Early this morning, the Park Police rolled into McPherson Square, set up barricades, took down the Tent of Dreams, distributed blue flyers describing what they were going to do, and after giving Occupiers about an hour to remove stuff from their tents, started methodically going through the park in yellow jumpsuits to bag and tag what hadn't been taken. Some headlines call it a raid, but the overall impression is more like a toxic waste dump cleanup, with months of detritus being cleared away.

"All persons not in compliance will be subject to arrest, and property will be collected as evidence," the notice reads. "Any temporary structure used for camping is subject to seizure as an abatement of a public nuisance."

The public nuisance language bears out hints dropped by the Department of the Interior at Tuesday's court hearing: Stuff could actually be taken out for sanitary reasons, even if it wasn't technically violating the no-camping regulations. By the time they're done, some of the tents might be left, but with nothing that made them habitable.

As of right now, DCist reports, most tents are gone, though Occupiers pledge to stick around, even if they're not sleeping in the park.

Photo by thisisbossi via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License

McPherson Square, Feb. 1st.  © 2012 Matt Dunn

Protesters at both D.C. camps simply adjusted to the new regulations and continued on as they have before. Most tents have been cleared of bedding and many protesters have found other places to sleep — in churches, with friends and sometimes on the streets. Others are complying with the ban by not sleeping at all. A handful of Occupiers on a "sleep strike" haven't slept since Monday morning and say they won't sleep until the Park Service stops enforcing the ban.

A good portion of Occupiers are still sleeping in the park in defiance of the Park Service's order.

"I'm sleeping here because a person has to find someplace to sleep," said Camilo Brokaw, 24, of Albuquerque, N.M. "There's a big community here that doesn't have somewhere to go."

But even though police patrolled the camp twice in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, checking tents for slumbering protesters, they made no arrests, protesters said.

Photo by Matt Dunn

To modest fanfare, members of the Occupy Movement in McPherson Square on Monday covered the statue of the eponymous Civil War general with a hand-painted tarp festooned with stars and dubbed the "Tent of Dreams." The equestrian statue of James Birdseye McPherson (yes, Birdseye!) was designed by sculptor Louis T. Rebisso (1837-1893), who was a longtime professor of sculpture at the University of Cincinnati School of Design, and is known for statues of Ulysses S. Grant in Chicago and William Henry Harrison in his adopted city of Cincinnati. The Feb. 5, 1876 issue of The American Architect and Building News praises the work, then still awaiting bronze casting, as "a colossal statue, the figure of the rider measuring eight feet high, and more; and represents Gen. McPherson suddenly reining in his horse, and earnestly scanning the distance of some field of battle."

Rebisso achieved success in the U.S., despite difficult beginnings. According to a capsule biography published in the  Iconographic Encyclopaedia of the Arts and Sciences, he emigrated from his native Genoa in 1857 after political conditions made it dangerous for him to remain. An ardent patriot and small-r republican, Rebisso was a supporter of the Young Italy movement led by Giuseppe Mazzini that aimed to end rule by foreign potentates and local nobility, curtail the temporal power of the Vatican and unite Italy under a national government. The Young Italy movement was brutally suppressed in its time, and most of its leading adherents were forced to live out their days in political exile. Perhaps worth commending to the Occupiers is this passage from Mazzini's Manifesto of Young Italy: "Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Man held by NPS after trying to remove the "Tent of Dreams" tarp from the statue.

McPherson Square, Jan. 31st.  © 2012 Matt Dunn

Is Our Deer Learning?: Maybe it's not too late to change the award-winning designs of some of the new libraries around town. Because, apparently, the local fauna have trouble with lots of windows. A deer crashed through the plate glass in the interim library in Washington Highlands today, shattering the window; the deer had to be put to death, after breaking its jaw. No word on whether it was rushing to return books to avoid an overdue fine. -1

McPherson Square, Preoccupied: Yesterday's deadline for Occupy D.C. to abide by rules banning camping in McPherson Square passed without too much trouble, as many protesters agreed to ditch things like stoves and sleeping gear in order to keep the U.S. Park Police from raiding the site. Today, the Occupiers failed to get a restraining order against the enforcement of the rules—but they did get a promise of advance warning before a bust. Which, among other outcomes, guarantees extensive media coverage if the cops ever do move to clear the park. +2

History Of Fiction: Republican presidential candidate and would-be moon colonizer Newt Gingrich has compared himself to everything from Moses to "a Viking." So it's almost understandable that Post reporter Stephanie McCrummen might have thought Gingrich was referring to another historical figure when he said he was a student of "the Japanese samurai warlord Toranaga." Unfortunately for McCrummen, Toranaga is a character in Shogun, a James Clavell novel published in 1975, not an actual historical figure. Fortunately for the rest of us, the correction noting that fact is quite amusing. +2

Save Us, Peyton Kenobi, You're Our Only Hope: Two seasons ago, the Washington Redskins signed Donovan McNabb amidst great preseason hype. Before the 6-10 2010 campaign was over, McNabb had been benched for Rex Grossman. So the news that the team is now doodling Peyton Manning's name and drawing burgundy and gold hearts on notebooks in Ashburn, Va., doesn't exactly inspire great confidence. Of course, the modern era being what it is, there is already a petition to bring Manning to town and a Twitter feed to promote it, complete with PhotoShopped images of Dan Snyder posing with his new QB. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 38 Today's score: +2 Today's Needle rating: 40

Slideshow McPherson Square, Jan. 30th.  © 2012 Matt Dunn

Slideshow NSFW. Around 16th and K St. NW.  Jan. 28th.  © 2012 Matt Dunn

The news was met with a predictable flurry of outrage on Twitter: If rats were enough to get you evicted, critics noted, much of D.C. would have to be relocated. Why pick on activists, especially ahead of next week's Occupy Congress gathering?

In fact, it's been clear for some time that the mayor—for all his initial support for the protest—has been heading toward this position. The encampment, of course, puts the mayor in an awkward position. Ditto Barack Obama, whose federal government actually controls the square. Neither man wants to be seen as opposed to Occupy's cause, but they also have bureaucracies to run. Considering that D.C. has the last large encampment in the country, we'd be willing to bet Gray is envious of his counterparts who were able to get rid of their protesters without dealing with the federal government. And it's likely that the Park Service would rather not have to deal with Occupy at all, especially since it faces legislative oversight from the likes of Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who's been demanding to know why the protesters haven't been evicted.

Against that backdrop, public health concerns—rats!—could represent a reluctant pol's deus ex machina.

This latest development, though, also represents a major flaw of Occupy. Yeah, establishmentarian critics like to poke the movement for not having clear goals. But the bigger issue is one of stagecraft. It's fairly clear that when the encampment ends, whether that's today or this month or some other time, it will look like a defeat—a case of cops or mayors or federal bureaucrats sending the campers scurrying. And those optics will be a shame, because, in changing the national conversation, Occupy has won big. "One percent" wasn't a phrase in usage pre-Occupy. Now it's everywhere.

Here's some unsolicited advice for Occupy: Figure out a way to declare victory.

A good protest, after all, works a bit like a concert. Everything builds towards that rousing finale, a moment of triumph that sends the audience confidently out into the night. No one feels the same about a show that goes on and on until the band runs out of energy or the audience drift off or the stadium maintenance crew cuts off the electricity.

Why shuffle off when they can go out with a bang?

Occupy D.C.'s end will be the symbolic conclusion of this stage of the U.S. Occupy movement. Shouldn't it end on Occupy D.C.'s terms? Here's what we think they should do: Announce an end to occupancy on Jan. 18—the day after their planned protest on Capitol Hill—and invite all the departed campers, or the occupiers evicted from other cities, to come show their strength. The crowds will grow, the images will be impressive, and the sense of success will dominate the coverage.

Which will also ensure that, when the movement plans its next act, the momentum will be even stronger.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

While the National Park Service has said that it has no plans to evict the McPherson Square or Freedom Plaza protesters, a lawyer for one McPherson group has filed a lawsuit that would prevent the Department of the Interior from evicting the occupiers without a trial. The Examiner reports:

The Park Service has already posted warnings in both Occupy camps at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza that mention trash concerns and problems with rats, he said. And on Thursday, the D.C. Department of Health, under orders from Mayor Vincent Gray, will inspect Occupy DC's kitchens after residents and business complained about rodents in the area.

There's no telling whether that inspection, or the Park Service's earlier memos, spell impending eviction for the Occupy movement. But [lawyer Jeff] Light doesn't want to take that chance.

"What you've seen around the country with so many Occupies being evicted causes a lot of concern that that would likely happen here," he said.

Park Service representatives have previously stated that they have no plans to evict protesters. But on Wednesday, Park Service spokesman Bill Line said the Park Service would let a Washington Examiner reporter know when it was "ready to make a move and communicate with demonstrators."

Photo by tedeytan via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License

McPherson Square, Jan. 1st.   © 2012 Matt Dunn

McPherson Square.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

Full Gallery.  Dead Prez and Head-Roc at Occupy DC.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

McPherson Square, Dec. 18th.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

McPherson Square, Dec. 18th.  © 2011 Matt Dunn