Early on Nov. 15, almost two months after Occupy Wall Street protesters set up their home base in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, the city determined that demonstrators would no longer be allowed to sleep there overnight, and hundreds of New York City police officers evicted them.

Two days later, in response to the eviction, members of the movement and sympathizers held demonstrations in New York and dozens of other cities across the United States.

In New York, police arrested more than 200 people after protesters clashed with authorities during an attempt to delay the opening of The New York Stock Exchange. Demonstrations were also held in the city’s subway system and near the Brooklyn Bridge. Police reported that seven officers and 10 protesters were injured.

Though the movement no longer has a fixed location in New York, it has not fizzled. On Nov.20, demonstrators protested in the affluent neighborhood where New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, resides.

Commentators are debating whether concerns over enduring corporate greed and social inequality highlighted by Occupy Wall Street will be heeded by political leaders. In a recent online forum in The New York Times on why political leaders do not seem to be responding to the protests, Rick McGahey, a professor of public policy and economics at the New School, posited that some officials are struggling between the urge to tap the movement’s energy and the fear of losing independent voters.

“Thus far, this conflict has paralyzed many Democratic officials,” he wrote.

Christopher Lehane, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, commented on the forum that “Many, though not all, elected officials are loath to be perceived as taking swipes at the very people and institutions they depend on to write them checks. It is hard to go with a straight face from standing in Zuccotti Park to attending a Park Avenue fundraiser.” A recent Washington Post/Pew Research poll found that 39 percent of Americans support Occupy Wall Street and that 35 percent oppose it.