A week after denouncing Wall Street protestors for making life hell for residents and businesses in Lower Manhattan, Mayor Bloomberg this morning vigorously defended the protestors as “generally” law-abiding citizens who follow the rules and “are part of a much bigger thing we should be focusing on.”
“I will say in all fairness to the people down there, we watch very carefully and they generally do not break the law,” Bloomberg said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.
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“When they protest they march in a line, they stay on the sidewalk, they follow the directions of the police, they exercise their First Amendment rights. They’re in one controlled park. If you were to go one block away from the park, you’d never know it (the protest) exists. It’s just literally– just one block away — there’s just nothing, literally.”
The mayor also suggested that the Occupy Wall Street movement was making a serious political statement that the country needed to heed.
“This is part of a much bigger thing we should be focusing on,” he observed.
Last week, Bloomberg was much less accepting of the entrenched camp-in that’s spread to cities around the US.
“This isn’t an occupation of Wall Street — it’s an occupation of a growing, vibrant residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan and it’s really hurting small businesses and families,” the mayor said last Wednesday.
The next day, after a man was arrested for allegedly groping a female demonstrator in Zuccotti Park, Bloomberg said it would be “despicable” if protesters are failing to report crimes.
While there have been no mass arrests in the park itself, hundreds of protesters have been taken into custody by the NYPD during various marches around the city.
The mayor’s zig-zagging statements provided further evidence of the administration’s difficulty in dealing with the closely-watched protest, which will soon enter its second month.