Occupy DC camps persist as rally planned next week

WASHINGTON — They let them back into Zuccotti Park, but kicked them out of a vacant house in Seattle. In other places, Occupy protesters are in courtrooms fighting evictions.

While the movement flickers, the protest in the nation's capital is persisting into the winter, buoyed by demonstrators who stay on federal land in a city with a tolerant, even celebrated, history of civil disobedience. Washington even has two Occupy sites within blocks of each other.

"We didn't initiate it — that was with Occupy Wall Street — but we're carrying it on. And you know what? So are they," said Joseph Bieber, 39, who came to Washington after the Occupy site in Philadelphia was shut down.

Demonstrators like Bieber have found a new home in D.C., where organizers expect a protest Tuesday on Capitol Hill — dubbed Occupy Congress — to draw thousands of people and bring renewed attention to their opposition to corporate greed and income inequality.

"We can't just protest on Wall Street. We must also protest Congress directly if we want to have real change," said Mario Lozada, a protester from Philadelphia.

Though the D.C. protesters have provoked the ire of a Republican congressman, they have been accepted — with some growing signs of exasperation — by a mayor who forged his political identity as an activist and by a National Park Service that says it's determined to protect First Amendment rights. Though they've dwindled considerably in numbers, the demonstrators, and a few homeless people, have remained despite occasionally freezing temperatures, the holidays and, more recently, rat infestations.

Several dozen tents occupy Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square, both just blocks from the White House. The group at McPherson Square was inspired by the protesters in New York, while the Freedom Plaza site — a generally older crowd — had a war protest that morphed into an Occupy encampment.

In New York, protesters have been holding meetings at various indoor spaces after tents and sleeping bags were banned from Zuccotti Park in mid-November. A police raid evicted protesters who had been sleeping there since Sept. 17.

On Tuesday, metal barricades that had surrounded Zuccotti Park were removed, and about 300 demonstrators "re-Occupied" the park. Most left, though, as the night wore on.

Ned Merrill was one of a handful of protesters around a day later.