New York, NY – With just a few protesters huddled against the cold winds at Zuccotti Park on Friday, city officials are hoping protests which have taken place here for the past two months have run their course.
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“There are problems in the country,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “You can make yourself heard, which I think has been done. Now it’s time to get back and build the economy and create the good paying jobs that people need.”
Having been evicted in the early hours of Tuesday morning by New York police and no longer allowed to camp at the park, just a handful of occupiers huddled together against brisk autumn winds in a largely empty space.
Most demonstrators may have just had protest hangovers, after a series of marches on Thursday that slowed traffic in the financial district and led to some scuffles with police and more than 200 arrests.
Organizers insist they are sticking around.
“A lot of us went to bed last night thinking we had the best day of the movement,” said protest spokesman Ed Needham. “We all thought, we still believe, this is still the unfolding of a new chapter.”
With no organized network of housing for scores of protesters who traveled to New York from other cities, the movement is confronting fundamental questions of where to gather and where to sleep.
“It’s hard to say where it’s going right now,” said John Carhart, 28, of New Jersey.
He said organizers were hoping to find an indoor space before the end of the year, “so people will have a place to put their belongings and a place to sleep that’s not outside.”
A few local churches are housing some of those left homeless by the evictions from Zuccotti Park. The protesters are allowed to return and congregate in the park, but they cannot sleep or lie down, and few have returned.
Caiti Lattimer said she and others like her who live in New York are hosting those from out of town. But she acknowledged that the coming Thanksgiving holiday may thin the ranks.
“People are going home for Thanksgiving,” she said. “But there are still people who … will remain.”
Organizers declined to elaborate on the movement’s next move, saying discussions and plans are ongoing.
But protesters at meetings late Thursday night said conversations about the group’s future ranged from plans to occupy homes foreclosed by banks to boycotting major chain stores during the upcoming holidays.
I’d say that the biggest problem that OWS must face is that it is not supported by the Creator himself. The OWS is sanctioned anarchy and this is a totally different message than Torah. There is no anarchy in God. No OWS for us! No thanks.
As a 3rd generation American, grandpa was born in NY in 1920, I can say that what makes America great, is the ability TO VOTE. True Americans don’t “take to the streets” (civil disobedience or worse) but vote to get the person elected that we feel will “improve” the issues. And then we vote them OUT when they don’t do good.
Skip the violence and the rhetoric and go vote!
Anyone that condones this behavior is UNAMERICAN.
If you don’t like how this Country is set up, YOU should move to another Country, don’t tell others that they should move because you think that they keep too much of their own money.
Go work…. How can people be so hypocritical and protest against them when they are not doing anything.
To Occupy wall street hooligans “get a life and go get a job instead of telling us how to run the country”………………………….
The hooligans, vagrants, deviants, lowlifes, ex-cons, and miscreants who comprise this movement should do New Yorkers a favor. GO HOME. We don’t need you here, disrupting the peace and tranquility of lower Manhattan. Lower Manhattan has recently recovered from the devastation of 9/11/01. If you wish to protest, go to Central Park, where there is plenty of grass, and plenty of room to pitch your tents, and camp out overnight.
Why stop selling worthless financial instrument when the account “executives” make big bucks. Reno on Wall Street sold as investment