Russell Simmons Offers To PayOccupy Wall Street Cleanup To Avoid Violence
In an effort to prevent potential for violence between Occupy Wall Street protesters and the NYPD, Russell Simmons offered to clean up Zuccotti Park, which has been the home base of Occupy Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.
Simmons, who has been a supporter of Occupy Wall Street tweeted on Thursday:
“Dear @MikeBloomberg — I will pay for clean-up of Zuccotti Park to avoid confrontation. I don’t wanna go to jail but I will be there ready!”
“Damn looks like they are gonna start a war out of this non violent movement. This could set off lots of chaos,” he also tweeted. “The law says the young people can stay. I love the mayor, my advice dont allow this to get violent.”
The city’s cleanup plans were scheduled for Friday morning but have since been postponed.
The NYTimes.com reports:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a radio interview on Friday morning, sought to make it clear that the the decision to postpone the clean up was made by Brookfield.
He said that the company made its decision after receiving a flurry of threatening phone calls from elected officials.
“Yesterday, as of 8 o’clock at night, they were going ahead to do it, but, as of midnight, they called and said they wanted to postpone the cleaning operations,” Mr. Bloomberg said on his radio program on WOR-AM (710).
The city will attempt to make arrangements with the protestors to clean up the park, which has been occupied for over a month.
Regardless of whose decision it was to postpone the cleanup, it’s a good thing that things were postponed because they could have gotten ugly.
We tip our hats to Russell Simmons for taking a political stance and attempting to step in.
