abnervaught: Tom Morello Occupies Wall Street As City Tightens Grip

Friday, October 14, 2011

Tom Morello Occupies Wall Street As City Tightens Grip

Protesters start to clean Zuccotti Park on Thursday in hopes of avoiding a city eviction.
By James Dinh, with additional reporting by Steven Roberts

Tom Morello
Photo: MTV News

In hopes of avoiding a city eviction from Zuccotti Park, protesters involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement began voluntary cleanup efforts Thursday afternoon (October 13).

It's an attempt urged by park occupiers themselves after Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Wednesday that protesters would have to temporarily evacuate the grounds by 7 a.m. Friday for a four-weeks-overdue mandatory cleanup. Because some viewed the city order as a means to end the protest, the Liberty Park occupiers have started to remove debris and scrub the sidewalks.

MTV News caught up with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who appeared at the protest Thursday and offered his support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. "Every successful, progressive and radical movement needs a soundtrack and I'm just helping to provide," he told us.

Morello was on hand to play a number of songs with his harmonica and guitar, including cuts from his World Wide Rebel Songs LP.

"I played at Occupy L.A. last Saturday and Occupy Wall Street today now, and it's a movement now that's in 13,000 cities across the country, and it's growing every day," he told MTV News. "I think the sky's the limit. There's no telling what this is going to be, and [if] you're watching now in your town, you can begin occupying your town today."

Morello is just one of a string of celebrity supports who have showed up to the now-dubbed Liberty Park, including Kanye West and Russell Simmons.

If the city and the park's owners, Brookfield Properties, still proceed with the protesters' eviction and cleanup process, it will cause a bit of a dent in the protest. According to The New York Times, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told reporters Thursday afternoon that the protesters will not be allowed to take their sleeping and camping gear back into the park after the cleanup. Zuccotti Park has had a ban on sleeping bags for weeks now as part of the grounds' rules, but has yet to enforce the guidelines.

Colin Harris-Mctigue, a volunteer organizer and coordinator of the outreach program for Occupy Wall Street, also spoke to MTV News recently about how the community formed. "The way [the outreach program] started was one day at 3 o'clock, we stood up and said, 'Does anyone want to join an outreach committee?' And that was the foundation. It was two people. And from there, we now have over 2,000 in our data list," Harris-Mctigue explained.

Share your thoughts on the ongoing Wall Street protests in the comments below.

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