Workers clear tents and belongings of Occupy DC demonstrators from McPherson Square in Washington yesterday

 
 
AFP/Washington

After a day-long raid, police dismantled a sprawling tent colony near the White House yesterday, but activists vowed to return to this once-proud bastion of the Occupy movement.
Sanitation crews in white overalls, backed with forklifts and garbage trucks, swept up belongings left over from the months-long protest, with authorities enforcing a no-camping rule at the McPherson Square encampment in downtown Washington.
After being kicked out of the park on Saturday, some protesters spent the night at nearby Freedom Plaza - a smaller park space nearby where protesters had set up a similar camp.
“Anytime you see an occupation getting torn down they come back stronger we’ll come back - absolutely we’ll come back stronger,” vowed protester Sam Mellot yesterday, at Freedom Plaza.
Protesters said a general meeting was scheduled for later yesterday, after what they called an “excessively forceful eviction.” Leaders said they would discuss during that assembly the movement’s direction after the raid.
“This occupation is far from over. They can’t evict an idea whose time has come,” said a statement posted on the organising website occupydc.org.
The new no-camping regulations were brought in after Washington authorities deemed the situation at the park unsuitable on health and safety grounds, citing the presence of rats.
Yesterday morning the clean-up crew jumped at the sight of a scurrying rodent - “rat!” they cried as the small animal scrambled under their feet.
Asked how many rats they’d found since clean-up began, one of the crew said “hundreds.”
Demonstrators in Washington are an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, a leaderless campaign that kicked off in September in New York against economic inequality and corporate power and spawned similar protests across the country.
The issue has resonated ahead of the November general election, with President Barack Obama describing battling income equality and maintaining the American dream as “the defining issue of our time.”
Seven people were arrested on Saturday for disobeying orders to clear out or for crossing police lines, and an eighth person was taken into custody for hitting and injuring an officer with a brick, a park police spokesman told US media.
Occupy DC took root in McPherson Square - in the heart of the K Street lobbying district - on October 1, swelling over time to around 100 tents that included a library, a cafeteria, and a medical clinic.
While the original Occupy Wall Street site in New York and other encampments fell in the face of evictions, protesters in Washington hung on, partly due to the National Park Service bending its no-camping rules and classifying the protest as “a 24-hour vigil.”
Under growing pressure from Republican politicians and local businesses, the federal agency changed tack last week, declaring it would begin strict enforcement at both Occupy DC and a second, less controversial camp nearby.