New York’s Flakiest

Occupy Wall Street on NYPD: “Demands Unclear.” Delicious.

It’s no secret that I have my problems with Occupy Wall Street (as well as an honest admiration for what it’s accomplished). But this from its blog is just delicious and I can’t resist quoting it in full:

NYPD Occupying Liberty Square; Demands Unclear

New York, NY — The NYPD have been occupying Liberty Square since 1:00am Tuesday morning, with the brand new occupation now set to enter its second day in just a few short hours. But will anyone listen to them when their message is so incoherent?

“What are their demands?” asked social historian Patrick Bruner. “They have not articulated any platform. How do they expect to be taken seriously?”

Critics of the new occupation allege that meddling billionaire Michael Bloomberg is behind the movement. Others question the new occupiers’ militant posture, concerned about the potential effects on the neighborhood.

“I suppose they have a right to express themselves,” said local resident Han Shan. “But I’d prefer it if instead they occupied the space with the power of their arguments.”

ABOVE: a rogue NYPD affinity group occupying the NY Stock Exchange


 

Author: Andrew Sabl

Andrew Sabl, a political theorist, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Ruling Passions: Political Offices and Democratic Ethics and Hume’s Politics: Coordination and Crisis in the History of England, both from Princeton University Press. His research interests include political ethics, liberal and democratic theory, toleration, the work of David Hume, and the realist school of contemporary political thought. He is currently finishing a book for Harvard University Press titled The Uses of Hypocrisy: An Essay on Toleration. He divides his time between Toronto and Brooklyn.

2 thoughts on “New York’s Flakiest”

  1. That’s really great. Should have worked something in about these occupants’ apparent ‘desire to intimidate local residents through their dress and behavior’.

    In news I find slightly more disturbing, if only because there are potentially creepy implications, I talked to a friend who has been spending a lot of time there. She’s an attorney. She was at the courthouse most of the day, awaiting the results of today’s wrangling, and passed the time getting to know people, as waiting lawyers tend to do. Some of them were courthouse cops.

    Tonight, she went back to Zuccotti, and, in addition to uniformed NYPD, there was private security hired by the park owners. Lo, the private security was some of those same cops she saw on duty at the courthouse earlier, now moonlighting in an nominally private capacity.

    There is a lot going on here that we are not seeing.

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