Occupy Wall Street protesters are celebrating in Manhattan’s Financial District today after successfully defying orders to evacuate the encampment they have held for nearly four weeks. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had said Zuccotti Park — renamed Liberty Plaza by protesters — would have to be cleared by 7:00 a.m. following a request by its owners that it be cleaned. Thousands of people began congregating in the square overnight amidst concerns the cleaning order was a pretext for evicting the protesters. Hours later, New York City officials announced the request to clear the park had been withdrawn. We go live to Zuccotti Park to speak with Democracy Now!'s Ryan Devereaux. "At about 6:00 in the morning, a march of union members arrived to Liberty Square, and the reception was one of pure joy, chanting, cheering," Devereaux says. He describes how protesters allocated $3,000 from their treasury to purchase cleaning supplies and then "spent the better part of all day yesterday cleaning this plaza, making sure that it was as clean as possible when the inspectors would arrive, giving the city absolutely no excuse to say that this was a unsanitary place." We also speak with New York City Council Member Jumaane Williams, who is one of many local officials who have lent their support for the occupation. "I think everyone kind of understands that this is a great movement going on," Williams says. “More importantly, it's something that should be supported, just like we supported all the other movements that were going on around the world."
The situation at the Occupy Wall Street encampment is rapidly developing this morning. Thousands answered a call for support and streamed into New York’s Financial District overnight ahead of a, quote, "cleaning" that many feared would actually lead to a [clearing] of Zuccotti Park, where protesters have stayed since September 17th. Well, shortly before 7:00 a.m. this morning, they got word that the feared evacuation had been canceled.
It’s been a really interesting dynamic between the protesters and the police, that’s for sure. Obviously, you know, some of the things that the police have done in recent weeks have caught a lot of headlines, beginning in late September when 80 people were arrested on a march near Union Square. Four young women were corralled and pepper-sprayed by Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. That was caught on video, that—those videos went viral, as did another video of Bologna pepper-spraying another protester on the sidewalk. Following that incident, the protest gained more attention. More people began to follow what was going on, and more people turned out in Liberty Plaza to support the cause.
Exactly one week later, the NYPD made headlines once again when they arrested over 700—over 730 protesters attempting to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. The arrests came under fire from a lot of critics who said that the police led the protesters onto the bridge, that they escorted them onto the bridge, and that they gave them the false impression that they would be able to cross the bridge. And then, when they made it about halfway across, about a third of the way across, they were stopped, kettled, as it’s called—caught in orange nets—and arrested en masse. And once again, the police, in their actions, gained this movement a ton of attention, a ton of press and a ton of sympathy in the United States and around the world.
And following that incident, we began to see occupation movements springing up around the country. There are reportedly over a thousand occupations taking place in cities around the United States.
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