Brookfield Deals With Protesters Again, but Not at
Zuccotti

	At least 17 Occupy Wall Street protesters were
	arrested on Monday at the World Financial
	Center, whose owner, Brookfield Properties,
	also owns Zuccotti Park, the public space where
	the protesters maintained an encampment for two
	months before being cleared by the police in
	mid-November.

By Colin Moynihan
New York Times
December 12, 2011

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/brookfield-deals-with-protesters-again-but-not-at-zuccotti/?scp=2&sq=goldman%20sachs%20occupy&st=cse

"We thought we would come over and give Brookfield a
direct message," said Bill Dobbs, an Occupy Wall Street
organizer.

About 200 protesters milled and chanted inside the
center's winter garden, a public atrium with soaring
ceilings. They also stretched yellow adhesive tape
marked with the word "Occupy" across the granite floor
of the atrium. From a second-floor balcony, a banner
was unfurled with the words "solidarity" and "west
coast port shutdown," in support of protests in cities
like Oakland, Seattle and San Diego, where activists
with the Occupy movement announced plans to blockade
ports.

Onlookers peered from other parts of the balcony, or
hurried across the main floor of the atrium, where
protesters swirled in a circle.

Soon police officers arrived. A man wearing a suit, who
would not say who he worked for announced: "If you do
not leave, you will be arrested."

A police commander said the man worked for Brookfield.
A spokeswoman for the company said by e-mail that she
would not comment on whether Brookfield employees
directed protesters to leave.

A few minutes after the announcement, officers began
herding protesters down a wide staircase in the atrium
and pushed them toward a door. At one point, several
officers pounced on a man on the ground. A moment
later, officers chased another man through the atrium,
cornering him near glass windows and arresting him.

Mr. Dobbs said that he was walking toward a door when
he was shoved from behind and sent sprawling.

"I was thrown to the ground.," he said. "I couldn't
believe I was being hurled with such force."

Most of the protesters and several news reporters and
photographers were pushed outside. But about 10 men and
7 women were placed in handcuffs inside the atrium,
then removed and placed in police vehicles.

The protests began when a few hundred people assembled
on Broadway, opposite Zuccotti Park, and marched to the
Goldman Sachs headquarters nearby. Some of those on the
march compared Goldman Sachs to a giant squid with
tentacles that spread throughout the global financial
system.

"We're demonstrating the links between the excesses in
finance and the excesses in industry," said Aaron
Bornstein, 31, a neuroscientist from Fort Greene,
Brooklyn. "And the labor-busting power of industry."

After rallying outside the Goldman Sachs building on
West Street while brandishing placards and papier-mache
replicas of squids, some of the protesters then headed
to the World Financial Center.

___________________________________________

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