The battle for McPherson Square - OccupyDC - Salon.com
Move back!” shouted the cop wielding a clear Plexiglas shield emblazoned with the words “U.S. Park Police” as he moved into the crowd of demonstrators thronging McPherson Square on Saturday afternoon. The photographer next to me was shouting, “I’m press!” but that didn’t seem to impress the phalanx of officers advancing on us, applying their shields to our shoulders.
“Move back!” the cop explained, and I went sprawling into what used to be the main information tent of OccupyDC. It was the place where you could always find someone who could tell you about the camp’s activities. It was a place where I had debated fiat money with a Ron Paul supporter, chatted with a delusional homeless man, and talked union politics with a woman from National Nurses United. Now the tent was a flat lumpy mess, and people were scrambling over it to get away from the suddenly aggressive cops. Nearby, mounted officers on horses were slowly wading their steeds into a river of people, and some screamed in panic at the approach of the massive animals.
What had started 12 hours earlier as a politically tinged eviction of an unsanitary but entirely peaceful encampment had suddenly turned into an aggressive display of force by the National Park Police officers (including 24 officers bused in from New York City.)
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