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The New York Times/ ­- N.Y./Region, Qui, 12 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
Evicted From Park, Occupy Protesters
Take to Sidewalks
By COLIN MOYNIHAN The protesters arrived on Wall
Street on Wednesday night carrying bedrolls, quilts
and blankets. They spread pieces of cardboard on the
sidewalks. Then, as several police officers stood
nearby, the protesters made signs with anticorporate
slogans. “It’s really exciting to see people actually
occupying Wall Street,” said Embi Weitzel, 25, a nanny
from Colorado, who came with earplugs, apples, a
flashlight, a bottle of water and an orange sleeping
bag. “Finally, here we are, in the belly of the beast.”
For the third consecutive night, Occupy Wall Street
protesters used a tactic that many of them hope will
emerge as a replacement for their encampment at
Zuccotti Park, which was disbanded by the police in
November. Norman Siegel, a prominent civil­-rights
lawyer who visited the protesters on Wednesday night,
said a decision by a federal court in Manhattan arising
from a lawsuit in 2000 allowed the protesters to sleep
on sidewalks as a form of political expression so long
as they did not block doorways and took up no more
than half the sidewalk. The protesters first cited that
ruling last week while sleeping outside bank branches
near Union Square, but said this week that they
wanted so­-called sleep­-outs to occur nightly around
the New York Stock Exchange. An organizer, Austin
Guest, said protesters had scheduled such events for
Friday night at four other spots, each related to the
Occupy Wall Street message that the financial system
benefits the rich and corporations at the expense of
ordinary citizens. The protesters’ presence on and
near Wall Street has drawn the attention of the police,
but officers have not dislodged them. Dozens of
Occupy encampments around the country were
forcibly cleared months ago by police forces, and
organizers in New York have acknowledged that it
would be difficult to mount a new occupation of a park
or plaza. Instead, many of them said, they would rather
establish these sleeping spots. “It takes a tremendous
amount of resources to maintain a camp,” Mr. Guest
said Wednesday night. “But sidewalks are
everywhere.” Another organizer, Jo Robin, said that by
moving to Wall Street, the protesters hoped to address
a new audience that would most likely not support the
movement’s message. She added that over the past
week, protesters in Boston, Philadelphia and
Washington had begun sleeping near financial
institutions. About 75 protesters gathered on
Wednesday night in Lower Manhattan. About 15 slept
on Wall Street. Most of them stretched out on Nassau
Street, just north of Wall Street. Others unrolled their
sleeping bags on Broad Street, across from the
illuminated colonnade of the stock exchange. “The
conversations that were happening in Zuccotti Park
are happening again,” said Ray Leone, 26, from the
Lower East Side. “We were separated for so long.”
Around 2 a.m. on Thursday, several protesters kicked
a soccer ball across the cobblestones of Nassau
Street. A large dump truck lifted a metal container with
a clang and emptied its contents. A couple of hours
later, most protesters were asleep, curled under
blankets, some wearing hats and scarves. Nearby, in
Zuccotti Park, empty except for a security guard, there
was the hiss of sprinklers watering tulips. By 5:30 a.m.,
the sound of stainless­-steel coffee carts clattering over
cobblestones could be heard. Workers began hosing
the sidewalk across the street from Federal Hall. By 6
a.m., protesters were waking up. As the sky
brightened, workers in suits or high heels began
walking down Wall Street, and a young protester
offered them pamphlets. Many ignored the literature.
Some accepted, leafing through the pamphlet as they
walked or shoving it into their pockets as they hurried
to their jobs.
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