After raids, Wall Street protesters shift tactics

An Occupy Los Ange­les sup­porter is arrested and car­ried out of the camp by Los Ange­les Police offi­cers at the Los Ange­les City Hall, Wednes­day in Los Ange­les. Police in Los Ange­les and Philadel­phia stormed Occupy Wall Street encamp­ments in both cities Wednes­day, demand­ing pro­tes­tors leave demon­stra­tion sites. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Bret Hartman)

CHRIS HAWLEY

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — The overnight police raids in Philadel­phia and Los Ange­les that dis­man­tled two of the nation’s biggest Occupy Wall Street encamp­ments leave just a few major “occu­pa­tions” still going on around the U.S. But activists are already chang­ing tac­tics and warn­ing of a win­ter of dis­con­tent, with ral­lies and marches every week.

The camps may bloom again in the spring, orga­niz­ers said, and next sum­mer could bring huge demon­stra­tions at the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tions, when the whole world is watch­ing. But for now they are pro­mot­ing dozens of smaller actions, such as pick­et­ing the pres­i­dent in New York and stag­ing sit-ins at homes marked for foreclosure.

“We intend to use this for what it is — basi­cally six months to get our feet under­neath us, to get strong,” said Phil Striegel, a com­mu­nity activist in San Francisco.

On Wednes­day, masked san­i­ta­tion work­ers hauled away 25 tons of debris from the lawns around Los Ange­les City Hall after police raided the pro­test­ers’ camp in the mid­dle of the night and arrested more than 300 peo­ple. In Philadel­phia, dozens of police patrolled a plaza out­side City Hall after sweep­ing it of demon­stra­tors and arrest­ing 50.

In the past few weeks, police broke up encamp­ments in such cities as Port­land, Ore., Oak­land, Calif., and New York, where the sit-down protests against social inequal­ity and cor­po­rate excesses began in mid-September.

Demon­stra­tors are still at it in places like Boston and Wash­ing­ton, which each had encamp­ments of about 100 tents Wednes­day. Dozens of pro­test­ers are fight­ing evic­tion from a com­mu­nity col­lege cam­pus in Seattle

While some observers won­dered whether the move­ment would wither with­out ground on which to make its stand, many pro­test­ers refused to con­cede defeat.

Pro­test­ers in Philadel­phia marched from the city’s well-to-do Rit­ten­house Square to police head­quar­ters Wednes­day after­noon and also called for a “vic­tory march” for Fri­day or Saturday.

“Occupy Philly is alive and well,” said Katonya Mosley, a mem­ber of the group’s legal col­lec­tive. She said mem­bers have been com­mu­ni­cat­ing via list serves, text mes­sages and email and planned to con­tinue meet­ing in cafes and other spaces. Local groups have also offered to donate space for the pro­test­ers to con­tinue meet­ing, Mosley said.

While one fac­tion received a per­mit for a scaled-down protest across the street, she said, Occupy Philadel­phia as a whole hasn’t decided whether to go that route. The city has said any new per­mit would include a ban on camping

The Occupy move­ment is begin­ning to fol­low a famil­iar pat­tern, said Todd Gitlin, a soci­ol­o­gist at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity and an author­ity on social move­ments. He noted that the 1960s anti-war move­ment grew grad­u­ally for years until burst­ing onto the world stage dur­ing the elec­tion year of 1968.

He pre­dicted big ral­lies around the 2012 Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion in Tampa, Fla., and the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion in Char­lotte, N.C.

Until then, “I think there will be some kinds of occu­pa­tions, but I don’t think they’ll be as big and as cen­tral,” Gitlin said.

Pro­test­ers them­selves were try­ing to draw lessons from his­tory. On Thurs­day a group of pro­test­ers from Occupy Wash­ing­ton planned to set out on a march from the Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Memo­r­ial on the National Mall to King’s gravesite in Atlanta. Thurs­day is the anniver­sary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a Mont­gomery, Ala., bus in 1955. That led to the year­long Mont­gomery bus boycott.

The long fight for civil rights shows “how long these things take,” said Kevin Zeese, an orga­nizer of the Wash­ing­ton occupation.

In New York, pro­test­ers have con­tin­ued to meet in Zuc­cotti Park, where the Occupy move­ment began, even though police cleared out their tents on Nov. 15. They planned to protest out­side a fundrais­ing din­ner by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Wednes­day night and a con­fer­ence of aero­space exec­u­tives Thurs­day that they branded a meet­ing of “war profiteers.”

On Mon­day, Occupy pro­test­ers dis­rupted a ses­sion of the Wash­ing­ton state Leg­is­la­ture in Olympia. State troop­ers used stun guns against at least three peo­ple and issued 30 tres­pass­ing cita­tions. In Bloom­ing­ton, Ind., police arrested five pro­test­ers who tried to block the entrance to a recruit­ing event by JPMor­gan Chase Bank at Indi­ana University’s busi­ness school Tues­day night.

In St. Louis, pro­test­ers whose camp was bro­ken up by police on Nov. 12 planned to march to the Fed­eral Reserve Bank office on Thurs­day. John Mills, a tech­ni­cal writer, called the dis­so­lu­tion of the camp a minor setback.

“It’s damp­ened some spir­its, but I think peo­ple are just as pas­sion­ate, just as excited and just as ready for change as they were before,” Mills said.

In Atlanta, where pro­test­ers moved to a home­less shel­ter after police drove them out of Woodruff Park in Octo­ber, orga­nizer La’Die Mans­field said the group will par­tic­i­pate in an inter­na­tional day of action in sup­port of Egypt this week­end and occupy a home marked for fore­clo­sure next week, as part of a national Occupy protest on that issue.

On Dec. 12 pro­test­ers plan to block­ade entrances to sea­ports along the West Coast. Oth­ers plan to march as a “human float” on the fringes of the New Year’s Day Rose Parade under the slo­gan “Every­thing is not com­ing up roses.”

Posted by AP News on Nov 30 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.