Last night we pub­lished a spe­cial call to ac­tion urg­ing our read­ers to oc­cupy Zuc­cotti Park early this morn­ing to de­fend the com­mu­nity from what seemed to many an ef­fort to evict the pro­test­ers and end the oc­cu­pa­tion. Mayor Bloomberg had an­nounced that the oc­cu­piers must leave the park from 7am to 7pm this morn­ing al­legedly so that the city could clean the area. Yes­ter­day, at the OWS Gen­eral As­sem­bly it was de­cided that the oc­cu­piers would them­selves clean the park in ad­di­tion to al­lo­cat­ing $3,000 in GA funds to hire pro­fes­sional clean­ers. Through­out the day and well into the night the pro­test­ers put this plan into ac­tion.

We at­tended an­other smaller meet­ing last night (though this was sev­eral blocks away from Zuc­cotti Park, there were at least ten po­lice of­fi­cers pre­sent), in which the pro­test­ers pre­pared the strat­egy for this morn­ing’s event. Vol­un­teers were given the op­por­tu­nity for as­sign­ment in var­i­ous roles, some of which re­quired train­ing. Roles in­cluded col­umn (link­ing arm to arm to form a bar­rier), es­cort, jail sup­port, media wran­gler, and oth­ers and were clas­si­fied as ei­ther “ar­restable” or not, giv­ing vol­un­teers fair warn­ing of the like­li­hood of ar­rest.

The crowd broke out into enor­mous cheers, and ap­plause. Many began recit­ing chants such as: “the peo­ple / united / will never be de­feated” and oth­ers began to sing, dance, and some could be seen shed­ding tears of joy. A con­sid­er­able ef­fort by those in power was made to re­move the pro­test­ers from their oc­cu­pa­tion and that ef­fort was de­feated. At least for the time being, the peo­ple hold Lib­erty Square and are now cel­e­brat­ing their vic­tory on Broad­way and Wall Street.

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