Mayor Bloomberg's Bum Rush Backfires; Galvanizes

Occupy Wall Street was getting as tired as Charlie Sheen jokes about "winning." The media were moving on. Questions about the protests were absent from recent Republican debates. Sympathetic neighbors had become frustrated. The police were tired. No amount of overtime was worth the hassle. Most disturbingly, assaults had turned a peaceful gathering into just another bad neighborhood.

Then New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg played right into the Occupy Wall Street movement's hands. He gave them a common enemy. Mr. Bloomberg's postmidnight raid on the camp at Zuccotti Park swept the protesters from their spiritual home, but it re-energized the movement, too. I met Occupy Wall Street in the morning hours following the raid at Foley Square and then Duarte Park. I followed the group back to Zuccotti Park just eight hours after the eviction.

Mr. Bloomberg's sweep woke up the hard-core protesters and ignited a second phase to the movement, articulated in a slogan that appeared on makeshift signs Tuesday morning: "You can't evict an idea."

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