I returned last night to Woodruff Park. I have to forewarn you: I didn’t have a notebook with me, so to write this, I am relying on my own memory, a few notes I made on my cellphone, and a number of videos and pictures I made on a friend’s iPhone.

The mayor had asked the Occupiers to meet with local clergy at five o’clock on Tuesday; the Occupiers contended that the offer was made in bad faith, since they already had a march scheduled for that time – information that was publicly available – and would not be able to meet then. The most generous way this was played in the media said that the meeting was lackluster; the most unfair claimed that the protesters deliberately refused to meet with the clergy.

People were getting twitchy. For some of the afternoon, a man had been wandering around the park with a very large gun (I’m told an AK-47) slung across his back, talking to people. The gun was legal and permitted, and the man said he was making a point about First and Second Amendment rights; nevertheless, the presence of a very large and obvious gun in an already tense situation did not help matters much.

When we came to the park at 1o:00, the barricades had extended, though they were still open at each end. There was a constant noise of helicopters overhead – and I am told that there had been all day. There was a circle assembled on the ground of protesters talking to each other, and tents being packed up and carried away.

A man in the circle asked who, sitting there at that moment, was willing to get arrested. He raised his hand, and no one else did.

Sounding defeated, he said, “All right – if we can assume that no one in this circle is staying in the park, we need to discuss what we’re gonna do to support those that do.”

Police Presence

We left briefly and came back to the park at 10:50. First, we decided to make a walk around the park, and count the police solely at the park’s perimeter – eighty-four in total, most of them clustered at the south edge. The barricades were still open, and spectators had gathered at the edges of the park to watch what happened.

CopWatchers were walking the edge of the park and asking each police officer for a name and badge number. They did this in sets of three: one CopWatcher talked, one filmed, and a third stood at a distance to film the other two.

I spotted a man in a suit walking through and talking to each police officer, pointing out positions and making plans; yes, it looked like arrests and police action would definitely happen that night.

The revolution will probably be on YouTube.

Cameras were everywhere last night. Mostly cell phone cameras, taping bits and pieces of what was going on, in the hands of spectators and protesters alike.

The news media were strolling the grounds of the park with their cameras – not to mention the large mounted cameras on their vans.

Photographers were out in abundance.

CopWatch, of course, filmed as many police interactions as they could. The Legal Observers were filming too, in the same neon green hats.

I didn’t expect it, but the police also had cameras: designated men and women in police uniforms simply standing to the side and taping police actions, especially at any location where spectators were wielding cameras as well.

The Crowd

We stayed firmly outside the park after 11:00, to avoid arrest ourselves. Within the park, the circle of people willing to be arrested had assembled again.

This time, the demographic of that circle was substantially older, and the circle was higher energy: rather than sitting silently with locked arms, they were talking – loudly enough that we could hear them from across the barricade. They were also drumming and playing guitars.

Most of the crowd was clustered at the west side of the park, on Peachtree Street. It had flowed, amorphously, across the barricades: some still on the inside and crossing, and some on the outside. More stood across the street. It was composed somewhat of Occupiers, but also spectators walking through. A lot of them were residents of the apartment buildings around the area; a good few of them were drunk, and either arguing, joining in on the chants, or laughing and taunting.

Whenever that got too out of hand, the Occupiers would begin chanting, “Don’t feed the trolls!”

I spoke to a friend of mine from early on in the Occupation, who was still on the inside of the fence. He said that they were certain that the police would be breaking up the protest – but that they already had plans for what action to take next, though he would not tell me what those plans were.

“Are you ready to see something incredible?” he asked. “You’re about to see a phoenix burn up and rise from the ashes.”

A few of the spectators were heckling the police; one yelled, “Go five blocks south and you find crackhouses! Why aren’t you there?”

The police began setting up spotlights on the east and west edges of the park. Within the park, they announced over the loudspeakers that anyone still in the park would be arrested; that any items left in the park would be confiscated by the police; and that protesters should exit the park. A few police officers went from tent to tent, waking anyone inside and telling them they had to leave the park.

There’s a section of wood fencing they’ve had in the park for a while now, with “What’s your story?” painted at the top, and many many different answers written in sharpie across it. I spotted two police officers stopping to read it, pointing at individual pieces, conferring, then walking away.

The Occupiers outside the barricades beat bucket drums and led chants.

“Whose streets?”

Gradually the crowd on the sidewalks spilled out into the street, taking up more and more of Peachtree Street. The streets leading to the park had been blocked on all sides by police and police cars. The street to the east of the park was barricaded off, and news vans had been asked to move elsewhere.

So far as we could tell, the police intended to move protesters from the park to the east side, where they’d process them and load them up – but it looked like they had neither expected nor planned for the growing secondary protest on the sidewalks.

Those that did not intend to be arrested were leaving the park, and ferrying their tents and supplies over the barricades.

Then a phalanx of motorcycle cops appeared to the north of the park, and a roar went up from the crowd. They circled around the park and then approached up Peachtree, from the south, but they were blocked by the protesters in the street – so rather than go through, they circled up and around in the street.

The crowd from the sidewalk poured into the street, walking toward the police on motorcycles and slowly pushing their circles back, further and further, chanting all the while, until they had retaken the length of Peachtree Street along the park.

The crowd cheered, and began chanting:

“Whose streets? Our streets!”

Arrests

Arrests had started in the park. They were done, so far as I could tell, as by-the book as possible. Protesters sitting in the circle had their arms carefully unlinked from each other, then bound together with zip ties. Some cooperated and walked away with the police; others had to be carried. Whenever one protester was removed, the circle tightened up, linking arms again.

At the east edge, they had set up their processing center: a bus to load the protesters onto, and a folding table and chairs set up on a large empty plaza. There, they emptied the arrestees’ pockets, placed everything in plastic bags, and – if I saw correctly – finger-printed them each as well.

The crowd on Peachtree Street were still chanting, a few police officers in the park standing and watching them. When they chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, these fascist fuckers have to go!” a few of the officers flinched, and stopped to confer among themselves.

Meanwhile, an argument had broken out in the crowd: a young woman that I recognized from the Process group was remonstrating with the crowd, reminding them that the Occupation rejected sexism, and that sexist language against female police officers was still sexism. A violent argument nearly broke out when one of the spectators began making fun of the arrestees, but a chant of “Don’t feed the trolls” put it down.

Another woman spoke up using the People’s Mic, saying that those waiting to get arrested asked that the crowd outside remain non-violent; a third pointed out that this protest belonged to the crowd outside as well, and that they ought to remain non-violent for their own sakes.

Mounted Police, and Riot Cops

At the north end of Peachtree, eight police on horses took up station. They did not block the street; they did not move; they simply very largely and obviously stood there.

A column of about fifty police in riot gear marched into the park from the south while police in the park were clearing some of the detritus. What purpose they served, I do not know: almost all the protesters had already been arrested.

Meanwhile, the crowd was debating its purpose; it was well past one o’clock and the protesters inside the park had been arrested; outside attention had fizzled; the police did not appear to intend any more action. They decided to march to the jail, and to chant outside it, to give support to those inside.

As of today, Woodruff Park is barricaded and indefinitely closed.