New Yorkers can expect all manner of disruption today. Occupy Wall Street’s dispossessed drifters are threatening a major escalation of their war on civility.
They promise a “day of action” to mark the two-month anniversary of their “occupation” — with thousands on hand to “shut down” Wall Street, march on Foley Square and snarl the subway.
Now meet their enablers — the Democrats that hope to run the city after Mayor Bloomberg: Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, City Council Speaker Chris Quinn, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and ex-City Comptroller Billy Thompson.
And consider their staggeringly mindless, fuel-on-the-fire rhetoric after the park clean-up:
De Blasio: “Bloomberg made a needlessly provocative and legally questionable decision.”
Quinn: “We must work to ensure that the protesters are allowed back into Zuccotti Park as soon as possible.”
Stringer: “The administration acted to end the occupation of Zuccotti Park by forcible eviction . . . Zuccotti Park is not Tiananmen Square.”
Thompson: “Our city must be one where all voices are respected and not suppressed.”
(City Comptroller John Liu spoke nonsense, too, but he’s well on his way to occupying a jail cell — see above — so what he thinks about anything isn’t important.)
So there you have it: Much of Lower Manhattan, not to mention the rest of the city, was delighted to see Zuccotti rescued and the law finally enforced.
Store owners and residents rejoiced at the clean-up, after two months of never-ending Occupy hell. But these folks pay taxes, they don’t consume them — so they are small beer to the mayoral hopefuls and the unions that pull their strings.
That such irresponsible demagoguery would issue from folks who already hold, or have held, major municipal office — and now seek to go higher — is astonishing.
Where have all the serious people gone?