Protesters in New York faced off with police Tuesday after being kicked out of their Manhattan tent camp in a surprise night raid that threw the two-month-old Occupy Wall Street movement into crisis.
After police tore down their tents and emptied Zuccotti park, several hundred protesters played cat and mouse with authorities seeking to re-establish a base to continue their anti-capitalist protests.
About two dozen people were arrested when one group of activists tried to occupy a small park apparently owned by a church. The crowd marched through the Financial District and eventually turned back to Zuccotti Park, their former base, now swept clean of any trace of the old encampment, and closed.
For eight weeks, the park -- a short walk from the New York Stock Exchange and the World Trade Center -- sheltered the birthplace of the anti-Wall Street movement which has inspired similar protests in US cities and abroad.
The decision by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to end the occupation followed crackdowns in other US cities, as well as a decision by officials in London to seek legal action against a camp outside Saint Paul's Cathedral.
New York police moved in at about 1:00 am (0600 GMT) with bright lights, overwhelming numbers of helmeted officers, and an army of sanitation workers.
About 200 people were arrested during the operation, which saw only sporadic violence and ended well before dawn, leaving cleaning crews to cart off piles of tents and other gear, then scrub the square clean.
Bloomberg told a news conference that protesters' free speech rights did not extend to "use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space."
Protesters would now have to "occupy the space with the power of their arguments."
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