More than 1,000 protesters awaited busloads of police at the Occupy San Francisco camps early Thursday morning, expecting a confrontation that had been brewing for several hours.
When those buses left Treasure Island and headed for San Francisco around 2:40 a.m., it appeared a showdown was imminent. However, by 4:30 a.m., the police were still steering clear of Justin Herman Plaza, where the protesters had gathered.
Dancing, chanting and singing around several hundred tents, the Occupy movement was still vibrant around 3:30 a.m. in the city known for protests. Rumors spread among the campers that scores of police officers dressed in tactical gear were preparing to arrive there in the wee hours. Some members of the movement had posted pictures online of officers boarding several city buses marked with words such as "alpha," "bravo" and "charlie," though it was unclear where they were headed.
Some were chanting "Peaceful power!" Another man walked by with a T-shirt emblazoned with the California state flag and a message that read, "We are Scott Olsen," showing support for the 24-year-old Iraq War veteran hurt in an Occupy Oakland clash the night before.
Several city leaders in the left-leaning city had joined the protesters in support of keeping the campsite, but the official policy from City Hall was that they were all subject to arrest if they stayed overnight.
"I feel energized tonight and I'm not worried," said Eric Rodriguez, a 52-year-old San Francisco resident who came Wednesday night to support the cause. "If (the police) want to start something, we're just here expressing our First Amendment rights."
He added that the police should stay away, since it is a public square.
Speaker after speaker demanded the resignation or recall of the city's mayor, Jean Quan, who had initially voiced her support of the protesters. "Mayor Quan you did more damage to Oakland in one evening than Occupy Oakland did in two weeks," said one slogan scrawled near the entrance to her offices.
In an afternoon news conference Quan had struggled to explain the decision to clear the square in the early hours of Tuesday morning and again when protesters returned that evening.
She gave the impression she had been as blindsided as anyone by the decision to close down Occupy Oakland. She had been in Washington at the time and said that although she knew there were hygiene and public safety issues that needed to be addressed, she did not expect that to happen while she was on the other side of the country.
"I only asked the chief to do one thing: to do it when it was the safest for both the police and the demonstrators," she said, pinning responsibility for the decision on her police chief and the top city administrator. When pressed for more details, Quan said: "I don't know everything."
Scott Olsen, 24 – a former US marine who friends said served two tours of duty in Iraq – has become a figurehead among Occupy Wall Street supporters in Oakland and elsewhere. Organisers took to Twitter and other social media urging protesters back into the streets.
Acting Oakland police chief Howard Jordan told a news conference his department was investigating the injury to Olsen as a "level one" incident, the highest for an internal police inquiry.
In Portland, Oregon, a crowd estimated to number at least 1,000 joined in a march organised by the AFL-CIO labour federation in support of the anti-Wall Street movement.
Hundreds of protesters also gathered in New York to march in solidarity, leaving the Occupy Wall Street base in Zuccotti Park and marching around the financial district and city hall. Protesters in New York voted to send $20,000 and 100 tents to their peers in Oakland, according to a Twitter message from a protester identified as JA Myerson and retweeted by the Occupy Wall Street group.
The Oakland crowd was a mixture of eco-activists, families with young children, nurses and teachers, as well as a handful of young men with bandanas or Palestinian keffiyehs covering part of their faces. Many said they were shocked by what happened on Tuesday and were bracing themselves for further confrontations with the police.
"Quan let the [county] sheriffs in to do her dirty work and then said she didn't know who was responsible for the decision. She's got to go," said Robijn Vangiesen, a local activist and organiser.
Vangiesen was in the plaza when Olsen was knocked down by a teargas canister. "He was out, man. Totally non-responsive. He had blood pouring out of his nose," Vangiesen said. The initial teargas volley was followed by another projectile from the police straight into the small crowd trying to help Olsen. His friends said it was a flash-bang grenade, pointing to a video distributed on the internet as evidence, but police have denied this.
Many of Wednesday night's protesters expressed anger. "When the rich steal from the poor it's called business. When the poor fight back it's called violence," a 25-year-old solar energy company executive, Cory Rae Shaw, wrote on a banner.
"Who's really the bandits here?" said Demarion English, a 23-year-old security guard. "I called them bitches. I call the police bitches to their face. We're all fighting for a real cause... and we got teargassed."
All about: Occupy, Wall Street, New York. Barack Obama, Chicago , Occupy Oakland, Oakland, California, Jean Quan, San Francisco
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