This article is from the archive of our partner .

National Park Police will have a much harder time forcing out protesters camped in McPherson Square now that activists attracted by Tuesday's big rally have swelled the encampment's ranks. The Park Service itself has no plans to attempt such an eviction just yet, though a spokesman said director Jon Jarvis was planning to meet with Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray this week. It will be the first communication between the Park Service and the mayor's office since Gray last week requested that park police evict the encampment on the grounds that it was unsanitary.

While increasingly annoyed politicians (mostly California Rep. Darrell Issa) pressure President Barack Obama to order the service to crack down on the protesters, Occupy has attracted many new campers who plan to stay long-term, meaning police will have a much bigger job evicting the camp now than they would have last week.

"I'm told that as of this morning, we’re approaching 200 tents in McPherson Square," said Justin Smith, a 25-year-old McPherson Square protester who has been at the camp since its twelfth day. "The south lawn of McPherson, where we have our general assembly, stays empty by design so that we can have our meetings there. But the rest of the park is filling to the brim ... We do expect that a large number of folks coming for this action are going to be staying with us for the long haul." The city's other encampment, at Freedom Plaza, is also adding members, he said. Last week, Occupy D.C.'s Sam Jeweler told us each park has a capacity of 500 people.