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Daily Show: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Exploit Local Retailers' Bathrooms

By

John Del Signore

Published Oct 7, 2011

Modified Oct 7, 2011

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By

John Del Signore

Published Oct 7, 2011

Modified Oct 7, 2011

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As the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park enters its fourth week, some local residents and small business owners feel like they're the ones be occupied. At a Community Board 1 meeting Wednesday night, Committee Chair Ro Scheffe told representatives of OWS, “Whatever your political views are, it doesn’t matter, because once again our neighborhood has been taken from us. We have a right to peaceful enjoyment of our homes, which we are being denied." Also being denied? The right to sanitary bathrooms, as Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee reports:

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Bee finds several local restaurants and delis are fed up with the protesters, who come in to use the bathroom without buying anything. (One demonstrator tells Bee that not buying anything is his "right as a consumer.") According to one restaurant owner, the restroom sink was ripped off the wall because a protester was using it to take a shower. And that's not all: "Somebody walked into the store and shit all over the place, and they thought it was fine to leave it like that," says one worker. But isn't that an apt metaphor for what Wall Street has been doing to America for so many years? It's called a shit-in, sheeple.

The demonstration is also costing taxpayers millions in overtime for NYPD officers. So far, $2 million has been spent on pepper-spraying and nightstick-workouts during the past three weeks of protests, an NYPD source tells the Daily News. Yesterday NYPD Commissioner Kelly told reporters, "We are accommodating peaceful protests. We are proud of the fact that we do that in this city. People are going to be here for an extended period of time. We’re going to accommodate them as long as they do it peacefully and in accordance with the laws and regulations."

As we noted yesterday, it's up to Brookfield Properties, the owners of Zuccotti Park, to decide when to pull a Tiananmen Square. "The charter, it gives access to the park 24 hours a day, seven says a week,” Kelly told CBS 2 yesterday. When asked if there was "an end game," Kelly replied, "You know, we’ll see. Right now they’re on private property and people who own that property don’t have the power to eject them."

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Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.

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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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