From NBC-New York:
Downtown residents and business owners angry that their neighborhood has been occupied for two months by the Wall Street demonstration are staging a protest of the protest Monday, declaring that City Hall has let it get out of control.
Angry over all-day drumming, people urinating and defecating on the streets and verbal attacks from protesters, organizers say they will rally at City Hall Monday to send officials a message.
“Laws are clearly being violated and we simply want them enforced,” Lower Manhattan resident Linda Gertsman told NBC New York.
Exasperated residents and businesses said they are “pursuing all options,” including lawsuits against the city, the mayor and the private company that owns Zuccotti Plaza, the encampment headquarters.
Organizers of the anti-Occupy protest posted fliers downtown that say “Mayor Bloomberg is helping them stay.”
The Occupy Wall Street movement began with a few people on Sept. 17 and has grown to hundreds who have made Zuccotti Park, a small plaza along Broadway, their home.
Businesses have complained for weeks that the encampment is causing them to lose money, although a few have made money off the protests, as donors from all over the country have sent food from nearby restaurants to the movement.
Mark Epstein, owner of Milk Street Cafe on Wall Street, said his business has suffered and he has had to lay off people in recent weeks.
The protest has been, he says, “a fiasco.”
Read more here.
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