• When the history of Occupy Wall Street is written, maybe we’ll find out whether the decision to set up in privately-owned Zuccotti Park was a strategic coup or a lucky accident. Ironically, as Ben Adler reports for GOOD, if the protest had been held in a public park, the city could have shut it down a long time ago. In order to protest in a public park, you need a permit. If you try to rally without one, you’ll be arrested. City parks have curfews, but Zuccotti Park must be open 24 hours a day, Lisa Foderaro reports in the New York Times. It’s actually illegal to camp in a city park without a permit, but it’s merely against the ad hoc rules to camp in Zuccotti Park.
• Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly had threatened to clear the park for “cleaning” at 7am on Friday. This was a de facto eviction threat because the protesters were told that they wouldn’t be allowed to bring their camping gear back in again. Early this morning, as thousands of people assembled in the park to defend the occupation, it was announced that the cleaning had been postponed. The official story is that Brookfield Properties, the owners of Zuccotti Park, made the decision late last night, before two thousand protesters showed up to defend the encampment, Allison Kilkenny reports on The Nation blog. Kilkenny is rightly skeptical.
• Adrienne Jeffries of the New York Observer debunks the insinuation that George Soros is funding Occupy Wall Street and sheds some light on how the occupation is actually funded. The protesters’ General Assembly also voted to turn down an offer by hip hop mogul Russell Simmons to pay for the cleanup of Zuccotti Park to preempt eviction. The protesters cleaned up the park themselves. I was there at 5:30 this morning and I can attest that the concrete was cleaner than the floor of the diner where I ate breakfast.

In non-Occupy-Wall-Street news…

• “I don’t like it when people use buzz words that try to get people’s attention, and ‘cancer’ is one of those,” Republican Congressman and thoracic surgeon Larry Bucshon told OSHA chief David Micheals during a hearing last week. Michaels said OSHA was working on a tougher standard for crystaline silica in the workplace, because the stuff causes cancer and other lung diseases. Bucshon said he’d never seen a patient with silica-induced lung cancer. As public health researcher Celeste Monforton explains at The Pump Handle, there is no question that crystaline silica causes lung cancer. It’s not the leading cause of lung cancer, smoking is. But then again, a lot fewer people are exposed to silica dust than tobacco smoke. Wouldn’t it be great if nobody had to breathe silica? 
• This week, Topeka City Council struck down the city’s law against domestic violence, Kate Sheppard reports in Mother Jones. This was not a capitulation to the wife beater lobby, but rather, a bid to force the local DA to resume prosecuting domestic violence cases, which he had stopped doing to protest budget cuts. Until recently, there was state law and city law against domestic violence. The City Council suspected that the DA wasn’t enforcing Kansas law because he was counting on the city to enforce Topeka law. So, they got rid of the city law to force his hand. Who knows if this will work? Meanwhile, if Topekan women want protection, they’re free to hire Blackwater.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]