© The Associated Press/Seth WenigOccupy Wall Street protesters move signs and structures over a wall into an enclosed site near Canal Street in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011.
Some of the latest developments in the Occupy protests:
CaliforniaAnti-Wall Street activists began rebuilding their tent encampment on the steps of the University of California, Berkeley student plaza Tuesday night, hours after demonstrations were disrupted by a campus shooting.
The shooting occurred inside the Haas School of Business as thousands of demonstrators gathered on campus for a general strike and protests against big banks and education cuts. Officials did not know if the suspect was part of the Occupy Cal movement.
The shooting didn't prevent some 2,000 students and demonstrators from gathering and rebuilding their encampment despite earlier violence.
On Nov. 9, baton-wielding police clashed with protesters who tried to set up tents and arrested 40 people as the university sought to uphold a campus ban on camping.
The Occupy Cal students were joined by hundreds of Occupy Oakland demonstrators who marched the five miles from Oakland to Berkeley along Telegraph Avenue, chanting, "Here comes Oakland!" Police cleared their tent city outside Oakland City Hall on Monday amid complaints about safety and sanitation, and arrested more than 50 people.
DelawareThe Wall Street protesters marching from New York to Washington have made their way into Delaware.
Organizer Kelley Brannon saId the "Occupy the Highway" march arrived in Wilmington Tuesday.
The march kicked off last week with about two dozen people departing from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. Brannon says about 40 people are now participating after a stopover in Philadelphia.
The protesters plan to arrive in Washington by Nov. 23. They are walking about 20 miles a day, mostly along highways.
Brannon had to leave the march temporarily because she has a court date Wednesday morning in New York stemming from an arrest during a demonstration last month. She plans to rejoin the march later Wednesday.
GeorgiaAbout 50 protesters gathered on the steps of City Hall in downtown Atlanta on a rainy Tuesday evening, holding banners reading, "Take Back Wall Street" and "Oakland, Wall Street, Atlanta, Chapel Hill: Our Passion for Freedom is Stronger Than Their Prison."
Spokeswoman La'Die Mansfield said the Occupy Atlanta demonstrators joined protests across the country in solidarity with New York protesters who were told to vacate Zuccotti Park.
The Occupy Atlanta protesters were forcibly removed by police from the park they had camped in for weeks after Mayor Kasim Reed decided conditions had become unsafe. The experience has given the Atlanta protesters a kinship with movements in New York and Oakland, where police also clashed with protesters, Mansfield said.
IllinoisA sit-in outside Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office to try to stop health care cuts ended Tuesday night after several hours.
Protesters marched to City Hall from a nearby church. They eventually took up seats on the floor outside Emanuel's office. Dozens more assembled in an outside hallway. Emanuel did not visit the protesters.
Ten people were still sitting outside the office Tuesday evening. Police officers stood by, but made no arrests. People who left the building were not allowed back in.
The
Chicago Tribune reported that the last protesters decided to leave City Hall at about 10:30 p.m.
The protesters oppose Emanuel's proposed budget, which would close six of the city's 12 mental health clinics and partner the city's neighborhood health clinics with a federal program.
MaineOccupy protesters worked Tuesday to insulate their tents, set up portable heaters and buy extra thermal socks as they vowed to stick it out in a city park for the winter months ahead in Maine.
Close to 60 tents are now set up in Lincoln Park, with many people placing hay bales around their tents and tarps over the top for insulation to ward off the cold to come. Some have brought in portable kerosene and propane heaters to prepare for the weather in Portland, which averages 62 inches of snow a year.
MassachusettsHip-hop mogul and political activist Russell Simmons told protesters at the Occupy Boston encampment Tuesday that it will take dramatic action to rid the American political system of corporate influence.
Simmons arrived in Boston after police dismantled the birthplace of the Occupy movement in New York earlier Tuesday.
"The Occupy movement is under attack," Simmons said, adding that there is no contradiction in a multimillionaire such as himself supporting a movement demanding economic equity. "I benefit off the tax code, but I'm ready to pay more taxes and ... I don't like having my secretary paying more in taxes than me."
Also Tuesday, Occupy Boston demonstrators filed a lawsuit as a pre-emptive strike against any attempt to remove them from their protest site.
The lawsuit said the demonstrators are concerned about attempts in New York and other cities to shut down the protests. The group is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the city or police from removing them from Dewey Square in Boston's financial district, where they have had an encampment since Sept. 30.
A hearing on the request is scheduled in Suffolk Superior Court Wednesday.
MichiganThe Detroit City Council has given Occupy Detroit protesters a one-week extension on their right to hold out at a city park.
Organizers of Occupy Detroit told council members Monday that they wanted extra time to clean up the park and move their belongings to new, winter locations.
Council members approved the extension Tuesday. It allows group members to remain at Grand Circus Park until 10 p.m. next Monday.
About 150 people have moved into the park since Oct. 14.
The city last month denied a request for a 45-day permit.
MinnesotaAuthorities in Minneapolis aren't saying when or if they will begin enforcing a new rule against sleeping overnight on a government plaza after they declined to remove Wall Street protesters the night the rule took effect.
Several dozen protesters spent Monday night on the plaza between the Hennepin County Government Center and Minneapolis City Hall. Since Oct. 7, the roughly half-block area has been the site of protests rooted in a movement that began in New York City.
Carolyn Marinan, a Hennepin County spokeswoman, and Sheriff Rich Stanek have said they're balancing free speech with concerns about the safety of protesters, who have been forbidden to set up tents.
"It's not going to be OK for people to stay overnight when temperatures are dangerous and cold," Marinan said Tuesday. "We don't want someone freezing on our plaza."
MissouriA federal judge refused Tuesday to order Kiener Plaza re-opened for round-the-clock protests by the group Occupy St. Louis, whose tent city was ousted over the weekend after police began enforcing a 10 p.m. curfew in city parks.
U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson said Occupy St. Louis failed to show that the curfew was being selectively enforced in Kiener Plaza or that the enforcement was a reaction to the political nature of the protest, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Occupy St. Louis maintained its tent city in Kiener Plaza from early October until police arrested 27 members without incident early Saturday.
New YorkPolice rousted protesters from a Manhattan park Tuesday 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 and 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.
OhioThe Rev. Jesse Jackson joined demonstrators at a rally Tuesday protesting the recent clearing out of Occupy camps in New York and other cities. Elsewhere in the state, police said they arrested seven protesters in Columbus for refusing to leave a bank.
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.
OklahomaA member of the Occupy Tulsa group said Tuesday that demonstrations will continue there around the clock despite recent arrests of protesters in the city and elsewhere.
Occupy Tulsa members have been gathering at a downtown park for several weeks to protest what they say is corporate greed and economic inequality.
Tulsa police officer Jason Willingham estimated 40 to 50 arrests had been made at H.A. Chapman Centennial Green since Nov. 2, the most recent on Sunday.
Occupy Tulsa member Brian Horton said those arrested in Tulsa weren't acting as part of the group when they violated the city's 11 p.m. park curfew.
OregonA group of key Occupy Portland demonstrators say they're breaking off ties with the city and police amid allegations by demonstrators that police used excessive force when they broke up a downtown camp that protesters had held for five weeks.
Protester Justin Bridges was hospitalized Sunday after police dragged him away from the camp, and he now claims officers beat and brutalized him. Police said Bridges was simply pulled away from a dangerous situation when he fell to the ground between protesters and riot police.
Six demonstrators who had served as liaisons between Occupy Portland, the city and police published an open letter Tuesday saying they were giving up their positions "in direct response to the deplorable police actions" and what they see as a lack of communication.
Officials told protesters in a state park on the Capitol grounds in Salem their tents and other structures have to be out by the end of the month.
Parks and Recreation Department officials say the camp's food and medical structures at Willson Park are open all night and are attracting unruly people.
The department told the protesters Monday their permit to demonstrate would end at the end of the month. The park is open to pedestrians 24 hours a day, and state officials say the protesters can be there if they don't camp or have structures.
PennsylvaniaFive people were arrested Tuesday evening following an Occupy Pittsburgh protest at the city's convention center, authorities said.
Police told WTAE-TV that about 100 protesters gathered at about 6 p.m. Tuesday outside the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where oilfield services firm Halliburton Co. was hosting a conference for oil and gas industry members
Police said the crowd was told to disband, and five people who resisted were arrested.
Officers said they were taken to Allegheny County Jail and face charges including defiant trespass, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and obstructing traffic.
TennesseeA flood of support for Wall Street protesters poured in after Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam imposed a curfew that led to the arrests of 55 people in Nashville, according to public records obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Of nearly 400 emails sent to the Republican governor's office, only 11 supported his actions.
The documents also include cost estimates for cleaning the plaza following the protest. One company on Oct. 31 said it would cost more than $46,000 to clean and refinish the surface, while another estimated it to be about $18,000 to pressure wash and treat the areas.
TexasCity and Occupy Dallas officials planned to meet after a federal judge cleared the way Tuesday for the city to close the demonstrators' campsite near City Hall, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said.
Protesters failed to get a temporary restraining order Tuesday to prevent the closure, though the mayor said no immediate action was being taken at Occupy Dallas.
Rawlings said city attorneys will discuss the "next steps" with the group's legal representation Wednesday. He said public safety and health conditions are a "paramount concern."
The city last week alleged protesters violated an agreement allowing the campsite. The city noted reports of an alleged sexual assault of a child at the site, the removal of a baby over possible endangerment and trespassing arrests.
Occupy Dallas officials say protesters are abiding by the deal.
VirginiaMembers of Occupy Richmond say they'll take up a newspaper publisher's offer to encamp on his property next door to the mayor's residence.
The protesters said they'll accept the offer from Raymond Boone, editor and founder the
Richmond Free Press. They said they'll begin their encampment on Tuesday.
Boone offered his property last week in an editorial.
WashingtonAuthorities arrested at least six people and used pepper spray to disperse a crowd of protesters after a downtown march in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement degenerated into a tense confrontation Tuesday evening in Seattle.
Protest organizers denounced the use of force, saying on the Occupy Seattle Twitter account that
police "indiscriminately" sprayed the chemical irritant at "peaceful" protesters.
The group said that among the demonstrators affected were an 84-year-old and a pregnant woman.Seattle police defended their actions, saying plenty of verbal warnings were given to demonstrators attempting to block intersections and streets during rush hour.
AustraliaPolice in Australia swooped down on the Occupy Melbourne camp, arresting three protesters as they enforced city orders requiring demonstrators to take down tents and tarpaulins.
A Melbourne spokeswoman says campers weren't evicted Wednesday morning, but were issued notices giving them an hour to remove the shelters. She said some protesters have lawfully remained at the camp.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said aside from the arrests, more than a dozen protesters were pulled away by officers and then later released. Both spokeswomen declined to be named under Australian media custom.
The anti-corporate "Occupy" protest in New York has inspired demonstrations around the world. Police in Melbourne made several arrests last month at an Occupy demonstration.
SwitzerlandPolice in the Swiss city of Zurich have cleared a makeshift camp linked to the global Occupy protest movement.
Zurich city police say 31 protesters peacefully resisted the clearance and were briefly detained when officers enforced an evacuation order for the historic Lindenhof square early Tuesday.
Police spokesman Marco Cortesi says some 20 protesters had earlier left the camp voluntarily.
The protesters had pitched their tents in the old town square Oct. 16 as part of an international anti-capitalist movement sparked by efforts to "occupy Wall Street."
Source: The Associated Press
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter