Evicted From Park, Occupy Protesters Take to Sidewalks

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/nyregion/evicted-from-park-occupy-protesters-take-to-the-sidewalks.html

The protesters arrived on Wall Street on Wednesday night carrying bedrolls, quilts and blankets. They spread pieces of cardboard on the sidewalks. Then, as several police officers stood nearby, the protesters made signs with anticorporate slogans.

For the third consecutive night, Occupy Wall Street protesters used a tactic that many of them hope will emerge as a replacement for their encampment at Zuccotti Park, which was disbanded by the police in November.

Norman Siegel, a prominent civil-rights lawyer who visited the protesters on Wednesday night, said a decision by a federal court in Manhattan arising from a lawsuit in 2000 allowed the protesters to sleep on sidewalks as a form of political expression so long as they did not block doorways and took up no more than half the sidewalk.

The protesters first cited that ruling last week while sleeping outside bank branches near Union Square, but said this week that they wanted so-called sleep-outs to occur nightly around the New York Stock Exchange.

An organizer, Austin Guest, said protesters had scheduled such events for Friday night at four other spots, each related to the Occupy Wall Street message that the financial system benefits the rich and corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens.

By 5:30 a.m., the sound of stainless-steel coffee carts clattering over cobblestones could be heard. Workers began hosing the sidewalk across the street from Federal Hall. By 6 a.m., protesters were waking up.

As the sky brightened, workers in suits or high heels began walking down Wall Street, and a young protester offered them pamphlets.

Many ignored the literature. Some accepted, leafing through the pamphlet as they walked or shoving it into their pockets as they hurried to their jobs.