NEW YORK (Reuters) ? With just a few protesters huddled against the cold winds at Zuccotti Park on Friday, city officials are hoping protests which have taken place here for the past two months have run their course.
"There are problems in the country," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. "You can make yourself heard, which I think has been done. Now it's time to get back and build the economy and create the good paying jobs that people need."
Having been evicted in the early hours of Tuesday morning by New York police and no longer allowed to camp at the park, just a handful of occupiers huddled together against brisk autumn winds in a largely empty space.
Most demonstrators may have just had protest hangovers, after a series of marches on Thursday that slowed traffic in the financial district and led to some scuffles with police and more than 200 arrests.
Organizers insist they are sticking around.
"A lot of us went to bed last night thinking we had the best day of the movement," said protest spokesman Ed Needham. "We all thought, we still believe, this is still the unfolding of a new chapter."
With no organized network of housing for scores of protesters who traveled to New York from other cities, the movement is confronting fundamental questions of where to gather and where to sleep.
"It's hard to say where it's going right now," said John Carhart, 28, of New Jersey.
He said organizers were hoping to find an indoor space before the end of the year, "so people will have a place to put their belongings and a place to sleep that's not outside."
A few local churches are housing some of those left homeless by the evictions from Zuccotti Park. The protesters are allowed to return and congregate in the park, but they cannot sleep or lie down, and few have returned.
Caiti Lattimer said she and others like her who live in New York are hosting those from out of town. But she acknowledged that the coming Thanksgiving holiday may thin the ranks.
"People are going home for Thanksgiving," she said. "But there are still people who ... will remain."
Organizers declined to elaborate on the movement's next move, saying discussions and plans are ongoing.
But protesters at meetings late Thursday night said conversations about the group's future ranged from plans to occupy homes foreclosed by banks to boycotting major chain stores during the upcoming holidays.
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