After
weeks of cautiously accepting the round-the-clock protests spawned by
Occupy Wall Street, several cities are putting an end to it. In Oakland,
police filled downtown streets with tear gas late Tuesday to stop
throngs of protesters from re-entering a City Hall plaza that had been
cleared of their encampment earlier in the day. Those protests, which
resulted in more than 100 arrests and at least one life-threatening
injury, appeared ready to ignite again last night as supporters of the
Occupy movement promised to retake the square. Early in the day, city
officials were trying to defuse the situation, opening streets around
City Hall, though the encampment site was still fenced off. In San
Francisco, city officials warned several hundred protesters that they
were in violation of the law by camping at a downtown site after voicing
concerns about unhealthy and often squalid conditions in the camp,
including garbage, vermin and human waste. In Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed
ordered the police to arrest more than 50 protesters early yesterday and
remove their tents from a downtown park after deciding that the
situation had become unsafe, despite originally issuing executive orders
to let them camp there overnight. Similar confrontations could soon
come in other cities, as city officials grow tired of the protesters.
