I have a piece of advice for the Occupy protesters camped out across the country. Fold up your tents and declare victory. You’ve earned it. There is nothing more you can accomplish as a protest movement.

Here are four reasons I think you should pack it up.

• It’ll be on your terms. The first rule of message management is that you want to start the conversation. The only way for you to control the next part of the story is for you to set the timetable. Otherwise, you’ll spend the coming weeks reacting to the efforts of politicians and police officers to shut down the protest camps. The story will be all about those moves and how they’re carried out, which will have little or no value to you from a public relations standpoint.

• Public support is as high as it’s going to get. You’ve won positive mentions from a number of high-profile thought leaders, Nobel Prize winners Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz among them. A new poll of Canadians found even more support. Of the roughly seven in 10 Canadians who have heard of the protests, 58% report a favourable or somewhat favourable view.

• It’s the grown-up thing to do. There has been tragic news associated with the protests. A young woman died of an apparent drug overdose in Vancouver, and a young war veteran was seriously injured while he protested in Oakland. You can prevent anymore of the same happening. (This is not to suggest you’re to blame, by the way.) You are often unfairly dismissed as idealistic kids who don’t understand how the world works. Packing up now would discredit that view dramatically. It would be a shrewd move.

• It’s getting cold outside. I’m not joking here. The longer this thing stretches, the greater the risk that someone is going to suffer harm from exposure to sub-zero nighttime temperatures. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that one or two of you aren’t properly outfitted to spend a January night in the park.

This is not about ending the movement. Remember what #OccupyBayStreet explained to me in an interview last month, when I asked about the call to action for Canadians. “The specific call is for people to come together and form these general assemblies,” said Doug. “I think the unique call is for people to come together and decide on a consensus model what the demands will be, what needs to change, what needs to be done differently.”

This is problematic at best. I can’t imagine how you expect to maintain public support if your ability to assemble and develop a political platform is dependent on the occupation of public spaces. For heaven’s sake, go rent a room.

Run your general assemblies in proper public facilities, and formally invite community participation. They’ll be more manageable (no need for the dreaded human microphone, for starters). And if planned properly, they’ll be genuinely accessible to the 99% you wish to represent. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you can make the argument that the assemblies are widely accessible now.

So please, go home. Reorganize and begin phase two, in which the Occupy protest movement becomes the Occupy political movement. Failing to make this transition will only re-marginalize your movement at a time when it actually has a bit of traction.