To hear some D.C. residents tell it, the McPherson Square Occupy camp should be long gone by now. When the National Park Service announced it would begin enforcing a camping ban at McPherson and Freedom Plaza Monday, media swarmed the camps, hoping to capture the final hours of a tent city that first popped up in October. Instead, on an unseasonably warm Wednesday, McPherson remained packed with tents and tarps. The camping ban has generated no arrests. Instead, protesters were doing yoga on the lawn near a new, massive “Tent of Dreams” draped over the statue of Gen. James McPherson. The U.S. Park Police were nowhere in sight.
It’s a far cry from the large-scale eviction for which residents, businesses and city officials were calling.
“Does this mean I get my neighborhood Starbucks back?” one resident tweeted Monday as Occupiers converged in the park. The short answer is no.
The protesters remain in the McPherson camp mainly because the Park Service has made clear that it has no intention of evicting them en masse. The camping ban the service said it would begin enforcing on Monday requires only that the protesters stop sleeping in the park and remove all bedding from their tents. But the tents themselves can stay as symbols of the protest protected by the First Amendment, Park Police said.
Protesters at both D.C. camps simply adjusted to the new regulations and continued on as they have before. Most tents have been cleared of bedding and many protesters have found other places to sleep — in churches, with friends and sometimes on the streets. Others are complying with the ban by not sleeping at all. A handful of Occupiers on a “sleep strike” haven’t slept since Monday morning and say they won’t sleep until the Park Service stops enforcing the ban.
A good portion of Occupiers are still sleeping in the park in defiance of the Park Service’s order.
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“I’m sleeping here because a person has to find someplace to sleep,” said Camilo Brokaw, 24, of Albuquerque, N.M. “There’s a big community here that doesn’t have somewhere to go.”
But even though police patrolled the camp twice in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, checking tents for slumbering protesters, they made no arrests, protesters said.
“I’ve been here since the beginning and I want to ride it out,” said protester Mike Johnson, who has been staying with a friend since Monday. “I’ve been here in 17-degree weather. My protest would be in vain if I left now.”
