Video-OWS protestors return to Zuccotti Park

The gates are down and the protestors were back at Zuccotti park Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement streamed back into the space immediately after police removed steel barricades that had surrounded it from almost two months.

Three people were arrested Tuesday night as they tried to lay down on cardboard but the battle over this and other public spaces started the very moment the occupy walls street movement began on September 15th.

Protestors used the park to launch a national movement that railed against corporate greed, wall Streets influence in politics and the disparity of wealth in America. Other occupy protests and camps sprung up in hundreds of cities around the world. But then one by one local city governments began cracking down and shutting protestors out.

The barricades had been here since November 15 – One week before the American Christmas shopping season – when police came into Zuccoti park to remove sleeping bags, tents and protestors from the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Civil liberties groups wrote a letter to the New York Building department complaining the barricades were in violation of its own zoning laws. The Brookfield Corporation owns the space but agreed to make it a publicly accessible to everyone. Advocates say it should also be free of the searches and screening that took place after the eviction.

A spokesman from the New York City police department denies the letter’s influence on the decision to remove the barricades saying quote “We determined they were not needed” in a statement to the media.

Some community residents and passers by expressed optimism about the removal of the barricades but said they would like to see more from the Occupy movement beyond Zuccotti park.

Protestors say the city and the country can expect to see of them in the near future now that there is public access to their symbolic center of operations.