Politics is what is driving the increasingly hard-line opposition, not pride in civic improvement.
Forced to take drastic "action"
A day before the mayor indicated that he may just have to "take action," he criticized the protesters for focusing on Wall Street. Congress is to blame, he insisted, politicians not financiers. Few media outlets noted that Bloomberg made his fortune on Wall Street and his news company serves its customers. This conflict of interest is blatant, but rarely noted.
That the one percent which protesters are denouncing are sticking together is not surprising. The mayor is demonstrably on their side.
An earlier mayor, Ed Koch, who has turned more conservative in his later years than even the Republican Bloomberg, is not quite so willing to let Wall Street off the hook.
The NY Daily News reported him saying: "I do believe in punishment." Koch then went on to blast the SEC for only fining Wall Street titans such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup for their financial misconduct. "What the hell do they care? That's the cost of doing business," Koch said of the banks. "I want to see somebody -- some CEO, some CFO - punished criminally."
The reason Bloomberg doesn't like Occupy Wall Street is because he likes Wall Street (especially while his police are occupying the place).
He believes in punishment too -- punishing protesters.
Fox News carried a complaint about the excessive (and expensive) police uber-presence there because a restaurant owner says it is keeping business away and forcing him to close. Fox went on, of course, to blame the occupiers for the restaurant's decision to lay off workers.
After all, you couldn't have so many cops, if there weren't so many protesters.
And around and around we go
Many New Yorkers seem obsessed with the protests. As the comedy channels satirise it, a New York Times business editor noted that an article the newspaper carried on the latest financial fraud drew 10 comments from readers before anyone tried to blame the problem on Occupy Wall Street -- the latest whipping boy in the financial crisis.
In other cities, there have been violent attacks on the Occupy Movement. Activists in Oakland, California, called for a general strike to defend their right to peacefully and non-violently protest.
Musician Boots Riley who is part of the organizing effort said: "We're ushering in a new phase in organizing. It's a one-day general strike. It's a warning shot. It's beyond saying that 'we are the 99 percent.' This is showing that the 99 percent can be organized, that we won't be limited to the rules and regulations that unions have confined themselves to in the last 60 years."
The general strike, as a tactic, has not been that successful in the United States -- because it requires a major organizing effort, far more than appeals on the internet or in press releases. Noam Chomsky was sympathetic but cautioned protesters "to build and educate first, strike later."
Many in the Occupy movement are criticizing violent incidents in Oakland that counteract their policies of non-violence.
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