On Saturday evening at McPherson Square on the infamous lobbyist-dominated K Street, the last sliver of D.C.'s Occupy encampment was charged by an inscrutable line of riot police, SWAT, and mounted police while officers yelling out "This area is closed! If you remain you are subject to arrest!" Pushed back from the encampment's library tent by a riot shield at face level, I began to fall back into the crush of people, as the rain fell and Occupiers tripped over debris in the mire.

[bug id="occupy"]Screams of anger, panic, and pain began to cut through the grey air, and I managed to get back into the crowd a bit, away from the police. In the midst of the pressed and screaming crowd I saw two occupiers, Mo and Georgia, find each other, and hug. They stayed there, oblivious to the cacophony around them, both their eyes glassy and vacant and a little too wide open.

I grabbed a woman I recognized from the info tent and pointed to them. "Get them out of here," I told her. She just looked at me for a moment in the chaos, and I repeated, "Get them the fuck out of here." She nodded and grabbed them, still hugging. I spun around, and the riot line was on me. Pushed from every direction, I tripped over something behind me which turned out to be a person on the ground. The officer in front of me screamed "Move back!" but other people were falling on the fallen, and there was no way to move back without trampling them, and no way to stay without being trampled.

***

I'd arrived to stay with the McPherson Square Occupy DC camp five days earlier. Occupy DC was the one of the two last major-city Occupys, split into two between McPherson Square on K Street, and Freedom Plaza, six blocks away by the White House.

The other, Occupy Miami, was facing eviction at that moment. Occupy DC, like the original Wall Street Occupy, had a geographical specialness. They regularly put on actions meant to get in the face of the power elite, embarrass and disquiet them. Occupy DC was not only one of the last large encampments; it was one of the best at generating media coverage.

They'd erected the People's Barn, they'd had actions aimed at Congress, they'd taken the steps of the Supreme Court, and they'd laid across K Street in puddles of rain to be arrested, protesting the power of lobbyists in American politics.

Every move had been followed by the press, keeping their movement as a going concern in the face of stories about one Occupy eviction after another across the country.

The McPherson side of Occupy DC was flamboyant; the Freedom Plaza side older and more staid. In their disagreements they played out a story of the larger Occupy Movement – old protest tactics versus the new social media, cooperation versus confrontation, traditional hierarchical organization versus the emergent properties of adhocracy. But at the end of the day, they were part of one Occupy DC.

I showed up shortly after the camps received a notice that a Park Service ban on sleeping would be enforced soon. In general, the camps believed they were supported, rather than persecuted by the Park Police.

National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis had defended the protester's First Amendment rights in the park to a hostile Congressman Darrel Issa (R), of California, during congressional hearings. But no one was sure what enforcement would look like, and theories ranged from pro-forma walkthroughs to full-on eviction.

Like many Occupys, MacPherson's tents were home largely to the hopeful homeless, people who'd slipped beyond the event horizon of American poverty, who were joined by a daytime crowd of activists spanning the country's social and political strata. The techno-savvy and politically outraged affluent often came face to face with American lives that had been invisible for them until the Occupy movement began.

"This camp is a microcosm of America, it has all the problems of America," Women's Caucus member Britta told me. As an environment, Occupy DC wasn't welcoming for women at night.

Men were often unpleasantly complimentary, sometimes standing too close for too long, or just leering. Other men and women tried to step in when these things happened, but it was frustrating for everyone, including Occupier Jim Fussell, part of the Occupy Faith DC.

"There's an atmosphere that I can be totally myself here, but I also don't have to respect other people in the same way that might be demanded in other institutions," Fussell said. Drawing people who had often never experienced respect into conversations about respecting others was a slow and difficult process.

Brian Grimes is a large man with soft eyes and a full, red beard. I met him during a moment of "De-escalation," the Occupy DC terms for security.

In the background a homeless alcoholic was being asked to leave the park – yet again – after drinking in the park and shouting at people. Grimes stood at the scene to keep people from crowding the conversation where other people on the De-escalation team told the man he needed to leave, taking his alcohol, and waiting for him to yell it out. Eventually he grew quiet and they picked up his tent and carried it out with him.

Grimes looked tired as he sat on a bench afterward, exasperated with the problems of camp life.

"Sometimes it feels like, 'Wow, we're just not going to get anywhere.' Sometimes it's just a matter of going through a period of feeling like I'm not accomplishing anything personally," he said after the difficult scene.

As we talked, a few rats ran by. McPherson had a terrible rat problem, even before the protest camp began. They were everywhere, darting between tents, rustling in the trash. The occupiers had closed the kitchen and prepared food offsite, but the rats remained nearly impossible to control. They are a regular feature of all DC parks, but they are also drawn to human habitation.

Grimes alternated between talking about how hard life at McPherson is and how frustrating the political problems that brought him here are.

"This is such a stressful, taxing environment to exist in," he said, but there's another side, too. "I found more of a purpose here in some ways than I really intended to."

Grimes had been out of work for a year and had fallen out with family, but it was after watching the Brooklyn Bridge arrests that he decided to head to the Occupy.

"It was time for me to stop saying this stuff's all wrong and someone should do something about this, and realized 'Wait, I should go do something about this.'"

He joined Occupy DC just as it was starting, and despite the troubles, has stayed ever since, with only a couple breaks. Occupying for Grimes is both political and personal. He talked about systemic problems with healthcare, student debt, and the failure of the American political process, but also about coming to love what he does in the camp. "I like to help people.... I keep people safe for a night," he said. "Even if it's just a little bit at a time, we're changing things."

For his part, Occupy Faith DC's Fussell says he stuck by the camp, even when it was frustrating and hard, because the political system has been hijacked by money and because it's a chance to pass on his belief in non-violence.

"The political landscape has drastically changed, not because there's a 1%, but the degree of separation between the 1% and the rest of us means that they have way more political clout, and basically can manipulate both political parties," said Fussell.

In his late 40s with teenage children, Fussell is older than most of the camp. He's been a non-violent activist much of his life, and sees Occupy as a chance to teach a new generation. "It's been fun seeing a lot of them, being sharp, discover non-violence theory," he said. He's also proud how people jump from task to task in the Occupy, learning skills from kitchen maintenance to web design.

As a response to the sleeping ban, the Occupiers took a giant tarp, painted and decorated it and put it over the statue of General McPherson at the center of the park, dubbing it the "Tent of Dreams." They surrounded it with political messages, ranging from "I'm dreaming of an end to genocide" to "I'm dreaming of affordable healthcare." It was a defiant move, and drew press coverage and Park Police anger.

But for the most part, Occupiers defended the police. That includes 28-year-old "Hopper" who had been with the camp since Thanksgiving.

"There's a lot of political pressure from Congress to get us out. The park police have been standing by us but are getting pressure from their superiors," she explained. Everyone I spoke to had words of praise for the National Park Police, seeing them as truly on the protest's side, but stuck in a bad position.

"It's supposed to be a 24-hour sit-in, and never leaving ever is a big part of the point of the protest," Hopper continued. "To say we're not going anywhere until things change. We're not going anywhere until moves are made to start to reverse economic inequality, campaign reform, and ending corporate personhood. Maybe some legislation that would prohibit insider trading for Congress members, things like that."

As the week progressed and rumors flew around, the tent of dreams slowly ripped and came down. Camp Anonymous, the contingent of the camp that identifies as part of the online collective, got onto the statue of McPherson and gave him one of their distinctive Guy Fawkes masks. Some people went days without sleep to both respect and protest the ban; others ignored it completely.

On Friday, I met Mo. Mo lived in a two-room tent, which, after the sleeping ban went into effect, he'd outfitted extravagantly like a little one-bedroom with a mattress and chest of drawers.

Mo came to Occupy DC from a village in Palestine by way of London, Brooklyn, and the Zuccotti encampment. He started calling himself Mo when he moved to America, and because he pitched his tent next to an DC Occupier called C Monee, they took to calling him Mo Money. At some point he's worked on nearly every part of the camp, energetically pouring himself into kitchen, website work, screen printing, all before running off to the next thing. Mo is short, constantly effusious, and hyperactive. Someone wrote Honey Badger on a strip of duct tape on his back, and the moniker fits, but it belies the troubles that brought him here.

Mo is committed to non-violence in a way few people are. It is his constant point, coming from life in that other occupation.

"I'm Palestinian, and I have been wanting to bring freedom to myself and my family and people in self determination (with) non-violence...," Mo said. "I have been wanting to do that in Palestine, when I lived in Palestine. It’s impossible to do that. You want to go dance at a checkpoint? In front of soldiers who are loaded with M16s, and you’ve got pimples. They’re going to shoot you dead in a second. You want to go and start whistling in front of a tank? Are you serious?."

He went on, "Do you want to go on a hunger strike? You’re already hungry. You cannot do a hunger strike. What kind of action do I want to stage, if I don’t even have an audience?" Peasant revolts are always violent, he believes, because there is no public space like McPherson Square for people to demonstrate.

The moment when he became committed to non-violence was in Nablus, at the age of 23. For the first time in the evening, he slowed down as he told the story. "I was subject to a mock execution at a checkpoint in Nablus in 2006 before I came here." He said he was blindfolded, handcuffed, and placed on the ground, a boot on his neck. One soldier put a gun to the back of his head, another shot a gun, and another hit his head with a rock. "I felt dead. You do not know what it feels to be dead unless you think you died," he said. "For about two minutes, all I was doing is just licking the soil. It felt horrible.... I've seen enough violence in my life."

For Mo, home is two places: Palestine, and Brooklyn, where he lived before the movement. He has an obvious love for his new adopted American home, and it's easy to see why. Despite being from a village, Mo has a cocky, urban manner to him. He came to DC from Zuccotti because this is the place he believes he can do the most to help both his homes.

"What goes on in K Street here affects me in a refugee camp in Palestine. It directly affects me.... It leaves extreme damage in my life. It stole my childhood, my land, my trees, and everything. All this accumulated anger can be positively redirected in a nonviolent way. And it will work. It can work."

He went on to brag that he's better than Gandhi while his friends laughed at him, grabbing his shoulders and hugging him. Later, turning serious, he said to me, "Remember, each and every person who occupied with Wall Street, or with Boston, or with Philadelphia, or (anywhere), is a better person at dealing with life problems, is a better person at surviving, is a better person and more sustainable person than ever before."

Mo offered me his tour of the camp, and I eagerly said yes. My first stop at each Occupy is usually the interfaith area. I sit quietly at the little shrines and altars people have built for themselves and each other, and contemplate the people I will be spending my time with. When I arrived at McPherson, no one seemed to know of such a place. But when Mo gave me the tour that Friday, he took me to a teepee that was far back from the center of the camp, on the eastern side.

Pulling back a carpet and tarp flap revealed a little shrine built of boxes covered with carpets. A book on teepee building and a copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee sat below a box and carpet pedestal with a half burnt sage smudge and a bowl with maize, rocks, pine cones, etc., arranged delicately. I asked Mo for a moment, sat on the small stool before the shrine, and calmed my mind. Mo was waiting, so I decided I would take pictures the next day. But the shrine and the teepee had no next day.

Saturday morning at around 5:45 the National Park Police came in force, with more than a dozen officers mounted on horseback and around 75 police in riot gear. They came with trucks carrying metal street barricades, now iconic emblems of camp evictions, and pushed the occupiers immediately out of about a third of the camp, including the center area with the Tent of Dreams.

Captain Phil Beck explained, "What we're doing is we're clearing an area out so we can work." One of the occupiers from under the Tent of Dreams asked him, "Can you give me your word as a man this is not an eviction?"

"Absolutely!" responded Beck cheerfully.

For a time the cleanup seemed straightforward, but as the hours rolled on, it became clear that the park police were taking down the vast majority of the camp. They brought in heavy machinery and trash trucks, piling up the tents and belongings of the camp and throwing them away. What they left seemed arbitrary; tents full of personal possessions were cleaned out and left behind. Obvious working-group tents and the teepee shrine were destroyed. It began to rain, and the occupiers gathered closer and closer to the heart of the camp as section after section was taken down and thrown away.

A little less than 12 hours since they'd begun what was now obviously an eviction of the lifeblood of the living camp, the park police, their SWAT, and mounted units moved the Occupiers out of the last bit of McPherson.

The tired and angry crowd was pushed back over a span of 12 minutes, people constantly slipping on the now muddy earth while the police shoved the crowd with riot shields, screamed, and hit the people at the front. Even the police couldn't keep up the aggressive pace without stumbling and slipping. The police line stopped a few times to let the fallen get up, and finally stopped long enough to let people pinned against the small park fence to escape.

The crowd's mood turned from fear to anger out on K Street. One occupier threw a bottle behind police lines, injuring an officer. Most screamed angrily at the police line, losing their voices, crying and hugging each other. The angry crowd dissolved over time into a general assembly, to talk about what had happened and plan the next move.

Grimes sat across the street watching, looking after many of the last personal effects people had managed to grab from the park. Mo, recovered from his shock now, was running around the crowd talking to people. Night was falling, and word was the other Occupy DC encampment at Freedom Plaza – six blocks away – was next. Many began to head over there.

Life in the Occupy goes on.

With the DC eviction, the last of the major lived-in camps was ended, continuing the legal effort that has scattered the least of the occupiers to the same desperate winds they'd emerged from in September and October. Those on the verge of homelessness, like Grimes, were back to thinking of survival more than the politics that have harmed them.

Their brief moment of attention on the national stage silenced by the baton and rubber bullet, they are often returning to a life of struggling for food and shelter, against crushing debt, and the constant fear of sickness.

Many of the larger protests have found a life after the camp staging actions around everything from SOPA in New York to the regular anti-police brutality protests in Oakland.

But the eviction of Occupy DC brought to a close a bitter winter for peaceful revolutionaries of America's Occupy Wall Street movement. While dozens of smaller camps still dot the American landscape, they have dwindled from hundreds, mostly at the hands of police and requests of American's mayors.

Monday morning at McPherson was a bright and beautiful day. The camp library still stood, and a shade structure that had been untouched was converted into the new information tent. The park grounds were ripped up by the giant treads of earth movers, and dirt and horse feces littered the sidewalks. An occupier was shoveling the sidewalks as others chatted and served breakfast in the decimated camp.

A tall anarchist kid everyone in the camp calls Irish was sitting on a park bench eating scrambled eggs off a soggy paper plate.

He's almost always in good spirits, but he was jumpier than usual. He was telling everyone proudly that he's been awake for 120 hours sleep striking, as we chatted with other occupiers on the crisp and bright morning. They left, and we keep talking. "The truth is I went to the church and tried to sleep last night," he tells me quietly, "but every time I close my eyes, it starts again."