Occupy Wall Streeters stink—literally; cost NYC $2 million

posted at 12:31 pm on October 7, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Culture ]   

Strip away all the bravado, all the pretense toward having a unified message, all the boosterism from leftist commentators who delude themselves into believing that the ascendancy of this rowdy group changes the electoral equation. What you have left of Occupy Wall Street is something rank and disgusting—and I’m not taking politics.

Zuccotti Park, the plaza in downtown Manhattan where the movement got its start three-plus weeks ago and which remains the national epicenter, is overrun with refuse. Brookfield Office Properties, which owns the park, has released a statement that reads:

Normally the park is cleaned and inspected every weeknight.… Because the protestors refuse to cooperate … the park has not been cleaned since Friday, September 16th and as a result, sanitary conditions have reached unacceptable levels.

A catch-22 for both Brookfield and the city is that Zuccotti Park is a public space. It is privately owned but operates under a charter that gives anyone free access—even squatters in desperate need of a bath.

Filth is not the only way in which the movement is adversely affecting New York. The tendency toward violence among the protesters, 28 of whom were arrested on Wednesday for disorderly conduct, requires a constant police presence. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly reports that the protests have so far cost the city about $2 million in overtime for officers assigned to cover the demonstrations.

How serious a problem is the sit-in becoming for a city that is already in debt to the tune of $100 billion? So serious that even its socialist mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has told the protesters to “lay off the banks.” Bloomberg is quoted by Politico as saying:

The protests that are trying to destroy the jobs of working people in this city aren’t productive.

What they’re trying to do is take away the jobs of people working in the city, take away the tax base that we have. We’re not going to have money to pay our municipal employees or anything else.

I share Bloomberg’s concern, if for different reasons. His chief worry is not having enough warm bodies to place more traffic-choking bike lanes on city streets.

As for Commissioner Kelly, he warned the protesters, several of whom have been arrested for assaulting police officers, that “they’re going to be met with force when they do that—this is just common sense.” Kelly added:

These people wanted to have confrontation with the police for whatever reason. Somehow, I guess it works to their purposes.

Clearly, the commissioner has the OWS demonstrators confused with the Tea Party. Everyone knows that it’s conservatives who are violent. Liberals are the party of peace and tolerance.

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