More than 200 Oakland police in riot gear fired tear gas early Thursday morning and arrested dozens of protesters and dispersed hundreds of others after Occupy protests spread to a downtown plaza.

After successfully shutting down the Port of Oakland in the early evening, one group of protesters moved to a downtown plaza right after midnight where they were met by the police.

The previous day's large demonstrations and "general strike" went off peacefully but degraded into violence in the wee hours Thursday,

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

A few activists paused to pick up canisters and hurl them back at officers as they fled, while others threw rocks. One barricade was set ablaze after the police first advanced.
"This was peaceful until you came!" some protesters shouted at police. Police later charged toward protesters with batons and more tear gas to push them farther into center of the square, where activists have reassembled a make-shift encampment forcibly dismantled by authorities last week.

The latest unrest in Oakland, which shot to the forefront of nationwide anti-Wall Street protests after a former Marine was badly injured in last week's clashes, followed a day of rallies that drew some 5,000 activists at their peak and shuttered the busy Port of Oakland but failed to grind the city to a halt.

Here is Neon Tommy's earlier comprehensive coverage of Wednesday's port shut down.

View the story "More On Occupy Oakland" on Storify]