On Nov. 18, the city’s police chief, Sheilah Coley, said she would waive the permit ordinarily required to assemble in Military Park, telling protesters that her officers’ task was “to make sure you’re safe.”

And Tuesday, members of the city’s Municipal Council said they supported lifting the 9 p.m. curfew that typically governs the plaza. One member declared his unwavering support for “operation whatever you call it,” to boisterous applause.

“It’s a good thing that it’s amicable,” said Donna Jackson, 47, a longtime Newark resident and one of the protesters. “People here are so beat up.”

The dynamics have shifted somewhat in recent days, as officers on Saturday removed three tents.

Protesters promised to “push the envelope further” after that episode, though they seemed to have taken the reprimand in stride. After the tents were taken down, about a half-dozen people stayed through the night anyway, crooning “Bohemian Rhapsody,” among other numbers, as they took karaoke requests from viewers of the live video feed on their Web site.

Of course, relations between Occupy protesters and their city can be inherently fragile. In Philadelphia, despite consistent expressions of sympathy from much of the local government, protesters were asked on Sunday to abandon their encampment, where they had been for weeks.

Still, throughout the Newark protest, acrimony has been minimal, participants say, because unlike in Lower Manhattan, few bankers or corporate executives pass the site during the day.

The city’s median household income from 2005 to 2009 was $35,507, according to the Census Bureau, barely half of the state median and roughly $15,000 less than the national figure.

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Occupy Newark remains small, attracting no more than a few dozen participants to a typical meeting. Many are from Newark; others come from neighboring cities and towns; a few are alumni of Occupy Wall Street, dispatched from across the Hudson River to dispense advice on how to expand the protest.

At the meeting Tuesday of the Municipal Council — where residents often speak too close to the microphone as they air grievances, and a fan blows through a dirty slit in the wall to make the American flag wave when the National Anthem is played — protesters said they planned to shout down council members and enumerate the demands of their occupation.

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But as the meeting entered its fourth hour, some began to lose their nerve.

“Should we do a mike check?” one whispered to a peer, referring to the movement’s hallmark call-and-response tactic. “That’s what we do, right?”

After officials praised their cause, the group decided against an interruption.

For many protesters, the message has remained persistently local, particularly when compared with the sprawling ambitions of the gatherings in Manhattan and other cities.

Grievances include Newark’s murder rate, the city’s unemployment levels, and layoffs last year to the police force, which thinned the department’s ranks by more than 160 officers.

Demonstrators have begun partnering with groups like the People’s Organization for Progress and the New Jersey Teacher Activist Group to plan marches and teach-ins.

Bilal Salaam, 31, a graduate student at the Newark campus of Rutgers University, said he was unsure how the occupation might resonate with city residents without attention-grabbing civil disobedience or the obvious corporate adversaries that often stroll past the protests in Manhattan.

“It’s been three weeks of waiting,” he said Friday night. “We’re waiting for them to tell us we can usurp these laws.”

Another protester overheard. “Guys, Bilal wants to get arrested,” he announced to the group. “Can we help him?”

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Some demonstrators noted that in 1999, as a member of the Municipal Council, Mr. Booker pitched a tent during a 10-day hunger strike in front of a housing project.

“I know the tradition,” Mr. Booker said in an interview. “In many ways, I wish they would go to some other neighborhoods within our city. It would consolidate police presence within communities that are asking for it.”

Many protesters, though, have found symbolism in the current location. Councilman Ras J. Baraka, who visited the site on Friday and pledged to stay overnight on a future date, noted that Prudential Financial’s headquarters were visible from the park. “That’s as corporate as Newark is going to get,” he said, gazing at the structure behind a lingerie shop and a bargain shoe store.

Teisha Miles, 23, sat a few feet away, rarely leaving her chair during the protest, she said, because her fourth child was due “any day.” She pointed to the bus stop along the western edge of the park, beside an elevated clock whose hour hand never budges.

“It should be here,” she said. “There’s crime on the buses, too.”