It seems an inescapable conclusion that Bloomberg prefers conflict to allowing what he would think of as a happy hippy fair.
The mayor described what happened in Egypt and Spain as "riots". It was ranking officers (more than one), not rank and file policemen, who attacked and maced the marchers below Union Square a week ago. And there was at least some complicity by the police in facilitating, if not leading, marchers onto the (illegal) roadway and away from the (legal) walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday.
Of course, there's also the contribution of simple stupidity:
"They call them New York's Finest... not New York's smartest" is an old nyork saying.
However, it really does seem that the city administration has a strong aversion to seeing a peaceful anarchy spreading out on the streets of the city. That could become too attractive and irreversible. They have apparently decided to nip it in the bud by creating violent confrontations instead. Ideally, I'm sure, they would like the gathering in Liberty Park to just fizzle out; but if it doesn't, they certainly don't want it to become a growing encampment of responsible citizenship.
We will see what happens to the encampment, but the economic crisis for which it has become a landmark won't be going away any time soon.
Thirty years ago, when the fever of the go-go eighties was just starting, I knew a young woman who had gotten a job with one of the (now defunct) big brokerage houses on Wall Street. One day she walked up to an older man who had been there for quite a while and asked him "what's going to happen?" He said, "I don't know, but...
when it's over, it will all be over."
Below is a brief history of how we got to "it's all over now".
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