In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg finally sent an army of cops to clear out Zuccotti Park, where hundreds of protesters had started the so-called “Occupy Wall Street” movement. But things never should have gotten to this point. Bloomberg should have cracked down the first time any of the protesters pitched a tent. He should have maintained a hard line against camping downtown. Instead, he let them set up a micro-village in lower Manhattan for nearly two months, which quickly deteriorated into a health and fire hazard as well as a haven for crimes including sexual assault.
Because the rest of the country followed the precedent set by New York, cities throughout the nation have been grappling with the same problems.
Bloomberg’s delay in doing anything about the protesters also made it much tougher for him to act when he decided to do so this week. It’s basic human psychology that over time, people form attachments both to places and to the people around them. It’s much tougher to uproot people from a mini-community where they have lived for months than it would have been to stop a handful of early protesters from camping.
I picked up on this phenomenon when I was in Denver over the weekend to see the Occupy movement evicted there. A weeping protester bellowed, “We made friends here. We’re a family.”
Bloomberg’s weak response to the Occupy movement stems from his obsession with being perceived as less confrontational than his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani, who took over the city at a time of disorder and rampant crime, had to be uncompromising in battling with entrenched interests. Bloomberg, the beneficiary of Giuliani’s work, inherited a safe city where civil society had been restored.
Their contrast in styles can be seen in the way each mayor treated Al Sharpton. Though he’s an MSNBC host these days, some of us will never forget that Sharpton’s anti-Semitic rhetoric instigated the 1991 Crown Heights riot that led to the murder of a Jewish rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum. In 1995, Sharpton led a protest against Freddy’s Fashion Mart, referring to the Jewish owner as a “white interloper.” Then one of the protesters burnt down the store, killing seven of its employees.
Giuliani rightfully refused to meet with Sharpton while he was mayor. Bloomberg has made a concerted effort to cozy up to him.
Bloomberg’s handling of the Occupy protests demonstrates his fear of confrontation. The mayor said he wanted to strike a balance between public safety and free speech. But camping in a privately-owned public park does not qualify as speech.
One of the principles that Giuliani employed when fighting crime in New York City was the so-called “broken windows” approach, which held that permissiveness toward small quality-of-life violations can only encourage more serious crimes.
Now that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are barred from bringing camping equipment to Zuccotti Park, they are vowing a series of “actions” on Thursday. This may include a plot to shut down parts of the subway system. One protester has been caught on camera saying, “On the 17th, we’re going to burn New York City to the ground.” He also said, “in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s,” a possible reference to next week’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the traditional kickoff to New York’s iconic holiday season.
Let’s pray that nothing comes of this warning. But either way, this stain on Bloomberg’s mayoral legacy has become a big problem for cities across America.
Philip Klein is senior editorial writer for The Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
