bailouts doled out during the recession allowed banks to resume earning huge profits while average Americans have had scant relief from high unemployment and job insecurity.

They also believe the richest 1 percent of Americans do not pay their fair share in taxes.

Roughly 1,000 protesters were on hand early today at the New York park, where many had been up all night cleaning it themselves.Throughout the park, big buckets were filled with brooms and mops. Many protesters had packed up their belonging in preparation for the clean-up.

"We clean up after ourselves. It's not like there's rats and roaches running around the park," said Bailey Bryant, 28, an employee at a Manhattan bank who visits the camp after work and on weekends. Some at the park feared a clean-up was still in the works as a ploy to evict them. "It's almost too good to be true," said Sofia Johnson, 17, a high school student from Brooklyn, of the postponed clean up.

"I think it's still a possibility and in a climate like this, letting your guard down completely seems like a naive thing to do," she said. Brookfield has said conditions at the park were "unsanitary and unsafe," with no toilets and a shortage of garbage cans. Neighbors complained of lewdness, drug use, harassment and offensive odors from the protesters, Brookfield said.

Hundreds of people have been arrested at rallies in New York, and dozens have been arrested in the past couple of weeks from Boston and Washington, DC, to Chicago, Austin and San Francisco. Solidarity rallies have also sprung up at more than 140 US college campuses in 25 states, according to Occupy Colleges.