NEW YORK — In an amplified version of a family Thanksgiving squabble, shouting erupted Thursday when police ordered a halt to protesters' drumming at an otherwise mostly traditional Occupy Wall Street holiday meal.
About 500 protesters were digging into donated turkey and all the trimmings when police told a drummer at lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park to stop playing. Things heated up for about 15 minutes.
About 200 of the protesters surrounded a group of about 30 officers and began shouting.
"Why don't you stop being cops for Thanksgiving?" yelled one protester.
"Why don't you arrest the drummers in the Thanksgiving parade?" hollered another.
A van rolled up with more officers, but they hung back. The protesters, part of anti-Wall Street movement that has gripped a nation consumed by economic despair, held an impromptu forum and decided to call off the drumming.
The noisy standoff ended, and the protesters returned to their food.
Volunteers had brought boxes full of meals to the edge of the park and distributed them outside metal barriers surrounding most of the plaza. Protesters then carried their meals into the park and ate them on stone benches. After police raided the park and cleared out protesters' tents last week, security guards have been enforcing a ban on lying down or bringing in bulky objects.
Before the Thanksgiving spat ensued, volunteer Haywood Carey, 28, of Chapel Hill, N.C., called the celebration a sign of Americans' shared values, despite the nation's mixed opinions about the Occupy movement. "The things that divide are much less than the things that bind us together," he said.
A guitarist played the spiritual song "Let it Shine" as the crowd ate turkey with gravy, cornbread stuffing, squash, cranberry sauce, rolls and pumpkin pie. Kent Johnson, 65, a lawyer from Oklahoma City, was one who brought a pie."
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