'Bags of excrement'

On Sunday, protesters peacefully vacated a park in Burlington, Vermont, days after a 35-year-old military veteran committed suicide in a tent there.

But the eviction in Portland was not so amicable.

Mayor Sam Adams ordered the camp to be shut down on the grounds that "crime, especially reported assaults, has increased in the area around the camps".
Ogawa plaza after the raid, 14 November 2011 More than 100 tents were removed from the plaza on Monday

Using loudspeakers, police warned that anyone who resisted orders to leave the parks and surrounding areas risked arrest and "may also be subject to chemical agents and impact weapons".

Witnesses said there were confrontations and shouting as police in riot gear attempted to move people out of the squares.

Meanwhile, a group of small-business owners in New York on Monday urged the authorities to put an end to the original Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park.

They said it was ruining their businesses and complained that protesters kept using their toilets facilities to wash, deterring customers.

The owner of a Chinese restaurant said demonstrators had been disposing of bags of their excrement outside his business.

The New York camp is due to mark the beginning of its third month of continuous protest on Thursday.

In St Louis, Missouri, where 27 anti-Wall Street protesters were arrested on Saturday, lawyers for Occupy St Louis planned to take their bid to regain their downtown campsite to federal court on Tuesday.

Police also moved in to evict protesters camping in the cities of Denver, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah, on Saturday. Seventeen people were arrested in Denver, police said.

Stephen Pierce
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