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Editorials | Occupy Boston

Don’t make it a turf battle

A LONG, drawn-out legal fight over how long people can stay in a public park would be, at best, a distraction from the serious economic issues that Occupy Boston is working to highlight.

Now two months old, the encampment in Dewey Square isn’t hurting anyone, and has created relatively little disruption. The city, which seems to recognize the free-speech implications, has wisely given the protesters a lot of latitude.

Yet it’s unlikely this detente can hold forever. As a legal matter, nobody has a unqualified right to camp indefinitely in a public park. The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, which manages the Dewey Square parcel the protesters are using, is pushing the city to act, alleging drug use in the camp and worsening sanitary conditions, and maintaining that a community event had to be cancelled because of the protests.

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The Greenway’s stance would needlessly force matters to a precipice. But it is time for the protesters to start thinking about their next steps. There is a danger on fixating too literally on the “occupy’’ part of their movement, rather than the actual issues of income inequality. And a group that proclaims to represent the “99 percent’’ ought to understand that claiming public space as theirs alone, in perpetuity, ultimately isn’t fair.

In the bigger picture, getting enmeshed in a courtroom battle over permitting regulations would be an unnecessary setback for the movement. Not only are the protesters sure to lose, as they did in New York when a court upheld the removal of tents from Zuccotti Park, but it will diminish them in the process by fostering an image that the protesters care more about seizing public space and battling authorities than the broader issues.

When the Occupy Wall Street encampment was broken up, it didn’t end the movement. Just the opposite: thousands of protesters turned out in the following days. If anything, no longer having to grapple with the burdens of running a camp seemed to liberate the Wall Street protesters, enabling them to renew the focus on their message.

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In Boston, the city has struck a good balance, but sooner or later the protesters here will have to move on, too. It’s ultimately to the movement’s benefit for that to happen on its own terms.