On November 16, 2011, police evicted Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York City. At 1 AM, after shutting down subway entrances and streets around the park, police moved in, destroying thousands of books from the occupation’s library, beating and pepper-spraying protesters, and ultimately arresting more than two hundred people.

Five years later, Donald Trump held a press conference in the gold-plated atrium of his tower in Lower Manhattan. With his family and aides grouped around him, the then-presidential candidate held forth as security guards shooed pedestrians away.

What connects these seemingly disparate events? Both occurred in New York’s privately owned public spaces (POPS), legal paradoxes that were born in the 1900s and have integrated themselves into the fabric of the city.