By tomorrow (Friday, October 14) morning, Zuccotti Park, the privately owned park where Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has set up their tent city, may be the cleanest park in New York City.  Today, the Mayor himself, the inestimable Michael Bloomberg (financier and media baron) showed up to tell us that the park would be “cleaned” starting early Friday morning, but hinted that the occupation would be “allowed” to continue, if it followed certain rules. The “clean up your room, young man/lady” antics of this joke of a public official has brought many thousand more supporters of OWS to the Park, angered by this paternalistic and thinly veiled attempt to “clean up the streets,” as Bloomberg's predecessor Rudy Giuliani liked to call his war on the poor.

In response, OWS has organized itself into dozens of teams of clean up crews, who are right now taking mops, brushes, garbage bags and detergent to the streets. “Today we clean up our park; tomorrow we clean up Wall Street” one sign reads. Ironically, come tomorrow morning, Zucotti park will be the cleanest public space in New York, thanks to the anarchistic self-organization of the Occupiers, and the decades of budget cuts to NY city services. Now that's what I call effective contracting out of government services!

More seriously, Bloomberg's gambit is transparent. He's testing the waters, seeing if he can push OWS around, if they'll take it, and if there will be a public outcry. He knows what he's doing: OWS is quite popular, but he is capitalizing on the impression (fostered by his media buddies) that OWS is a den of punks and hippies who are a threat to public health and sanitation. His paternalistic stance invites the public to sympathize with his plight as a patient but stern father figure.

Is OWS equal to the task of playing optics chess with a master like Bloomberg? Probably not. We can only hope the public sees through it. But it does give us a sense of what the tactics of the state will be, at least until the game changes. They don't want an upfront confrontation which will bring attention and sympathy to OWS. They want to frame the Occupation as a subculture, just one (dirty) part of a pluralistic society and a diverse city. If they succeed in doing this, they'll win – the nascent populism of the Occupation will dwindle and all that will be left will be the die-hards who, truth be told, might prefer a subculture to a movement.

To support OWS from afar, check this out:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/emergency_callin_to_stop_eviction/?cl=1333598631&v=10700
and
http://www.civic.moveon.org/defend_ows/?id=31974-19021638-%3DuadbCx&t=2