Like an aging Manhattanite finally tired of paying $2,000 a month for a leaky East Village walkup, Occupy Wall Street is finally moving to Brooklyn. Sort of. The movement that's taken over Manhattan is spawning an outer borough spinoff this weekend, when the newly formed Occupy Brooklyn plans to protest in Grand Army Plaza.
Details are still hazy, but the group has two Twitter feeds (here and here), a blog, and a Facebook page up and running. They plan to rally at the Plaza at 11 a.m. this Saturday in solidarity with other protestors across the country.
“It was only a matter of time before the … rallies made their way to Brooklyn,” borough President Marty Markowitz told the Brooklyn Paper. “There is no doubt that Americans—those in the ‘99 percent’—are hurting, and we can all agree that some of the issues being raised by these protests … are concerns we can all rally around," he added, though he would not commit to actually joining the Occupants on Saturday.
Occupy Wall Street's previous foray over to Brooklyn didn't go so well—some 700 people were arrested while marching over the Brooklyn Bridge earlier this month. Yesterday, Gawker staffers were busy making fun of Occupy Brooklyn, which protestors didn't take to kindly.
Grand Army Plaza is not included in the list of privately owned public spaces [pdf] maintained by the city, but Occupy Brooklyn protestors look (so far) like they're planning less to actually occupy and more to protest for a temporary time period. The group is having an Occupy Together Brooklyn General Assembly meetup tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at the Commons Brooklyn.
