Why The Occupiers Chose Zuccotti Park

See Occupy Wall Street's Crony Capitalism: Political extortion created Zuccotti Park, and it allows protesters to remain despite the noise, filth and stink by L. Gordon Crovitz, WSJ, 10-17-11. Excerpts:

"How did protesters manage to take over Zuccotti Park, a half-acre plot a few blocks from Wall Street? It turns out that this land grab is not due to the power of social media. Instead, the main force letting protesters stay in the park is old-fashioned crony capitalism."

" Zuccotti is not a city park, where sleeping overnight is prohibited. Instead, it is one of some 500 "privately owned public spaces" that New York City officials created as part of zoning deals with real estate developers.

In the case of Zuccotti Park, the crony capitalism goes back to the 1970s, when U.S. Steel built the One Liberty Plaza office tower. In exchange for adding nine stories, city officials extracted an agreement that U.S. Steel would fund a 24-hour-a-day park across the street.

These quasipublic spaces are notorious for leaving unclear who's responsible for what."

"Even if this were a public park, Supreme Court cases on the "time, place and manner" for demonstrations would clearly allow officials to stop a month-long sleepover.

Occupy Wall Street leadership and lawyers picked Zuccotti Park knowing the split responsibility for privately owned public spaces would give them a better chance to stay than in a public park. The absence of quasipublic parks explains why similar Occupy efforts failed in Washington, Chicago and Trenton, N.J., where police quickly removed protesters camping out in parks."

"Last week, Brookfield finally asked the New York police commissioner for help. "The manner in which the protesters are occupying the park violates the law, violates the rules of the park, deprives the community of its rights of quiet enjoyment to the park, and creates health and public safety issues that need to be addressed immediately," its letter to the police reads."

""Brookfield got lots of calls from many elected officials threatening them and saying, 'If you don't stop this, we'll make your life more difficult,'" Mayor Bloomberg said on his radio show on Friday."