Tag: Occupy Wall Street

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A note on OWS numbers in New York City

The Cinch Review

This morning’s much anticipated and ballyhooed “Occupy Wall Street” march in the financial district, and attempt to shut down the New York Stock Exchange, attracted anywhere from a few hundred to somewhere between one and two thousand participants, according to the media.

In this city of New York, you can gather a crowd like that if you stand on the corner giving away free samples of some new protein bar. I mean, really. Considering the non-stop publicity and promotion of this event taking place (for free) in all outlets of the mainstream media, the level of participation is nothing short of dismal. This is not the 99%. It is more like the 0.000001%. In addition, as is well known, many of those in the hardcore membership of this OWS “movement” in New York are in fact from out of town. Take them away and you have a complete non-event. It’s a non-event anyway: the whole escapade of the past two months has been created by and remains dependent upon the wildly disproportionate attention of the media, in pursuit of a political narrative that suits their own preferences. (And we must not forget who in the political world supported it from the beginning.) Continue reading “A note on OWS numbers in New York City”

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11/17/2011: Anarchy in New York City?

The Cinch Review

I think not. The news of the day is full of predictions of chaos tomorrow in New York City and dark portents of the OWS types “burning down New York” and throwing Molotov cocktails at Macy’s and so on and on.


Certainly, if a nefarious and very shrewd group of villains decided to cause chaos in New York on any normal day, they might achieve it by means of random acts of mayhem and carnage. But if these Occupy Wall Street protesters attempt anything of the kind during their anticipated demonstrations tomorrow, the NYPD will land on them so hard and so fast that they will dearly wish that they were still back in Portland, Oregon, slacking off in their parents’ basements.

You read it here first.

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The Bloomberg versus the Giuliani way on Occupy Wall Street

The Cinch Review

In the early hours of this morning, the New York City Policy Department cleared Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan of hundreds of protesters, some of whom had been camping there since the “Occupy Wall Street” movement began two months ago. They were followed by an army of New York City Sanitation Department workers who moved in to remove tents, tarps and other accoutrements of the occupation, and to thoroughly disinfect the public plaza.

The decision to do this at this juncture came as a surprise, not least because Mayor Michael Bloomberg has vacillated for the past two months over how to address the problems created by the encampment; though he had largely seemed on the side of allowing the situation to continue until it might naturally peter out (with winter coming and all). Continue reading “The Bloomberg versus the Giuliani way on Occupy Wall Street”

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Occupy Wall Street: getting cooler, but not in the way they’d like

The Cinch Review

At Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan this morning, the New York City Fire Department moved in and removed generators and gasoline from the small encampment of protesters which has been hunkering in that location for about five weeks. Naturally enough, the tiny public plaza was never intended for the kinds of activities taking place, and fire codes were being violated all over the place in the name of heating and cooking. Until now, a blind eye had been turned to it. It is an interesting time to now turn an unblind eye towards it, one must say, with temperatures having just plummeted in the New York City area, and with actual snow being predicted for tomorrow night. Continue reading “Occupy Wall Street: getting cooler, but not in the way they’d like”

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A Visit to Wall Street and Environs

The Cinch Review

Although a resident of Manhattan, I rarely have cause to go down to the Financial District near the lower tip of the island. As a general rule, there are only two reasons to go to that part of town: (1) just to look at things, i.e. as a tourist and (2) to go to work, if you should happen to work there. These days there’s a third reason, of-course: to protest the stinking capitalists (which many are currently doing by camping out in a public plaza nearby and stinking back at them).

Today (a Sunday) I thought I’d go down there for reason #1: tourism. Mainly, it’s been so long since I’ve been there that I wanted to see in person how far construction on the “Freedom Tower” had come. However, we’re not supposed to call it the “Freedom Tower” anymore, since that apparently scared people—and isn’t freedom a scary thing?— so it’s just “One World Trade Center” now. In any case, the last time I had been down there there was virtually nothing above ground. It has pained many of us for the past decade to have a big hole in the ground down at Ground Zero, and I wanted to replace that mental image. Continue reading “A Visit to Wall Street and Environs”