Within hours of the dismantling of the largest of the remaining Occupy Wall Street-inspired encampments outside Los Angeles City Hall, organizers were framing the eviction as a new beginning.
"City Hall and the occupation of City Hall was a potent and powerful symbol," said Mario Brito, an Occupy protester who was among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Monday in an attempt to stop the city's action. But "our movement is not just made of symbols."
The end of the Los Angeles camp — and the Occupy Philadelphia site, which was dismantled the same night — could signal the end of public encampments as the Occupy movement's primary tactic.
But organizers and their supporters from labor, religious and immigrant rights groups said closing the camps won't stop the movement's momentum. And an end to the camps might even give the movement a boost, said Brayden King, an assistant professor of management at Northwestern University who studies how social movements affect corporate governance.