OWS Declares Victory as Liberty Plaza Cleanup Is Postponed

Posted on Oct 14, 2011

AP / Mary Altaffer

An NYPD officer on a scooter runs over a Legal Aid Society observer as Occupy Wall Street demonstrators march through the streets near Wall Street. The man was subsequently arrested.

Occupy Wall Street: 1, Mayor Bloomberg: 0. After the New York City mayor’s sketchy sanitation plan for Zuccotti Park—or, if you will, Liberty Plaza—was postponed on Friday, OWS members were bullish, making it clear on their website that this development constituted a victory against thinly veiled bureaucratic attempts to jostle them from their encampment near the country’s financial command center.

The OWS site quotes Oregonian activist Kira Moyer-Sims celebrating Friday’s news by repurposing a familiar bailout-themed quote: “This movement is gaining momentum and is too big to fail.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported that 14 protesters were arrested Friday morning by New York police even without the larger-scale cleanup showdown.  —KA

Occupy Wall Street:

Over 3,000 people gathered at Liberty Plaza in the pre-dawn hours this morning to defend the peaceful Occupation near Wall Street. The crowd cheered at the news that multinational real estate firm Brookfield Properties will postpone its so-called “cleanup” of the park and that Mayor Bloomberg has told the NYPD to stand down on orders to remove protesters. On the eve of the October 15 global day of action against Wall Street greed, this development has emboldened the movement and sent a clear message that the power of the people has prevailed against Wall Street.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.