Daniel Massey and Associated Press
October 14, 2011
An expected clash with police was averted Friday when a cleanup of Occupy Wall Street's sit-in spot, Zuccotti Park, was postponed indefinitely. Jubilant protesters struck up a band and plotted their next moves.
By 7 a.m., the park in lower Manhattan where protesters have been camped out for a month was supposed to be filled with maintenance workers wielding power washers.
Instead, a brass band and dancers took up the southeast corner of the park, two men playing chess sat in its center, and a group stood in the northeast corner planning a “victory march” down Broadway.
Cleanup of the park was postponed early Friday, eliciting cheers from a crowd that had feared the effort was a pretext to evict them.
Deputy Mayor Caswell Holloway said the owners of the private park, Brookfield Office Properties, had put off the cleaning. That averted a confrontation with the protesters, who had been reinforced during the morning darkness by hundreds of supporters. Led by several of the city's largest unions, the sympathizers had streamed into the park before the planned cleaning, forming a crowd of several hundred, chanting
“We are the 99%” and wielding brooms, sponges and cleaning spray...
By 6 a.m., hundreds of union members—from 1199, SEIU 32BJ, the United Auto Workers, the Professional Staff Congress, and the Communications Workers of America—lined the sidewalks surrounding the park....
The Alliance for a Greater New York is planning to launch occupytheboardroom.org, which is being billed as a mysterious, surprise action targeting bankers.
“We want to make sure the 1% hears the voice of the 99% that they've been ignoring for years,” said Austin Guest, a communications associate with ALIGN who is coordinating the effort.
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