A semiautonomous zone has sprung up in downtown Manhattan, just blocks from the site of Occupy Wall Street — but this time, the demands are more concrete
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams issued a press release Monday morning stating he would refuse to sign a tax authorization required by theto implement the final budget if that budget did not move away from school policing or implement a full NYPD hiring freeze.
The space they’ve created on the concrete and sparse grass next to City Hall is an ever-changing protest, collaboration center, soapbox, performance space, and party. Spray paint and chalk slogans fill the sidewalks, and hand-painted signs decorate the surrounding fences and barricades. When I first showed up on Saturday evening, the smell of sage was thick in the air. Carlos Rosario, 32, was fanning a bundle of it with goose feathers that he found next to the Hudson River.
n Sunday morning, a pair of NYPD officers entered the north side of the park, seemingly confused about what was going on there and looking to walk through. They were swiftly met with a chorus of boos, “get out of here,” and a protester blowing a very loud whistle. The officers quickly turned back and walked around the other side of the metal police barriers instead. Occupy City Hall had become a space most everyone was welcome.
Laundry land does daily en masse drop-offs and pickups of bedding and clothes, with no ticket system for identifying whose clothes are whose. Mackenzie Jamieson, 23, who had moved from volunteering as a medic to laundry land, says that despite what sometimes looks like chaos, everything just works. “Any person working any of these stations just figures it out. A lot of it’s luck and a lot of it’s trust,” she says.
“They’ve been marching for a while. And there’s something we can focus on, which is to have a just budget,” Public Advocate Williams, who stopped by Occupy City Hall, told“Let’s focus right at where decisions are being made on a regular basis. Let’s hold court right at City Hall. Let’s get it done. Let’s make sure they hear us.”
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