Protesters suspicious of plan to clean NY park

Associated Press

NEW YORK

The owner of the private park where Wall Street protesters are camped out gave them notice Thursday that after it power-washes the space it will begin enforcing regulations, which prohibit everything from lying down on benches to storing personal property on the ground.

The protesters’ response was to plan a demonstration for an hour before they are supposed to evacuate Zuccotti Park while it is cleaned with power washers this morning. They believe the effort is an attempt to end the protest, which triggered a movement against unequal distribution of wealth that has spread across the globe.

Protest spokesman Patrick Bruner sent an email to supporters Thursday asking them to join the protesters at 6 a.m. today to “defend the occupation from eviction.”

The owner, Brookfield Properties, earlier handed out a notice to protesters saying they would be allowed back in the park after the cleanup if they abide by park regulations.

The notice lists regulations including no tents, no tarps or sleeping bags on the ground, no lying on benches and no storage of personal property on the ground. All those practices have been common at the park, where protesters have lived, slept and eaten for nearly a month.

“They’re going to use the cleanup to get us out of here,” said Justin Wedes, 25, a part-time public high- school science teacher from Brooklyn. “It’s a de facto eviction notice.”

Police officers escorted representatives of the company as the notices were passed out to demonstrators.

The notice from Brookfield Properties stated that the 12-hour, section-by-section cleaning is slated to begin at 7 a.m. and is part of daily upkeep, and that conditions have deteriorated in recent weeks because that upkeep was put on hold by the protesters.

There was a scramble of activity Thursday afternoon as demonstrators began cleaning the park themselves. Part of the plaza was blocked off with red tape. Within that area, protesters scrubbed benches and mopped stone flooring. Some people even replanted flower beds.

The self-organized sanitation team even hired a private garbage truck to pick up discarded curbside garbage and announced a storage area at the corner of the park.

Protester Dylan O’Keefe, an unemployed 19-year-old from Northampton, Mass., was tying red tape marked with the word “danger” around trees.

“We’re trying to clean the entire park, mobilizing everyone,” O’Keefe said. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

The regulations are not new — they existed before the occupation — but they have not been enforced until now. Because the park is private property, police will not make arrests unless Brookfield requests assistance and laws are broken.