How did the story line get to be that Occupy Wall Street is in response to a call by Canadian outfit, Adbusters, instead of the obvious escalation of what was, apparently dismissively, called Bloombergville just three months before? Surely, the New York Times did not forget the well-covered precedent.
June 15, 2011, 2:47 pm
In ‘Bloombergville,’ Budget Protesters Sleep In
By DAVID W. CHEN
So it may not be quite on the scale of the so-called Walkerville sit-in in Wisconsin, or the protests in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Nor will it remind anyone of the anti-apartheid shantytowns on college campuses in the 1980s, or even, on a much less serious note, the legions of Duke students who regularly camp out in a makeshift tent city, known as Krzyzewskiville, before college basketball games.
Well, now it is up to scale. How does it happen that when peace-mongers try and try again, the press forgets but aggression is always part of a grand tradition? I don't think the reporter's supercilious approach accounts for it. It was followed by some meat. See below the curlicue.
On Tuesday night, a collection of labor officials, students and social service workers parked themselves just outside City Hall in sleeping bags and vowed to stay there, nonstop, “till Bloomberg’s budget is defeated!”
It is the first sleep-in protest outside City Hall in recent memory, according to the police and city officials. And about 100 people made it through Night 1, despite the rain and chilly conditions. By Wednesday morning, the 20 or so protesters who were still there were in good spirits, distributing fliers, chanting slogans and recording their actions on video cameras.
Why didn't those two paragraphs just get recycled when Occupy Wall Street arrived on the scene? Surely, the issues are the same, just on a larger scale.
Good golly, Miss Molly, there was even a video.
Did the New York Times agree that the protests were happening in the wrong place?
...when asked about the protests, Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said, “They should have been camped out in Albany months ago.”
Did it seem unfair that New York was having to spend money on police overtime, in addition to having to shell out $461 million to cover civil suits it lost in the courts? At last count, the cost is up to $2.3 million in additional wages for the officers on the beat. That's a pittance, really, compared to what was lost through the courts. And there's more coming in that account, if this action bears fruit.
On Tuesday, the law firm of Rubenstein & Rynecki filed a notice in court, on behalf of the administrator of Ms. Gay’s estate, signaling an intention to sue the city and the Police Department over the Sept. 5 shooting of Ms. Gay. Besides claiming the death was wrongful, the suit will raise allegations of negligent hiring, training and supervision of police officers, according to the notice, which outlines plans to seek $10 million in damages.
Ms. Gay was caught in the cross hairs of a gunfight after, the police said, Leroy Webser, 32, opened fire on Eusi Johnson, 29, on the street where she lived, Park Place. As Mr. Johnson fell mortally wounded by Mr. Webster’s firing of his gun, several officers confronted Mr. Webster and eight of them opened fire on him in two volleys. The officers fired 73 bullets in all, striking Mr. Webster two times and wounding him.
It would seem that Councilwoman Brewer's concerns are well founded.
Ms. Brewer, a Democrat from the Upper West Side, laid out her arguments in a letter on Tuesday, to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.
Exhibit A was the detention and handcuffing of her colleague, Councilman Jumaane D. Williams, at the West Indian Day Parade last month — an episode that several officials said reflected a pattern in which the police unfairly single out young black men. Kirsten John Foy, the community affairs director for Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, was also swept up in that encounter.
...
All the hostility prompted Ms. Brewer to disclose her own experience with what she termed a “belligerent and over-reactive officer” on June 26, during the Gay Pride Parade. Confused, briefly, about where to meet her colleagues for the parade, Ms. Brewer tried to enlist an officer’s help. She took out her official Council identification and explained the situation, she said. But it did not work.
“He not only refused, but immediately adopted a belligerent attitude, hooking his thumbs in his belt, puffing up his chest, and acting as though he felt he was under threat,” Ms. Brewer said in her two-page letter. “When an African-American woman also peaceably approached the barricade with a similar request, he grabbed her and pushed her backward. None of this was called for.”
A sergeant who came by also declined to help, was “angry and rude” and wound up laughing with the patrolman, Ms. Brewer wrote. Ultimately, she said, a higher-ranking officer came by and helped her, but only after others had interceded on her behalf.
...
Now, see, that's the kind of subjective involvement that "objective" conservatives really object to. It's what Senator Hatch held against now-Justice Soto-Mayor in her confirmation hearing. In the conservative firmament, the subject is never involved, either as agent (claiming responsibility) or first-hand observer. The only proper role for a subject is to be a suspect which, of course, the police are on top of.
Apparently, there's a local problem in New York that visitors are not immediately aware of. Perhaps that's because
City officials note that many groups — including business and civic organizations, and nonpartisan policy groups and others who tend not to protest — have praised the mayor for trying to act prudently in his budget, despite being dealt a bad fiscal hand.
And the New York Times buys this blame-shifting line. "Dealt a bad fiscal hand" sounds like the back side of the "luck of the draw." No human agency involved. It's hard talking reality with people who believe in magic. Godzilla is more tangible.