Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Rising Cost of Freedom

New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez is more than 99 percent right when he wrote this about our city's oligarch mayor Michael Bloomberg's actions against the Occupy Wall Street protesters:

Amazingly, even as cops cleared Zuccotti Park of the rebel tent camp, other tent structures, complete with generators, were going up at other parks, with City Hall's blessing. At Union Square Park, for example, rows of tents have already been erected for the annual holiday market so vendors can sell their trinkets through Christmas. A second tent market will soon spring to life in Central Park near Columbus Circle. Pay the city rent, and tents are fine. But tents and generators so people can protest Wall Street greed? That's an unhealthy idea that requires immediate police action.

Anyone who knows anything about history knows that shutting down OWS was the surest way to fuel it further. Sure enough, OWS protesters plan to converge on the New York Stock Exchange this morning -- two months from when the "occupation" began -- then plan a series of demonstrations around the city. Bloomberg has already promised massive police -- his tone in the press conference struck me as ominous -- but it will take more than a closeted billionaire to stop this uprising.

2 comments:

George Safford said...

Any chance we could get 10000 people in the Wall Street area to clog the streets while demonstrating peacefully? Wouldn't that make a good point in rallying against Wall Street greed?
How would the police remove such when the wealthy and money technocrats are so near and possibly endangered by police action. Might be interesting result.

ML said...

Like most New Yawkers, I genuinely like Bloomberg, but the man is surprisingly tone-deaf on this issue. I guess one too many power lunches at Le Bernardin will do that to a guy.

It definitely shows us where his true sentiments lie: Money.

And that's what this whole OWS movement is about. America's becoming a third-world country, with a handful of super-wealthy plutocrats controlling everything, while the rest of us work in corporate salt mines. If we're lucky enough to have a job at all...