Occupy Detroit has been granted a one-week extension to stay in Grand Circus Park.

Members of the movement wanted two weeks to clean up the park and to find transitional housing for some of the homeless people on-site, but they were allowed to stay only until Nov. 21, just a few days before the city's annual Thanksgiving Day parade downtown.

Councilman Kwame Kenyatta gave a passionate speech before the vote, saying occupiers are standing on the backs of those who protested and marched for civil rights. City officials should not have them jumping through hoops, he said.

"None of us sit here on our own," Kenyatta said. "I commend them for going through the (permit) process. All of us sit here because people occupied and demonstrated. They didn't have a permit to go up against racism (and) Jim Crow. They did it because it was the right thing to do.

"For us to question the process...Who are we to do that on the backs and the shoulders that we stand on? That's a concern of mine."