Only in America: Occupy Wall Street Inspires Protest With In A Protest

According to Bess Levin, Dealbreaker’s Doyenne of Dish, downtown residents and business owners are organizing a protest of the protest after two months of Lower Manhattan being occupied by the Wall Street demonstration. 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

It was well after midnight when Kyle Brooks was jolted awake by an ungodly banging. Mr. Brooks, who lives a block from Zuccotti Park, groaned; the pounding had become a persistent irritant — with no sign of letting up until winter’s end. Outside, below his windows, the perpetrators carried on without pause, jack-hammering through concrete and rock at the World Trade Center site.

“Occupy Wall Street is controllable; the construction is not,” said Mr. Brooks, an architect who has lived in a loft on Cedar Street for 20 years. “The problem is you can’t get any sleep.”

As the Occupy Wall Street protest nears its third month, Lower Manhattan residents who live nearby have alternately grown more accustomed to it or increasingly aggrieved. Foremost among complaints are the protesters’ daily drumming sessions, which, some neighbors say, jangle nerves, scare young children, disrupt homework and make working at home impossible. But other residents said the protesters’ drumming paled alongside the near-constant din of construction emanating from the World Trade Center site, which has often started before dawn and gone on past 2 a.m.

City figures help tell the tale of the neighborhood’s plight, and show that construction seemed to be the greater nuisance. Within a quarter-mile radius of Zuccotti Park, over 300 noise-related complaints have been logged by the city’s 311 line from Sept. 17, when the encampment began, to Nov. 9. Of those, 115 were about loud talking or music, and 175 were about jackhammers and construction in the early and late hours.

The exasperation extends beyond residents. In August, the Millenium Hilton filed an $8 million lawsuit against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, and Silverstein Properties, which is building towers there. The suit charges that the defendants failed to make good on promises to mitigate the noise and worked very early and late hours, causing guests to flee.
Learn more at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/nyregion/for-neighbors-of-zuccotti-park-and-ground-zero-beat-drags-on.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion