The NY Daily News has a piece out that is so entertaining in it's entirety that I am finding it hard to know where to start.
So, let us start with the words of Wall Street Occupier Jeff Smith, a member of the OWS press working group, who said "What we’re trying to build here [Zuccotti Park] is a model for the bigger society we’d like to see.”(Left- Photo Richard Drew/AP)
I make way less than the $300,000 plus that makes up the 1 percent, so I guess that makes me part of the 99 percent,although I vehemently deny that any Occupier in Zuccotti Park speaks for me or represents my views, because they do not.
With that said, as one the 99 percent they claim to represent, I could not be paid enough to live like they are willingly choosing to live in the Occupied Park. (See photo above) If that is their example of a "model civilization" these people are more disturbed than I originally thought.
Moving along...
And there’s the rub: The “model” civilization that’s sprung up at Zuccotti is itself increasingly divided between the stakeholders in the nascent movement who feel invested in the emerging economic, social and cultural causes of “the 99%,” and hangers-on, including a fast-growing contingent of lawbreakers and lowlifes, many of whom seem to have come to Zuccotti in the last week with the cynical encouragement of the NYPD.
That alleged encouragement is discussed much lower in the piece where another Occupier, Daniel Zeta, says "The police are saying ‘it’s a free for all at Zuccotti so you can go there."
If police are saying that, then they are right, it is a free for all.
Occupiers do not have permits. Occupiers are breaking the Park's rules by sleeping there and erecting tents. Occupiers are endangering their own and any visitors lives as evidenced by the letter Brookefield sent the police department asking for help and stating there were safety issues and repairs to be made that they cannot make because the Occupiers refuse to leave.
It seems that the 99%'ers that the police are allegedly sending to Zucotti Park are not welcome by the other 99%er's.
The punchline here is that the NY Daily News actually has the audacity to call the second group of 99'ers, get this.... "freeloaders and disturbed characters."
Freeloader from Wiktionary:
One who does not contribute or pay appropriately; one who gets a free ride, etc. without paying a fair share
Definition of Freeloader via Dictionary.com:
to take advantage of others for free food, entertainment, etc.
All the Occupiers are freeloaders by it's very definition!!!!
Now for the disturbed part, we do not have to look at the second group of 99'ers to find disturbed individuals, we simply go back to a previous Wake up America piece and grab a video of original Occupiers.
Reminds me of that saying about stones and glass houses.
The entertainment doesn't end there though.
Down further in the piece we see this paragraph:
The watch, though, has only powers of persuasion and pressure to try and enforce the rules, and no way to remove people from a public park. The police, whom many occupiers see as the enemy and who work under a mayor who’s made no secret of his distaste for the occupiers, have little reason to help them maintain order, and rarely seem to have entered the park over the last week for anything short of an assault. When officers have gone in, a wave of people carrying drugs (or with other reasons to fear arrest) moves away from them while others circle tightly around, cameras out. Even when organizers have requested their intervention, police enter to a mixed chorus of “brutality” and “pig” calls side by side with chanted reminders that “you are the 99%.”
If anyone needs me to explain the idiotic irony of that emphasized portion of the paragraph, they are too stupid to even bother with.
The final kicker here and the best quote of the day comes from the writer's claim that he heard three different cops, when asked to intervene with troublemakers inside the park, say "He’s got a right to express himself, you’ve got a right to express yourself."
Cops sense of humor:
“The first time I’ve heard cops mention our First Amendment rights,” cracked one occupier after hearing a lieutenant read off of that apparent script.
“A lot of you people smell,” a waggish cop shot back later after an occupier asked if he might be able to help find more appropriate accommodations for a particularly pungent and out-of-sorts homeless man.
If this NY Daily News piece isn't satire, and it isn't, it should be because this was the most amusing article I have read in a long time.
You can find all WuA's Occupier antics posts at the class warfare label page here.
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