Crackdowns reach NY park

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Crackdowns against the Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country reached the epicenter of the movement Tuesday, when police rousted protesters from a Manhattan park and a judge ruled that their free-speech rights do not extend to pitching a tent and setting up camp for months at a time.

It was a potentially devastating setback. If crowds of demonstrators return to Zuccotti Park, they will not be allowed to bring tents, sleeping bags and other equipment that turned the area into a makeshift city of dissent.

But demonstrators pledged to carry on with their message protesting corporate greed and economic inequality, either in Zuccotti or a yet-to-be- chosen new home.

“This is much bigger than a square plaza in downtown Manhattan,” said Hans Shan, an organizer who was working with churches to find places for protesters to sleep. “You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.”

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman upheld the city’s eviction of the protesters after an emergency appeal by the National Lawyers Guild.

The protesters have been camped out in the privately owned park since mid-September. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he ordered the sweep because health and safety conditions had become “intolerable” in the crowded plaza. The raid was conducted in the middle of the night “to reduce the risk of confrontation” and “to minimize disruption to the surrounding neighborhood,” he said.

By early Tuesday evening, some protesters were being allowed back into the park two by two. But they could each take only a small bag.

Later Tuesday, the protesters held a general assembly where they discussed topics including where and how to retrieve their belongings that had been swooped up in the raid and options for going forward, including appealing the judge’s decision.

Still, some protesters believed the loss of Zuccotti Park may be an opportunity to broaden and decentralize the protest to give it staying power.

The New York raid was the third in three days for a major American city. Police broke up camps Sunday in Portland, Ore., and Monday in Oakland, Calif.

The timing did not appear to be coincidence. On Tuesday, authorities acknowledged that police departments across the nation consulted with one another about nonviolent ways to clear encampments. Officers in as many as 40 cities participated in the conference calls.

In Cincinnati, the Rev. Jesse Jackson joined demonstrators at a rally Tuesday protesting the clearing-out of Occupy camps in New York and other cities.

Jackson spoke to about 200 people in Cincinnati’s Piatt Park on Tuesday night, urging them to continue their fight against corporate greed and social inequality.

“You are that voice that will not go away. It is not whether you occupy downtown or not. You occupy the conscience of a nation,” Jackson said, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. “You are America’s unfinished business.”

Earlier Tuesday, the Occupy group in Columbus took its protest and chanting into two banks, a Fifth Third branch and a U.S. Bank branch, where those who refused to leave were arrested.

The protesters were arrested on criminal trespassing charges, said police Sgt. Rich Weiner. An organizer of the group didn’t immediately return a call for comment.