This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
- Peaceful ending: Closing Occupy SLC camp - Salt Lake Tribune Editorial
The Salt Lake City Police Department rolled up the Occupy Salt Lake encampment in Pioneer Park Saturday night, but that's not the story. How they did it — without breaking heads, without ugly confrontation — that's the story.Both the police and the protesters deserve credit for setting a high standard for humane behavior at a nonviolent demonstration. Police Chief Chris Burbank notified the protesters a day in advance that they would have to clear out of the park at sunset Saturday. He made it clear that the intent was not to eliminate protests but to end overnight camping at the park because public safety and public health both were deteriorating.For their part, the protesters stayed true to their pledge of nonviolence.Basically, both sides kept their cool. There's been a lot of empty talk lately about civility in political affairs, but police and protesters walked the walk Saturday night. ...
Not so peaceful elsewhere, sadly:- Police bust NY 'Occupy' protest in nighttime sweep - AP/Salt Lake Tribune
Hundreds of police officers in riot gear raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City in the pre-dawn darkness Tuesday, evicted hundreds of demonstrators and demolished the tent city that was the epicenter of a movement protesting what participants call corporate greed and economic inequality. ...
- Updates on the Clearing of Zuccotti Park - New York Times City Room blog
- Time's up, children - New York Post Editorial
Mayor Bloomberg last night ordered a long-overdue fumigation of the festering mess at Zuccotti Park — and while the zealots likely will be winging about the decision for months, it remains that the two-month-long demonstration had long since devolved from a principled sit-down into a carnival of contempt both for the law and for common decency. ...
- Bravo to Bloomberg's Occupy Wall Street eviction - New York Daily News Editorial
Occupy protesters have a right to make their case, not to hunker down in a shared community park
- Occupiers must fill void with clear goals - Murfreesboro (Tenn.) Daily News Journal Editorial
We congratulate all of those in the Occupy movements who exercised their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble and were heard by bank officials. But as occupation protests continue, we are straining to hear the protesters' current message. ...
- Evicting conscience at Occupy Wall Street - Susan Brooks Thistlethwait, Washington Post's On Faith blog
... The protestors in Zuccotti Park and around the nation have become the conscience of our nation, bringing our descent as a nation into widening inequality among the very rich and everybody else (the 1 percent and the 99 percent) from the margins to the center of our awareness. Evicting those who are calling our nation to act on its conscience and its deepest values of political freedom and economic equality just isn't right. This isn't right. ...
- You can't evict an idea - Danny Schechter, Al Jazeera
... For weeks, the Murdoch press had been baiting Bloomberg as weak and a wuss for not getting tough as they focused on any act of depravity they could find or invent. But now, the park is gone - for now - but the Movement says it will go on. ...
- Nicholas Kristof, via Twitter:
Now at Zuccotti Park, full of police and surrounded by protesters. Public now has even less access than before.
- Keith Olbermann, via Twitter:
I'll leave you repeating an earlier thought: US Democracy has always survived thanks to stupidity of those who'd suppress it.