Bloomberg also cast bankers simply as those who were making “$40–50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet,” and that “people in this day and age need support for their employers.” (The New York comptroller’s office later determined that the average compensation for New York City bankers was $362,950 in 2011.) Sounds like a man who we can certainly believe will reform Wall Street!And then came the raid. In November 2011, Bloomberg infamously ordered the New York police to evict protestors at 1 am, tearing up tents and blocking reporters. Here’s how the scene was described in the Washington Post at the time:Did you partake in Occupy Wall Street or work for then-Mayor Bloomberg at the time? We’d love to hear from you. Email clio.chang@vice.com .
Bloomberg then ignored a court order that required protestors to be readmitted to the park. According to The Guardian, the mayor defended the media blackout of the raid by arguing it was to “protect members of the press.”As Alex Pareene pointed out at The New Republic, this type of polite authoritarianism is part and parcel of Bloomberg’s regular governing style. Whatever Bloomberg might say or promise during the primary, his actual track record shows that in practice, he’s brutally unafraid to represent his own class interests over the rest of the country.Once inside the park, the police tore up the tents, and apparently ruined the belongings of the protesters who had turned the park into a makeshift city over the last two months. (Among other ruined items were 5000 books from the park’s library, the protesters’ Twitter feed points out.) Those who resisted were met with batons and pepper spray, reports Mother Jones’s Josh Harkinson; among others, New York City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested and bleeding from the head, according to another council member. Protesters were to be allowed back into the park, but the NYPD insisted they’d have to make do without tents, tarps or any other equipment essential to the occupation.