Police arrested 70 protesters in Zuccotti Park early this morning as they cleared the park for cleaning. The occupiers have since been granted a court order to return. Amy Davidson visited the empty park:
Zuccotti Park, despite its utopian aspirations, wasn’t the promised land, a particular piece of ground that had to be won. It wasn’t even technically on Wall Street. It could, in some sense, have been anywhere, or everywhere; perhaps that will be the backward effect of this eviction. In that way, and in others one can only glimpse, the quiet in Zuccotti this morning felt like a lull, not an ending.
Yglesias thinks Bloomberg did OWS a favor:
OWS was either going to end with the cops clearing the park, or else it was going to end with the protestors losing interest. It would be totally human and understandable for the protestors to end up fading away as the weather gets colder, but that would be demoralizing to everyone who’s come to look at the various Occupations as a key signal of popular discontent with rampant inequality. Instead, by ordering the protestors to be removed the Bloomberg administration has ensured continued relevance for the issue.
Ezra Klein looks ahead:
If [the protestors] are to go further, however, they are going to have to figure out a way to wield power in a more direct and directed form. The movement has always been uncertain on whether it wants to do that, and if it does, how to do it. It requires a willingness to work with the system that is, in certain ways, inimical to the founding of Occupy Wall Street. The good news, if they choose to make that transition, is that they don’t need a park to do it. The bad news is that, in most cases, it requires more hierarchy, clearer leaders, a more obvious agenda.
Photo by @jimbradysp. Live updates here. Footage from last night after the jump:
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