Occupy Wall Street Knows Not What It Does Hurting Local Jobs
Did you hear the one about the boy tried for murdering his parents who asked mercy from the Court because he was an orphan?"Occupy Wall St. hurting local jobs" is a headline today in Bloomberg News. The article begins by stating that Occupy is taking away jobs in the Wall Street area because some local businesses have less foot traffic because of police barricades. Although it later states that the reporters who wrote the story contacted the police, without a response, for information about the barricades, the crux of the article is that Occupy is acting hypocritically by . . . well . . . by occupying. For the record, the movement is peaceful and doesn't require police barricades.
Only later in the article do we learn that other merchants in the area have increased their business. The local Pret A Manger has increased its sales by $1,000 a day, attributable I assume to the increased tourism in the area. Or perhaps the occupiers like Pret's croissants--the best in the City. Let's hope the Mayor after hearing this good news doesn't set up a barricade in front of Pret. The article is totally biased, which is not surprising since our One Percent Mayor is completely against the movement and has tried in various ways to thwart the protestors, fortunately so far without success.
The bias is revealed, again, further down by the following paragraph:
Demonstrators initially struggled to build momentum, drawing a fraction of the 20,000 participants that organizers such as Adbusters, a group promoting the movement, aimed to lure to lower Manhattan last month. Prior to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Adbusters gained attention for what critics called an anti-semitic essay published in 2004.What has Adbusters or anti-semitism to do with the point of the article, that jobs are being lost because of police barricades. There are a number of wild inconsistencies in the article but my blood pressure is on the rise so I'll leave them for now. But one last comment. The City has been building the Second Avenue Subway since before I was born, finally getting somewhat serious about it a few years ago. Legions of merchants are losing their businesses along Second Avenue because of the construction, and in this instance these businesses will never recover. Many have already closed their stores and don't expect to reopen them when the subway is completed--mainly because the opening date moves further and further out each year. Let the Mayor concentrate his energies on getting the subway finished, soon, so no more job are lost.
My concern is that anyone breezing by news stories on Google, which is where I found this one, will read the headline and perhaps the first few paragraphs and no further. It's not the protestors who are responsible for declining business, but the police. Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but the protestors are not going away. And if you're unable to rig the election laws this time around, you are. Bye!
If you agree that Occupy protestors have the right to organize in a public space for things that matter to those us in the 99%, please sign the petition below addressed to the Mayor asking him to permit tents in Zuccotti Park. Winter is coming!
http://action.
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