Lets see what the colder weather brings. Occupy Wall Street will either fade away or turn into Occupy Phoenix or Miami.
Right, wrong, or indifferent the longer they are allowed to go on and the more media coverage they get - the harder they will be to ignore.
MikeyRavioli wrote:
Protesters stay at Centennial Park, given tickets
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Centennial Park closed at 10:30 p.m. Thursday but that didn't keep protesters from taking part in Occupy Fort Myers. At 11 p.m, police officers arrived at the park and issued tickets.
The protesters were told Thursday to leave the park after six days because they didn't have the correct permits. The city said they needed a policy for liability for $1 million.
For six days, the city has let the rules slide but said Thursday, protesters needed to leave. The city is concerned about something happening to someone inside a city park and they don't want to be held liable. Protesters said its unconstitutional.
Some protesters left at the 10:30 p.m. deadline but others decided to stand their ground. At 11 p.m., several protesters walked up to officers and said they were planning to stay at the park and then they were given tickets.
Lt. Jay Rodriguez with the Fort Myers Police Department, told WINK News that they would issue tickets for $135 to protesters who decided not to leave the park. Those who were given tickets could stay in the park, but would be showing their tickets to police before they could stay.
Rodriguez said the chief of police and the mayor will meet on Friday to figure out what to do next.
http://www.winknews.com/Local-Florida/2011-10-20/Protesters-stay-at-Centennial-Park-given-tickets Police arrest six Occupy Tampa protestersBy JOSH POLTILOVE | The Tampa Tribune
Published: October 21, 2011
Nick Windholz tried his darndest to get arrested today.
The Occupy Tampa protester lay in front of police and called them "Gestapo." Then he marched to Tampa Police Department headquarters with several comrades, chanting "TPD is oppressing me." In the lobby, the 26-year-old Land O' Lakes resident laid prone, hands behind his back holding an American flag.
Officers wouldn't cuff him. Six others weren't so fortunate.
The ongoing tension between police and Occupy Tampa protesters finally boiled over into arrests about 9 a.m. today.
Protesters were arrested after police said they refused to stop lying on the sidewalk in front of Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park.
At issue is a city ordinance that prohibits people from sleeping in city parks. As an alternative, police have told protestors that they have to sleep on nearby sidewalks when the park closes at 10 p.m. In the morning, police wake the protesters up and order the demonstrators to roll up their sleeping bags and leave space on the sidewalk.
That has created friction between the two groups, and today protesters refused to move.
Police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said officers had been trying to get the protesters to move off the sidewalk since 6 a.m. – hours before arrests began.
"We've clearly established that we don't want to arrest protesters who follow the law, and it's unfortunate that they've given us no choice,'' Davis said.
"We have to balance their First Amendment rights but also the people who work in this area."
Davis noted police didn't arrest all the protesters lying on the sidewalk, saying police were trying to be reasonable. "The people with sleeping bags and a lot of stuff, that's where we're starting.''
As Alicia Dion, 24, of Pinellas County, was being placed into a patrol car, she said she did not know why she was being arrested.
"I have not been Mirandized,'' Dion said. "No one gave me an ordinance or a statute at the time."
Police also took assorted items like sleeping bags from the sidewalk and put them in the trunks of their squad cars.
After the arrests about 10 protesters marched from the park to nearby police headquarters to protest.
They chanted "Arrest corrupt police" and "TPD is oppressing me" as a demonstrator played a bongo drum. They sat inside the department about 10 minutes, chanting quietly before they left. Outside the department, they warned youngsters visiting the station that "police are not your friends."
Mayor Bob Buckhorn supported the crackdown on demonstrators.
"We've been very patient," he said.
Tampa had been the only city where Occupy demonstrations had not resulted in arrests or violent confrontations, he said. But enough was enough.
"At some point, you have to draw the line," he said, "and if you step over that line, there are consequences."
"If they want a place to sleep," Buckhorn said, "they can go home or to a hotel. We have bent over backward trying to accommodate them."
In his conference room while demonstrators were being handcuffed a few blocks away, Buckhorn said Occupy Tampa has been a peaceful demonstration.
"But we will not tolerate people who violate the law," he said.
Elizabeth Toms, 20, of Temple Terrace, was one of the protesters not arrested. She said police told protesters they need at least a 4-foot clearance from the street and said protesters have been providing at least a 6-foot clearance.
"If they care about obstructing the sidewalk, they wouldn't line it with their (police) cars,'' Toms said.
Asked if having fewer people because some have been arrested would diminish the protest, Toms said, "We have a lot more. A lot of people are just not here at the moment."
Although she wasn't arrested, police seized her two blankets and her pillow, which someone else had been using.
The arrests come one day after the protestors marched to city hall to complain to city council about what they termed regular harassment by police, including officers recording video of them as they sleep and waking them up every morning.
Police officials said they have tried to accommodate the demonstrations, allowing them to occupy the park during the day without permits and other requirements.
"Downtown is a neighborhood these days, and we expect them to get out of the way," Tampa police Capt. Brian Duggan told council members Thursday.
Both police and the protestors had pointed out at Thursday's meeting that nobody had been arrested.
Windholz, who said he lay in front of police today in solidarity with his arrested brethren, said he doesn't know why officers wouldn't arrest him.
"I was mocking them left and right," he said.
The Occupy movement is a national extension of the Occupy Wall Street protests in the New York City financial district. Protesters say they object to social and economic inequality and corporate greed.
Occupy Oakland gets eviction notice from City HallBy Scott Johnson
Oakland Tribune
Officials put residents of Occupy Oakland on notice Thursday night that a tent city outside City Hall could no longer continue.
A letter posted on the city's web site at 8 p.m. expresses concerns about a wide range of public health and security issues surrounding the 10-day old camp in Frank Ogawa Plaza. No moves have been made by police or other officials to dismantle the camp since the notice went up.
Meanwhile, an Occupy rally at 11 a.m. and a noon march are planned for Saturday in downtown Oakland. The Occupy Facebook page so far has 350 listed as planning to attend.
Citing a rat infestation, numerous fire hazards, threats of intimidation and open displays of violence, Thursday's letter from city
officials appears to be a first step toward moving the residents out of the camp.
"We believe that after 10 days, the City can no longer uphold public health and safety. In recent days, camp conditions and occupants' behavior have significantly deteriorated, and it is no longer manageable to maintain a public health and safety plan," reads the notice posted on the city's web site.
Overnight camping will no longer be permitted, only "peaceful daytime assembly" between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., according to the notice.
In response, several hundred angry residents gathered in the amphitheater for the nightly General Assembly to protest the letter.
One after another, the residents took the microphone to express their rage
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at the police and the mayor's office, and proclaimed repeatedly the need to "hold the camp" and resist the police "by any means necessary."
One speaker, a young woman who has been active in the camp for several nights running, said the residents should learn from the example of Oakland's longshoremen, who she said were "hardcore" workers and protesters who regularly got into running fights with the police.
"How are we going to look to these longshoremen if we back down here?" she asked, to loud applause from the audience.
Expressing concern about the safety of some of the camps more vulnerable residents, such as children, the mentally ill or the disabled, some speakers said the residents needed to think less about the need for direct action, and more about the safety and well-being of all the citizens of Oakland.
One man who said he came to the camp as a skeptic in the hopes of documenting the movement's aims, choked up as he began to speak and expressed deep admiration for the aims of the residents, which he said included feeding and sheltering the homeless, giving voice to the
disenfranchised and standing up to the 1 percent. "I'm sorry," he said, "I get kind of emotional."
Sorry, but their day in the sun is setting.
