Don't mess with the cat ladies

Perhaps someone should have given the Republican vice-presidential candidate a history lesson:

Even a powerful park commissioner found the housewives and their perambulators blocking his way when he tried to rent out a bit of the green as a parking lot for a private restaurant he favored; and wild painters and cat-keeping spinsters united to keep him from forcing a driveway through lovely Washington Square.

Paul and Percival Goodman, Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life

The "powerful park commissioner" was of course Robert Moses.