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Philadelphia Managing Director and Deputy Mayor Richard Negrin has been working with the Occupy Philly demonstrators since they set up camp 40 days ago, and the constant change in/lack of leadership feels a lot like "a shell game" to him. "You don't know who you're dealing with from one day to the next."
That might explain why Occupy Phily today complained that the city withheld information on Thomas Paine Plaza, while Negrin tells CP that he actually sat down with Occupy Legal Collective members and showed them schematics of the plaza a full month ago.
Furthermore, he argues that Mayor Michael Nutter has rolled out the red carpet for Occupy "unprecedented access to senior officials," starting when "the mayor left his office with myself and chief of staff Everett Gillison, and walked over to the Friends Center to meet with them under their own terms and conditions. We showed up with half the cabinet, on their terms!"
At that point, the city asked for weekly meetings with Occupy, which the demonstrators declined. "That's not collaboration. That's not open communication," Negrin says. Negrin believes the group is seeking out confrontation and conflict, whereas the mayor is looking to avoid it. "There are concerns about whether the movement is becoming more radicalized."
He denies that police have failed to step in when asked, but notes that the number of incidents at the encampment has escalated. "There was an assault on Tuesday night: members of the security team beat up a man who was drunk and disorderly. There was an unauthorized propane tank confiscated Thursday, and the sexual assault on Saturday night," he says. "It's been a really bad week down there."
Which is what prompted the mayor's frustrated press release this weekend. Even so, Negrin says the mayor remains eager to open weekly discussions with the demonstrators. But he notes that "when they're ready [to begin work on the Dilworth Plaza renovations some time in the next few weeks], we're going to have to start construction."
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