Since the city agreed to divert up to a billion dollars in NYPD funding Tuesday, the #OccupyCityHall protest has waned at City Hall Park – yet some protesters are sticking around, insisting that they are “prepared for war” if they’re told to leave.
Participants in the continuing #OccupyCityHall sleep-in at City Hall on Centre Street are now preparing for an anticipated clash with police as an exit strategy similar to that of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in 2011.
At that time, the protestors who took up residence in Zuccotti Park on Broadway and Liberty Street at that time were there for more than two months before being removed in a violent clash.
But at City Hall, up to 200 protesters have been training on site to fight police and resist their anticipated clearing of the area and their makeshift living quarters. They’ve engaged in self-defense training, and some of them have made plywood shields and other makeshift weapons if the NYPD or others try to make a move on the camp.
Many of the protestors from various groups who had been occupying the space next to the Tweed Court House were prepared to stay if a billion dollars wasn’t defunded from the NYPD. Some of those protestors now say they will stay because they are not satisfied with the defunding nor continuing policy changes that had been demanded.
One of those changes included the disbanding of the NYPD and elimination of school safety officers from schools, a demand that few legislators were willing to entertain.
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