Gone is the camp that protesters against racial inequalities had set up in front of New York City Hall in June: the Democratic City Hall cleaned the site on Wednesday, under increasing pressure in particular from Donald Trump, who threatens to send federal agents to restore “Order”.
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New York police, accompanied by cleaners and lawyers, intervened before dawn to dismantle the tents and drive out the 50 or so people left behind, without collisions or injuries, said the New York police chief. – Yorker Dermot Shea, during a press briefing.
Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, a staunch defender of the right to protest and the anti-racial inequality movement that followed the death of African-American George Floyd at the end of May, presented the clean-up of the site dubbed “Occupy City Hall” as carefully considered. », In homage to the movement« Occupy Wall Street »born in 2011 which, for months, had denounced the abuses of capitalism.
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“In recent weeks, the rally was getting smaller and smaller, it was less and less a demonstration and more and more a gathering of the homeless,” said the mayor. “It was time to act”.
Since the end of the big protests for George Floyd in New York, the pressure was mounting to end the encampment and the wild graffiti it generated on several municipal buildings and statues, close to federal buildings.
On Monday, Donald Trump threatened to send federal agents to New York as in other Democratic strongholds, to protect federal buildings and, more generally, “to restore order”.
These threats sparked an uproar among Democrats who, citing the example of the controversial interventions of federal agents against demonstrators in Portland (northwest), see in their unusual use an “authoritarian” drift.
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De Blasio reiterated on Wednesday that New York would take the federal government to court if federal agents were deployed in the U.S. economic capital.
But the pressure on the municipality is also coming from the governor of the state of New York, Andrew Cuomo.
The latter said Wednesday he was “very disturbed” by the rise in crime in New York and other signs of “decline” of the metropolis, which is idling after being severely affected by the pandemic.
The governor said he spoke to the US president on Tuesday, asking him not to send federal agents to New York and assuring him that he would take action himself if necessary.
“I am worried, but not to the point of declaring a state of emergency,” he said.
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