After Encampment Ends, NYC Occupiers Become Nomads

Published January 12, 2012 7:45AM (EST)

NEW YORK (AP) — Refugee protesters from New York City's Zuccotti Park have become a band of homeless Occupiers with no place to go.

About 100 protesters have been sleeping in various churches since Mayor Michael Bloomberg shut down their camp in November.

Occupy Wall Street, the movement that protests economic inequality and corporate greed, has spent about $20,000 so far keeping the church dwellers fed and sheltered. Some of them are chronically homeless; others suffer from drug addiction and mental illness.

Now protesters are debating whether these people are truly "Occupiers," or whether they belong in a homeless shelter.

On Monday, the metal barricades surrounding Zuccotti Park were removed for the first time since the raid. But protesters still can't set up tents to camp overnight.


By Salon Staff

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