Wall Street occupation not evicted for now

Last night my inbox was flooded with messages from progressive groups warning that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was about to evict Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park, under the pretext that it needed to be cleaned. Nation.com blogger Allison Kilkenny reports that the occupiers have won the showdown, at least temporarily:

This was the first protest I’ve ever covered where the activists won – if only a battle, and not the war, and if only temporarily. And the victory is definitely temporary. Major problems have not been resolved and large questions remain: Will the protesters be able to bring their sleeping bags back into Liberty Park? Will they be able to sleep on the ground? Fourteen hours ago, Mayor Bloomberg declared protesters wouldn’t be able to return their gear to the park, and now the decree came down to postpone the cleaning entirely. Why the change of tune?

Many were braced for a disastrous clash with the police and were instead handed not a truce, but ongoing purgatory followed by a run-in with the authorities at a second location. After the cries of victory went up, a group of about a hundred protesters marched up the middle of Broadway. This caused quite a stir at Liberty. Many thought it was bad strategy, abandoning the camp when it was still so vulnerable, but some of the protesters seemed to have gotten a taste of victory and wanted to go on a celebration lap. At the gates of City Hall, protesters clashed with police armed with riot gear, and as of this report, six individuals have been arrested thus far.

Rawstory.com has this link to a live video stream provided by Occupy Wall Street to what is happening right now. (Hat tip to commondreams.org for posting its Twitter feed on its Occupy Wall Street page--that's how I found this link.)