NEW YORK, N.Y. – Wall Street protesters scrubbed, mopped and picked up garbage at the corporate-owned park they have been occupying in an attempt to stave off a scheduled cleanup Friday that demonstrators suspect is a pretext to evict them.
The month-long Occupy Wall Street protest has spawned similar gatherings across the U.S. and the world. But the owners of the half-acre (0.2 hectare) Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, their patience worn thin, want the demonstrators to clear out and stop pitching tents or using sleeping bags.
Organizers were mixed on how they would respond when police arrive to help remove the occupiers from the public plaza so it can be cleaned. Some said they would resist; others planned to co-operate but engage in nonviolent civil disobedience if they are not allowed back in the park.
Publicly-traded real estate firm Brookfield Office Properties planned to begin a section-by-section power-washing at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT). The company called the conditions at the park unsanitary and unsafe.
Han Shan, 39, of New York, a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street, said it was clear to everyone that the plan is to shut down the protest.
“There is a strong commitment to nonviolence, but I know people are going to vigorously resist eviction,” he said. “I think we’re going to see a huge number of supporters throughout New York and the surrounding area defend this thing … I’m hoping that cooler heads will prevail, but I’m not holding my breath.”
The demand that protesters clear out sets up a turning point in a movement that began Sept. 17 with a small group of activists and has swelled to include several thousand people at times, from many walks of life.
Occupy Wall Street has inspired similar demonstrations across America, is spreading to Canada and Britain, and become an issue in the Republican presidential primary race.
The protesters’ demands are amorphous, but they are united in blaming Wall Street and corporate interests for the economic pain they say all but the wealthiest Americans have endured since the financial meltdown.
Some 600 to 700 protesters gathered in early morning darkness Friday. Many had not slept and were busy cleaning while a light rain fell. The group’s sanitation team had hired a private garbage truck to pick up discarded curbside garbage. Dozens of people, including a man in a Santa Claus suit, tossed out trash and used thick brooms and water from buckets to sweep the concrete.
Police kept a low profile – a couple of officers walked through the encampment while others sat in vans Thursday evening but did not stay overnight.
Protesters would be allowed to return after the Brookfield cleanup, which was expected to take 12 hours, but the company said it plans to start enforcing regulations that have been ignored.
No more tarps, no more sleeping bags, no more storing personal property on the ground. In other words, no more camping out for the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who have been living at the lower Manhattan park for weeks. The park is privately owned but is required to be open to the public 24 hours per day.
A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose girlfriend is a member of Brookfield’s board of directors, said Brookfield has requested the city’s assistance in maintaining the park.
“We will continue to defend and guarantee their free speech rights, but those rights do not include the ability to infringe on the rights of others,” Bloomberg spokesman Marc La Vorgna said, “which is why the rules governing the park will be enforced.”
Protesters say the only way they will leave is by force. Organizers sent out a mass email asking supporters to “defend the occupation from eviction.”
“We are doubling up on our determination to stay here as a result of this,” said 26-year-old Sophie Mascia, a Queens resident who has been living in Zuccotti Park for three weeks and intends to sleep there Friday night. “I think this is only going to strengthen our movement.”
Protesters have had some run-ins with police, but mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge and an incident in which some protesters were pepper-sprayed by police seemed to energize their movement.
The New York Police Department says it will make arrests if Brookfield requests it and laws are broken. Brookfield would not comment on how it will ensure that protesters do not try to set up camp again, only saying that the cleaning was necessary because conditions in the park had become unsanitary due to the occupation.
Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, expressed concern over the city’s actions as he inspected the park Thursday afternoon and listened to protesters’ complaints.
“This has been a very peaceful movement by the people,” he said. “I’m concerned about this new set of policies. At the very least, the city should slow down.”
Attorneys from the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild – who are representing an Occupy Wall Street sanitation working group – have written a letter to Brookfield saying the company’s request to get police to help implement its cleanup plan threatens “fundamental constitutional rights.”
“There is no basis in the law for your request for police intervention, nor have you cited any,” the attorneys wrote in a letter Thursday to Brookfield CEO Richard B. Clark. “Such police action without a prior court order would be unconstitutional and unlawful.”
The attorneys said the sanitation working group has “committed itself to carrying out a thorough and complete cleaning” and to negotiate with the park’s owner in good faith.
The protest has led sympathetic groups in other cities to stage their own local rallies and demonstrations: Occupy Boston, Occupy Cincinnati, Occupy Houston, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Philadelphia, Occupy Providence, Occupy Salt Lake and Occupy Seattle, among them.
More protests are planned in Toronto and Vancouver this weekend, and European activists also are also joining in. Organizers announced a protesters’ “occupation” of the London Stock Exchange to begin there on Saturday.
The movement has also drawn reaction from world leaders, including President Barack Obama, former Polish President Lech Walesa and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Walesa said Thursday that he supports the New York protest and is planning to either visit or write a letter to the protesters. He said the global economic crisis has made people aware that “we need to change the capitalist system” because we need “more justice, more people’s interests, and less money for money’s sake.”
Khamenei said Wednesday that the wave of protests reflects a serious problem that will ultimately topple capitalism in America. He claimed the United States is in a full-blown crisis because its “corrupt foundation has been exposed to the American people.”
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Larry Neumeister, Tom McElroy, Cara Anna, Deepti Hajela, Colleen Long, Cristian Salazar, Verena Dobnik, and Meghan Barr contributed to this report.
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