“Hundreds of New York City police officers cleared Zuccotti Park of the Occupy Wall Street protesters early Tuesday, arresting dozens of people there after warning them that the nearly two-month-old camp would be ‘cleared and restored’ before the morning and that any demonstrator who did not leave would be arrested,” the New York Times reports.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s statement: “No right is absolute and with every right
comes responsibilities. The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the
right to speak out – but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a
park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others – nor does it
permit anyone in our society to live outside the law. There is no
ambiguity in the law here – the First Amendment protects speech – it
does not protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a
public space.”