“It’s difficult to say what will happen moving forward, but we will make those decisions on a daily basis,” Driscoll said in a telephone interview.
But the pressure appears to be building.
Just yesterday, Occupy Oakland protesters in California were evicted for the second time, and police in Portland, Ore., cleared out an encampment on Sunday. Over the weekend, protesters in Burlington, Vt., agreed to peacefully leave their two-week-old camp after a man shot himself to death inside a tent there, the Burlington Free Press reported.
The Occupy Boston encampment in Dewey Square was founded less than two weeks after Occupy Wall Street began and shared many elements with the New York City camp, but from the beginning, the two have seen markedly different responses from their municipal governments.
Both camps were established in their cities’ financial districts, within easy walking distance of their city halls, and in parks of less than an acre. Inside, the protesters have set up similar information tables and resources for food, legal advice, and media contacts. Both camps have created working groups to tackle issues such as outreach, demonstrations, logistics, medical needs, sanitation, and public safety.
But police departments in the two cities have responded to the protests in strikingly different ways.
Occupy Wall Street was met early by an aggressive police response that famously included a Sept. 25 pepper spray attack on two unarmed women by a high-ranking officer, who was later reprimanded. And New York Police made one previous, unsuccessful attempt to clear the park for cleaning before entering it with batons and plastic shields early Tuesday.
The National Lawyers Guild later obtained a court order that will allow protesters to return, but the final outcome remains unknown. A week before they were evicted, one protester said they were working to find common ground with police and planned to march for better wages for officers.
