Food vendors in Ziccotti Park have “lost all our business” due to the protesters

When Brookfield Properties (as I am assuming) committed to the City of New York to keep the plaza open 24 hours a day, did any of the parties contemplate a permanent shantytown that would discourage normal public and commercial activities in the plaza? It seems arguable to me that the authorities could kick out the demonstrators on this basis, if they had the will to do it.

New York Magazine reports:

Even as Occupy Wall Street protesters are decrying the grip of big business on America, they are causing angst for some small business that are well within the 99 percent: The New York food carts and tourist stands that surround Zuccotti Park. And while the occupation has been compared to the Arab Spring and Tahrir Square, the mostly Egyptian kebab cookers and breakfast sellers who are losing their livelihoods aren’t too sure.

Zizi Elnagouri, a voluble native of Alexandria, Egypt, has spent five years selling pastries on the corner of Cedar and Broadway. She whirled her hands as she spoke, flapping her apron to make a point. “From the beginning of this, we lost all our business,” she lamented. Elnagouri took matters into her own hands, venturing out into the square to tell the occupiers “we are out of business.” Some were glad and others sympathetic. But Zizi was shocked. “I couldn’t believe they were American. Do you see how they look? What they are wearing? I don’t believe. This must be the Third World!” Zizi is accustomed to well-fed New Yorkers in suits, not people begging for free doughnuts. [cont.]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 16, 2011 01:45 PM | Send