ReFund California, a coalition of student group and university employee unions, has called for a campus strike Tuesday, when protesters plan a large afternoon rally and march to protest banks and budget cuts to higher education.

The Berkeley protesters will be joined by Occupy Oakland activists who said they would march to the UC campus in the afternoon. Police cleared the tent city in front of Oakland City Hall before dawn on Monday and arrested more than 50 people amid complaints about safety, sanitation and drug use.

Occupy Cal activists will try again to establish an encampment Tuesday night, when UC Berkeley professor and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich is scheduled to deliver a speech on class warfare on the steps of Sproul Hall.

In New York, hundreds of police officers in riot gear raided Zuccotti Park early Tuesday, evicting dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters from what has become the epicenter of the worldwide movement protesting corporate greed and economic inequality.

Hours later, the National Lawyers Guild obtained a court order allowing Occupy Wall Street protesters to return with tents to the park. The guild said the injunction prevents the city from enforcing park rules on Occupy Wall Street protesters.

At a morning news conference at City Hall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city knew about the court order but had not seen it and would go to court to fight it. He said the city wants to protect people’s rights, but if a choice must be made, it will protect public safety.

About 70 people were arrested overnight, including some who chained themselves together, while officers cleared the park so that sanitation crews could clean it.

By 9 a.m., the park was power-washed clean. Police in riot gear still ringed the public space, waiting for orders to reopen it.

The city told protesters at the two-month-old encampment they could come back after the cleaning, but under new tougher rules, including no tents, sleeping bags or tarps, which would effectively put an end to the encampment if enforced.

Bloomberg said the evacuation was conducted in the middle of the night “to reduce the risk of confrontation in the park, and to minimize disruption to the surrounding neighborhood.”

“The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” Bloomberg said. “Ever since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with, as the park has been taken over by protesters, making it unavailable to anyone else.”

Concerns about health and safety issues at Occupy Wall Street camps around the country have intensified, and protesters have been ordered to take down their shelters, adhere to curfews and relocate so that parks can be cleaned.

Hundreds of former Zuccotti Park residents and their supporters marched along Lower Manhattan before dawn Tuesday.

Some paused and locked arms outside the City Hall gates but left peacefully when police in riot gear appeared on the scene. About 300 to 400 kept moving along the sidewalks, taking care not to block them.

Some were chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.”

Others chanted: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, our billionaire mayor has got to go.”

At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, New York City police handed out notices from Brookfield Office Properties, owner of Zuccotti Park, and the city saying that the park had to be cleared because it had become unsanitary and hazardous.

Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, said the park had been cleared by 4:30 a.m. and that about 70 people who’d been inside it had been arrested, including a group who chained themselves together. One person was taken to a hospital for evaluation because of breathing problems.

Police in riot gear filled the streets, car lights flashing and sirens blaring. Protesters, some of whom shouted angrily at police, began marching to two locations in Lower Manhattan where they planned to hold rallies.

Some protesters refused to leave the park, but many left peacefully.

Ben Hamilton, 29, said he was arrested “and I was just trying to get away” from the fray.

Rabbi Chaim Gruber, an Occupy Wall Street member, said police officers were clearing the streets near Zuccotti Park.

“The police are forming a human shield, and are pushing everyone away,” he said.

Hundreds of police officers surrounded the park in riot gear with plastic shields across their faces, holding plastic shields and batons which were used on some cases on protesters.

Police also came armed with klieg lights, which they used to flood the park, and bull horns to announce that everyone had to clear out.

Jake Rozak, another protester, said police “had their pepper spray out and were ready to use it.”

Notices given to the protesters said the park “poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard to those camped in the park, the city’s first responders and the surrounding community.”

It said that tents, sleeping bags and other items had to be removed because “the storage of these materials at this location is not allowed.” Anything left behind would be taken away, the notices said, giving an address at a sanitation department building where items could be picked up.

Alex Hall, 21, of Brooklyn, said police walked into the park “stepping on tents and ripping them out.”

Occupy encampments have come under fire around the country as local officials and residents have complained about possible health hazards and ongoing inhabitation of parks and other public spaces.

Last Wednesday, baton-wielding police clashed with protesters who tried to set up tents and arrested 40 of them as the university sought to uphold a campus ban on camping. A group of students and protesters who say they were beaten by police last week announced plans Monday to sue the university and campus police for police brutality.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has launched an investigation into allegations that campus police used excessive force. He said videos he watched of the protests were “very disturbing” and plans to grant amnesty to all students who were arrested and cited for attempting to block police from removing the tents.

“The events of last Wednesday are unworthy of us as a university community,” Birgeneau wrote in a campus letter Monday.

UC Berkeley officials were determined to avoid a repeat of last week’s violence, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof.

On Monday, the UC Board of Regents canceled its scheduled meeting this week after law enforcement officials warned about possible violence and vandalism at a planned anti-Wall Street demonstration.

The regents had been set to hold its bi-monthly meeting Wednesday and Thursday at the UC San Francisco Mission Bay campus, but will reschedule and possibly hold it at another venue.

The move came after law enforcement officials received information that “rogue elements intent on violence and confrontation with UC public safety officers” were planning to join a demonstration by students and university employees at the meeting, UC officials said.

ReFund California had reserved 20 buses to take students and other protesters to the regents meeting Wednesday and had expected several thousand demonstrators to show up, said Charlie Eaton, a coalition organizer and graduate student at UC Berkeley.

The protesters now plan to head to Justin Herman Plaza near San Francisco’s financial district, where protesters initially planned to go after the regents meeting, Eaton said.

Oakland estimates that it has spent more than $2.4 million in month-long efforts to contain the protests.

Police staged a previous raid on the Oakland encampment Oct. 25, but Mayor Jean Quan allowed protesters to re-establish their tent city. On Monday, however, Quan said officials could no longer ignore the problems the camp posed.

“We came to this point because Occupy Oakland, I think, began to take a different path than the original movement,” Quan said. “The encampment became a place where we had repeated violence and last week a murder. We had to bring the camp to an end before more people got hurt.”

Demands increased for Oakland protesters to pack up after a man was shot and killed Thursday near the encampment at the City Hall plaza. Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said a strong police presence would remain at the plaza around the clock to make sure protesters didn’t roll out tents and sleeping bags again.

Several hundred people regrouped Monday night at the city’s library and marched to the cleared plaza. The police chief said they would be allowed to assemble as long as they remained peaceful and did not try to re-establish the encampment.

Shon Kae of the Occupy Oakland media committee said it was still unclear what demonstrators would do next.

“There is no secret plan,” Kae said. “We all have to just keep on with the struggle.”

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By Terrence Chea, Colleen Long and Verena Dobnik