No more sleeping in those tents come Monday. (Photo by Joshua Yospyn)
After a hearing earlier this week in which House Republicans hammered it to clarify the difference between camping and a 24-hour vigil, the National Park Service appears to be getting ready to enforce the prohibitions on camping at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza, potentially starting to draw the curtains on Occupy D.C.’s takeover of the public squares.
NPS staff and U.S. Park Police officers began distributing fliers this morning quoting the agencies’ regulations on camping as a reminder to the occupiers that their four-month-old encampments at the downtown D.C. parks may be in violation and that, come Monday, the law will be enforced.
“If camping violations are observed,” the flier states, “individual violators may be subject to arrest and their property subject to seizure as evidence.”
Federal regulations cited in the leaflet define camping as “use of park land for living accommodation purposes such as sleeping activities, or making preparations to sleep (including the laying down of bedding for the purpose of sleeping) or storing personal belongings, or making any fire, or using any tents or shelter or other structure or vehicle for sleeping or doing any digging or earth breaking.” NPS grants camping permits in many of the federal lands it oversees, but McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza are not among those spots.
An NPS spokesman told DCist they are giving the protesters the weekend to get better informed about what they are permitted to do in the spaces.
“What the Park Service and Park Police are doing this weekend is to pass out fliers that talk about the regulations prohibiting camping and structures for camping,” Bill Line, the spokesman, said. “It’s to educate the protesters what the standards. If they meet the regulations that are required, then all will be fine.”
But the fliers clearly state that if Occupy D.C. does not stop using its temporary structures—i.e., the scores of tents that now blanket McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza—as sleeping quarters, then the hammer will fall. The notice continues that unoccupied tents may be allowed as “symbols of the demonstration,” but the income-inequality movement has said from the beginning that the image of protesters living in front of the office buildings that line K Street NW is essential to their message.
“I cannot predict what people will do,” Line said. “All the National Park Service and Park Police are doing are informing and educating.”
At the House Oversight hearing this week, NPS director Jonathan Jarvis seemed to identify Occupy D.C. more as a round-the-clock vigil rather than a campsite, though he did acknowledge to members of Congress that the protest includes camping. He also said that his agency was preparing to issue its final warning to Occupy D.C. that they are in violation of NPS rules.
Sara Shaw, a spokeswoman for the McPherson Square group, said NPS staff and Park Police officers taped notices to every tent in the park this morning. Occupy D.C. doesn’t have an official response yet, she said; that’ll have to wait for the proudly leaderless protest group’s general assembly meeting tonight. But Shaw has made up her mind.
“Me personally, I will not take my tent down,” she said.
Jarvis also said at the hearing Tuesday that as its presence has dragged on, Occupy D.C. has become more compliant with park rules. But, given the appearance of this last notice to stop camping, that adherence has gone only so far.
“We have been complying with a lot of their rules, we are generally receptive to them,” Shaw said today. “But it’s to a certain degree. We are here because it is our First Amendment right to express our grievances with the government.”
She mentioned the commotion early this morning when the Park Police arrested two protesters for disorderly conduct. Shaw said that in the course looking for people with outstanding warrants, officers inspected many, if not most of the tents in McPherson Square.
“We will not so easily give up this space,” Shaw said.
Sgt. David Schlosser, a spokesman for the Park Police, said officers are giving protesters the weekend to review the rules. But on Monday, per the flier, they will be enforcing the camping ban.
“We’re going to make sure they’re in compliance with the regulations,” Schlosser said.
