Latest developments in the Occupy protests
Some of the latest developments in the Occupy protests:CALIFORNIA
A day of demonstrations by students and anti-Wall Street activists was disrupted Tuesday when a campus police officer shot a man with a gun about a half-mile from the main protest site at the University of California, Berkeley.
The shooting occurred inside the Haas School of Business as hundreds of demonstrators left an outdoor plaza at the school for a march to demonstrate outside a bank. Officials didn't yet know whether the suspect was part of the Occupy Cal movement, said Ute Frey, a spokeswoman for the university.
ReFund California, a coalition of student groups and university employee unions, called for a campus strike, and protesters marched and rallied to protest banks and budget cuts to higher education.
Earlier in the day, more than 1,000 students, campus employees, faculty and other demonstrators filled an outdoor plaza after many took part in teach-ins. The plaza was covered with banners that read "stop the cuts" and "educate the state."
In Los Angeles, police and Occupy protesters are working on a plan that would close down an encampment that encircles City Hall.
Cmdr. Andrew Smith said Tuesday police don't have a sense of when demonstrators will pack up and go home but discussions are ongoing and both sides hope for a peaceful resolution.
Tensions rose briefly earlier Tuesday when about 100 protesters marched downtown in solidarity with New York counterparts being ousted from their encampment. No arrests were made.
GEORGIA
About 50 protesters gathered on the steps of City Hall in downtown Atlanta on a rainy Tuesday evening, holding banners reading, "Take Back Wall Street" and "Oakland, Wall Street, Atlanta, Chapel Hill: Our Passion for Freedom is Stronger Than Their Prison."
Spokeswoman La'Die Mansfield said the Occupy Atlanta demonstrators joined protests across the country in solidarity with New York protesters who were told to vacate Zuccotti Park.
The Occupy Atlanta protesters were forcibly removed by police from the park they had camped in for weeks after Mayor Kasim Reed decided conditions had become unsafe. The experience has given the Atlanta protesters a kinship with movements in New York and Oakland, where police also clashed with protesters, Mansfield said.
ILLINOIS
Protesters staged a sit-in Tuesday in front of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office to try to stop health care cuts.
The protesters had the backing of a variety of activist groups, including Occupy Chicago, as they marched to City Hall from a nearby church. About a dozen protesters eventually took up seats on the floor outside Emanuel's office under the watchful eyes of police and journalists. Dozens more protesters assembled in a cordoned-off area in a hallway outside Emanuel's office. The mayor wasn't there.
The protesters oppose his proposed budget, which would close six of the city's 12 mental health clinics and partner the city's neighborhood health clinics with a federal program.
They chanted and offered testimonials about how they had been helped by the clinics.
MAINE
Occupy protesters worked Tuesday to insulate their tents, set up portable heaters and buy extra thermal socks as they vowed to stick it out in a city park for the winter months ahead in Maine.
Close to 60 tents are now set up in Lincoln Park, with many people placing hay bales around their tents and tarps over the top for insulation to ward off the cold to come. Some have brought in portable kerosene and propane heaters to prepare for the weather in Portland, which averages 62 inches of snow a year.
MASSACHUSETTS
Hip-hop mogul and political activist Russell Simmons told protesters at the Occupy Boston encampment Tuesday that it will take dramatic action to rid the American political system of corporate influence.
Simmons arrived in Boston after police dismantled the birthplace of the Occupy movement in New York earlier Tuesday.
"The Occupy movement is under attack," Simmons said, adding that there is no contradiction in a multimillionaire such as himself supporting a movement demanding economic equity. "I benefit off the tax code, but I'm ready to pay more taxes and ... I don't like having my secretary paying more in taxes than me."
Also Tuesday, Occupy Boston demonstrators filed a lawsuit as a pre-emptive strike against any attempt to remove them from their protest site.
The lawsuit said the demonstrators are concerned about attempts in New York and other cities to shut down the protests. The group is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the city or police from removing them from Dewey Square in Boston's financial district, where they have had an encampment since Sept. 30.
A hearing on the request is scheduled in Suffolk Superior Court Wednesday.
MICHIGAN
The Detroit City Council has given Occupy Detroit protesters a one-week extension on their right to hold out at a city park.
Organizers of Occupy Detroit told council members Monday that they wanted extra time to clean up the park and move their belongings to new, winter locations.
Council members approved the extension Tuesday. It allows group members to remain at Grand Circus Park until 10 p.m. next Monday.
About 150 people have moved into the park since Oct. 14.
The city last month denied a request for a 45-day permit.
MINNESOTA
Authorities in Minneapolis aren't saying when or if they will begin enforcing a new rule against sleeping overnight on a government plaza after they declined to remove Wall Street protesters the night the rule took effect.
Several dozen protesters spent Monday night on the plaza between the Hennepin County Government Center and Minneapolis City Hall. Since Oct. 7, the roughly half-block area has been the site of protests rooted in a movement that began in New York City.
Carolyn Marinan, a Hennepin County spokeswoman, and Sheriff Rich Stanek have said they're balancing free speech with concerns about the safety of protesters, who have been forbidden to set up tents.
"It's not going to be OK for people to stay overnight when temperatures are dangerous and cold," Marinan said Tuesday. "We don't want someone freezing on our plaza."
MISSOURI
A federal judge refused Tuesday to order Kiener Plaza re-opened for round-the-clock protests by the group Occupy St. Louis, whose tent city was ousted over the weekend after police began enforcing a 10 p.m. curfew in city parks.
U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson said Occupy St. Louis failed to show that the curfew was being selectively enforced in Kiener Plaza or that the enforcement was a reaction to the political nature of the protest, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Occupy St. Louis maintained its tent city in Kiener Plaza from early October until police arrested 27 members without incident early Saturday.
NEW YORK
Hundreds of police officers in riot gear raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City in the pre-dawn darkness Tuesday, evicted hundreds of protesters and then demolished the tent city, leaving the future of the demonstration in limbo.
Later in the day, a New York judge upheld the city's crackdown. Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman said in his ruling that the protesters "have not demonstrated that they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park, along with their tents, structures, generators and other installations to the exclusion of the owner's reasonable rights ... or to the rights to public access of others who might wish to use the space safely."
Protesters were allowed back into Zuccotti Park two by two Tuesday evening. They each could take only a small bag. No sleeping bags or tents were allowed.
City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez was released without bail Tuesday night after being charged with resisting arrest as police cleared the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park.
Rodriguez emerged from a courtroom Tuesday night with visible scrapes on his left temple and right forehead. He says an officer assaulted him two blocks from the park as he went to observe the police action. Police had no immediate comment.
Several journalists were arrested, handcuffed and hauled onto police buses along with hundreds of protesters Tuesday.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the NYPD's policy of keeping the media back, saying it was intended to keep them out of harm's way.
City officials said the behavior was troubling, and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the council would look into "reports of excessive force by the NYPD and reports of infringement of the rights of the press."
According to a poll released Tuesday, most New York voters don't believe the Occupy Wall Street movement has a clear message or represents 99 percent of Americans, but they support the demonstrators' right to stay in public parks around the clock.
The Siena College poll showed 45 percent of voters statewide have a favorable view of the movement. Forty-four percent have an unfavorable view, up six percentage points from a month earlier.
However, 57 percent of those polled said the demonstrators should be able to stay in the parks all day and all night, while 40 percent say they should not.
In upstate New York, a Republican Party official clashed verbally with Occupy Albany protesters Tuesday and urged Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to appoint a special prosecutor to handle curfew violations by the demonstrators in a public park next to the state Capitol.
Albany County Republican Chairman Don Clarey went to the encampment Tuesday to tell reporters that Cuomo should appoint the special prosecutor.
"The rule of law is at stake here," Clarey said. "We need to enforce the law."
Demonstrators surrounded him Tuesday with signs with slogans like "Got Lies" and "Robin Hood was right" and countered that they have a constitutional right to be there. "The Constitution is the law of the land," some chanted, making him hard to hear.
OHIO
Police in Ohio say they have arrested seven Occupy protesters for refusing to leave a bank.
Columbus police Sgt. Rich Weiner says the group on Tuesday took their protest and chanting into a Fifth Third branch and a U.S. Bank branch, where they were arrested.
He said they were asked to leave by security, and those who refused were arrested on misdemeanor criminal trespassing charges.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson plans to join an Occupy group in Ohio at a rally protesting the recent clearing out of Occupy camps in New York and other cities.
Spokesmen for Occupy Cincinnati and Jackson say he will join the group Tuesday night at a downtown park where the group's members have been meeting and last month camped out. The group says about 20 University of Cincinnati students joined them Tuesday in a meeting on the UC campus where Occupy Cincinnati had urged students to walk out of classes in support of the movement.
OKLAHOMA
A member of the Occupy Tulsa group said Tuesday that demonstrations will continue there around the clock despite recent arrests of protesters in the city and elsewhere.
Occupy Tulsa members have been gathering at a downtown park for several weeks to protest what they say is corporate greed and economic inequality.
Tulsa police officer Jason Willingham estimated 40 to 50 arrests had been made at H.A. Chapman Centennial Green since Nov. 2, the most recent on Sunday.
Occupy Tulsa member Brian Horton said those arrested in Tulsa weren't acting as part of the group when they violated the city's 11 p.m. park curfew.
OREGON
A group of key Occupy Portland demonstrators say they're breaking off ties with the city and police amid allegations by demonstrators that police used excessive force when they broke up a downtown camp that protesters had held for five weeks.
Protester Justin Bridges was hospitalized Sunday after police dragged him away from the camp, and he now claims officers beat and brutalized him. Police said Bridges was simply pulled away from a dangerous situation when he fell to the ground between protesters and riot police.
Six demonstrators who had served as liaisons between Occupy Portland, the city and police published an open letter Tuesday saying they were giving up their positions "in direct response to the deplorable police actions" and what they see as a lack of communication.
Officials told protesters in a state park on the Capitol grounds in Salem their tents and other structures have to be out by the end of the month.
Parks and Recreation Department officials say the camp's food and medical structures at Willson Park are open all night and are attracting unruly people.
The department told the protesters Monday their permit to demonstrate would end at the end of the month. The park is open to pedestrians 24 hours a day, and state officials say the protesters can be there if they don't camp or have structures.
PENNSYLVANIA
Police say a homeless man was arrested early Tuesday for assaulting a homeless woman at the Occupy Philadelphia encampment.
Officer Jillian Russell says the 47-year-old man was arrested after slapping and punching the woman. He is charged with simple assault.
Both the man and the woman told police they were affiliated with the protest. A member of Occupy Philadelphia said he couldn't immediately verify whether that was the case.
TENNESSEE
A flood of support for Wall Street protesters poured in after Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam imposed a curfew that led to the arrests of 55 people in Nashville, according to public records obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Of nearly 400 emails sent to the Republican governor's office, only 11 supported his actions.
The documents also include cost estimates for cleaning the plaza following the protest. One company on Oct. 31 said it would cost more than $46,000 to clean and refinish the surface, while another estimated it to be about $18,000 to pressure wash and treat the areas.
TEXAS
Police say seven people have been arrested at an Occupy El Paso campsite in a peaceful removal of the protesters.
El Paso police spokesman Darrel Petry says no one was injured during the arrests early Tuesday at San Jacinto Plaza. The seven El Paso residents are accused of misdemeanor unlawful camping in a city park and also being in a public park after hours, he said.
A federal judge has refused to grant an order sought by Occupy Dallas demonstrators to prevent the city from closing their campsite.
Protesters failed to get a temporary restraining order Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle earlier expressed concern that federal courts did not have jurisdiction.
The city last week said protesters had violated an agreement to allow the campsite near Dallas City Hall. The city noted reports of a sexual assault of a child at the site, the removal of a baby over possible endangerment and trespassing arrests.
A Nov. 12 deadline to comply has been extended.
Occupy Dallas officials said protesters are abiding by the deal.
VIRGINIA
Members of Occupy Richmond say they'll take up a newspaper publisher's offer to encamp on his property next door to the mayor's residence.
The protesters said they'll accept the offer from Raymond Boone, editor and founder the Richmond Free Press. They said they'll begin their encampment on Tuesday.
Boone offered his property last week in an editorial.
WASHINGTON
The Occupy movement has reached one of Washington state's most remote towns — the fictional home of the characters in the vampire teen series "Twilight."
The Peninsula Daily News reports that 17 people held an Occupy Forks protest on Saturday, rallying outside a Bank of America branch, the only corporate presence the protesters could find in the town.
It's about a four-hour trip from Seattle, on the western side of the Olympic Peninsula.
AUSTRALIA
Police in Australia have swooped down on the Occupy Melbourne camp, arresting three protesters as they enforced city orders requiring demonstrators to take down tents and tarpaulins.
A Melbourne spokeswoman says campers weren't evicted Wednesday morning but were issued notices giving them an hour to remove the shelters. She said some protesters have lawfully remained at the camp.
SWITZERLAND
Police in the Swiss city of Zurich have cleared a makeshift camp linked to the global Occupy protest movement.
Zurich city police say 31 protesters peacefully resisted the clearance and were briefly detained when officers enforced an evacuation order for the historic Lindenhof square early Tuesday.
Police spokesman Marco Cortesi says some 20 protesters had earlier left the camp voluntarily.
The protesters had pitched their tents in the old town square Oct. 16 as part of an international anti-capitalist movement sparked by efforts to "occupy Wall Street."
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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