Occupy Wall Street (& Beyond): From Oakland to Atlanta, City Officials Crack Down on Protests (McKinley/Goodnough)

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LiveStream from Occupy San Francisco in California

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UPDATE 0730 GMT: Developments in Oakland and San Francisco in California: in Oakland, demonstrators have returned to the square which was cleared out by police on Tuesday night, although they have prevented --- through the closing of roads from marching on San Francisco.

In San Francisco, protesters are rallying on Market Street, despite rumours that police will move on the area.

UPDATE 0500 GMT: The Guardian of London highlights the critical wounding of a war veteran, Scott Olsen, in Oakland on Tuesday night.

Witnesses, including a photographer who published pictures of Olsen on the ground, said he was hit by a "flash bang" grenade. Olsen was rushed to hospital with a fractured skull and brain swelling.

A source at the Oakland citizen's police review board said it had not yet received a formal complaint, but would be "looking into" the circumstances surrounding Olsen's injuries and will decide whether to launch an official investigation.

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Jesse McKinley and Abby Goodnough report for The New York Times:

After weeks of cautiously accepting the teeming round-the-clock protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street, several cities have come to the end of their patience and others appear to be not far behind.

Here in Oakland, in a scene reminiscent of the antiwar protests of the 1960s, the 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. And those protests, which resulted in more than 100 arrests and at least one life-threatening injury, appeared ready to ignite again on Wednesday night as supporters of the Occupy movement promised to retake the square. Early Wednesday evening, city officials were trying to defuse the situation, opening streets around City Hall, though the encampment site was still fenced off.

But after about an hour of speeches, the crowd removed the fences. The number of protesters swelled to about 3,000 people, but the demonstration remained peaceful. Leaders led a series of call-and-response chants. “Now the whole world is watching Oakland,” was one phrase that was repeated as passing cars honked in approval. That police had gone, compared with a heavy presence the night before.

Across the bay, meanwhile, in the usually liberal environs of San Francisco, city officials there had also seemingly hit their breaking point, warning 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 Wednesday 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.

And like many of his mayoral colleagues nationwide, Mr. Reed openly expressed frustration with the protesters’ methods.

“The attitude I have seen here is not consistent with any civil rights protests I have seen in Atlanta,” Mr. Reed said in an interview, “and certainly not consistent with the most respected forms of civil disobedience.”

Similar confrontations could soon come to pass in other cities, including Providence, R.I., where Mayor Angel Taveras has vowed to seek a court order to remove protesters from Burnside Park, which they have occupied since Oct. 15.

And while other, bigger cities, including New York, Boston and Philadelphia, have taken a more tolerant view of the protests — for now — officials are still grappling with growing concerns about crime, sanitation and homelessness at the encampments. Even in Los Angeles, where the City Council passed a resolution in support of the protesters, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa warned Wednesday that they would not be allowed to remain outside City Hall indefinitely.

Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, echoed that. “It’s a daily assessment for us,” she said.

More and more, mayors across the country say they have found themselves walking a complex and politically delicate line: simultaneously wanting to respect the right to free speech and assembly, but increasingly concerned that the protests cannot stay orderly and safe.

“We can do lots of different things to help them on our end,” said Mr. Taveras, who estimates that roughly 200 people have camped out in Providence despite a city rule forbidding such behavior. “But we cannot allow an indefinite stay there, and we can’t allow them to continue to violate the law.”

The protests showed little sign of slacking. In Chicago, for example, demonstrators gathered Wednesday outside the office of Mayor Rahm Emanuel requesting 24-hour access to Grant Park and demanding that charges be dropped against the more than 300 protesters arrested there in the past weeks.

“He’s denying us our constitutional right to not only free speech, but peaceful continual assembly,” said Andy Manos, 32, one of the protesters.

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