The one percent wants to change the law to shut down Occupy Wall Street.
New York City law currently requires that privately owned public spaces, such as Zuccotti Park, stay open 24 hours a day. However, with the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the wealthiest landlords in the city are seeking to change the law so that they would be able to shut down any and all permanent encampments:
Casting a wary eye on the four-week-old Occupy Wall Street encampment, a group representing some of the city's most influential landlords plans to ask the city to revamp the rules governing privately owned parks, including removing a requirement that they be open 24 hours a day.
"We're going to be clearly recommending to the city that there need to be some changes," Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said Friday. "If you can say that the plazas are closed between 1 and 5 a.m., I'm not sure who that's harming."
Yeah, who could possibly be harmed by changing the law in this way? Maybe it's the massive protest movement that has set up a permanent encampment in a privately owned public space, but maybe it's someone else entirely. Really, it's anyone's guess.