Photo: GETTY
By Nick Allen, Los Angeles
9:56PM GMT 13 Nov 2011
The Occupy protests are now nearly two months old, having begun in New York's financial district on Sept 17 as a demonstration against income inequality and corporate greed.
This weekend however officials across the country urged an end to gatherings and camps were cleared in Salt Lake City, Utah and Denver, Colorado.
In Portland, Oregon thousands of people gathered in two adjacent city parks in an overnight stand off with police. The city's mayor Sam Adams had ordered a camp there to be shut down by midnight Saturday, citing unhealthy conditions and the camp's attraction of drug users and thieves. There had been four non-fatal drug overdoses in recent weeks..
But early on Sunday 3,000 people converged on the area and protest organisers said that would make it difficult for police to carry out an eviction.
Occupy Portland spokesman Jordan LeDoux said: "We're going to sit-in and force them to arrest us."
Portland police spokesman Robert King said it was a legal violation to remain in the park after midnight, adding: "We'll take action that's appropriate."
In Salt Lake City police arrested 19 people at the weekend when protesters refused to leave their camp in a park. Around 150 people had been living there for weeks.
City officials had rescinded permits for the group to stay shortly after a man was found dead inside a tent, in what police said was a drug related death. The city's police chief Chris Burbank said they could "no longer tolerate" the camping on the streets.
In Denver officers also removed illegally pitched tents and arrested several people, while in St Louis 27 people were arrested for curfew violations.
Eviction notices were also issued in Oakland, California, where demands for protesters to leave have increased since a man was shot and killed in a fight near the camp on Thursday.
Police said they do not know if those involved in the gunfight were associated with the Occupy Oakland movement, but protesters said there was no connection.
On the same day as that death a 35-year-old military veteran apparently shot himself at an Occupy camp in Burlington, Vermont.