Policemen in riot gear scuffle with protesters at the 'Occupy Denver' camp on October 29, 2011 in Denver, Colorado. Following a march by protesters, police tried to tear down some newly-erected tents at the encampment and and a melee ensued. Police arrested about a half dozen people and pepper-sprayed others before calling for reinforcements. (John Moore/Getty Images)
I’m not nearly as scared of witches, ghosts and goblins as I am of over-zealous police officers following unconstitutional orders to break up peaceful encampments of protesters exercising their constitutional rights of assembly, protest and free speech.
My respect today is reserved for one magistrate in Nashville, TN (Tennessee of all places), where Night Court Magistrate Thomas Nelson keeps letting the arrested protesters out!
However, in Nashville, a few hours after the protesters were taken into custody Thursday night, Night Court Magistrate Thomas Nelson let them all go.
He did the same thing the next night when troopers brought in another group of protesters, telling the officers “your warrant is denied.”
Nelson released the demonstrators and refused to sign the arrest warrants, arguing that authorities had no legal basis for the arrests.
The arrests began less than 24 hours after Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration announced it was going to impose a curfew in the park due to safety concerns. Nelson said that wasn’t enough time for protesters to get the necessary permits and he told troopers he will not approve any warrants for arrest under the new curfew.
“For three weeks they’ve sat up there and protested, under no admonition whatsoever that they are violating state policy with regard to camping out…or that they are committing a crime,” Nelson told a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer, according to ABC News affiliate WKRN-TVin Nashville.
“When the state issued its memorandum imposing a curfew and changing the rules, right in the middle of a protest, they can do that, but they have to give them adequate time to comply with those rules,” he said.
Unfortunately, things are getting worse in Richmond, VA
Early Monday (this) morning, shortly after 1 am, the Richmond Police Department descended on Kanawha Plaza, where Occupy Richmond has been camped since October 15, 2011.
Shortly after arriving, police cruisers blockaded streets and lines of officers and horses were set up around the borders of our camp.
Richmond Police gave protesters at Occupy Richmond 15 minutes to collect their belongings and vacate Kanawha Plaza. Promptly after the 15-minute waiting period, Richmond Police swarmed the park. All of our property still remaining in the park was confiscated, collected, and designated for disposal. As the city’s dump trucks and front-loaders decimated our community, occupiers forced to watch from across the street joined together to sing the Star-Spangled Banner. We remained nonviolent at all times during the police action against us.
We unofficially account for 10 to 12 arrests. The majority were released with citations around 4 am while the remainder wait patiently at Richmond City Jail until the magistrate can see them.
This weekend also saw police abuse protesters in Portland OR, Austin TX, Denver CO and other cities.
Our friends at Crooks and Liars have been raising money and sending OccuPies (aka solidarity pizza) to occupations around the country. But as Nicole Belle told me this morning (more on her visit in a moment), they’re stepping up the effort to raise money to help the protesters make it through a long, cold winter. They will also be raising funds to help Scott Olsen, the Iraq war Marine veteran who suffered a fractured skull in the Oakland raid last week, pay his mounting medical bills.
They’ve also just launched a new section of the site for updates on all things Occupy America.
Meanwhile, in Washington DC, the politicians continue to turn blind ears to the suffering of the 99%. The “Super Committee” (which I believe is wholly unconstitutional – I certainly didn’t vote for ANY of those 12 people to represent us, nor did anyone else in Florida) is spending valuable time coming up with new way to screw the American people who need help the most.
I’m just a mom/radio host and I figured out how to save Social Security and Medicare: Get rid of the damned FICA cap! We poor working schmucks pay FICA taxes on 100% of our income. Make the 1% (and everyone else who makes over $110,000 a year) also pay FICA on the same percentage of their income. Problem solved. I didn’t even need to convene a super committee to figure it out.
OK, I know that’s not all they’re doing. How about putting the tax rates back to where they were when Richard Nixon was president…. OK, I’ll take the 50% rate the top earners paid under Reagan. When business owners are taxes at that rate, they tend to put more money back into their businesses (instead of hiding it in an offshore account or socking it away in some other manner). By being forced to reinvest in their companies, they might actually HIRE some new employees, putting people like me back to work… That’s how you get more of us paying our fair share of taxes (and the wealthy who get even richer by sitting on their asses and collecting capital gains have to pay the same rate on that money) … VIOLA! Deficit goes down.
Unfortunately, we get members of the 1% telling us that to bring down the deficit, we have to cut Social Security (which doesn’t add a dime to the deficit) and the rest of the social safety net (Medicare, Medicaid). They live in opposite world.
This morning, I spoke with Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works about what the committee has proposed so far, and what we can do to stop them (hint: call your congressperson and Senators daily and sound off about it!).
Being Monday, I spent most of the second hour of the show with the afore-mentioned Nicole Belle of Crooks and Liars, commenting on some segments from the Sunday talking head shows in a segment we call “Fools on the Hill”. Here’s what Nicole brings us today:
There is nowhere where the disconnect between the 99% of Americans and the 1% ruling elite is more manifest than on the Sunday shows. Outside the cozy confines of Beltway studios, the 99% are hurting, with high unemployment, record foreclosures, mortgages underwater, crippling debt and yet none of this penetrates that Beltway bubble. Instead, they happily debate their wedge issues, or the bewildering number of flat tax plans—something guaranteed to worsen the situation for 99%ers—instead of anything that helps Americans feel invested in the political process.
Tom Brokaw is a perfect example of the Beltway media insulation. He calls an AARP ad urging politicians to keep their hands off Medicare and Social Security “selfish”. Methinks Tom does not understand the concept of shared sacrifice as well as he thinks he does.
Speaking of unclear on the concept, Michele Bachmann told Christiane Amanpour that her flat tax plan would have “several rates.”
And as another example, Bob Schieffer spent time with Herman Cain, asking him about the infamous Mark Block “smoking man” ad, and whether it was responsible to glamorize smoking, something that Schieffer had a personal issue with, having survived cancer. Not that the ad in great taste, but if I got the chance to interview Cain, I’d probably ask whether it was responsible to hire someone as his campaign manager someone who had been banned for three years from running campaigns due to campaign irregularities. However, it looks like Cain has his own campaign issues with which he’ll need to deal very soon.
Cain was also asked to clarify his accusation that Planned Parenthood was carrying out a planned genocide of African American babies. Not surprisingly, he stood by those words, citing PP founder Margaret Sanger’s words advocating decreasing the number of poor black children. But facts are troubling things, since Sanger was advocating community involvement in encouraging the use of birth control
Anti-abortion activists often misquote Sanger as saying, “
But in full context, the quote has the opposite meaning. In a 1939 letter to pro-birth control advocate Clarence J. Gamble, Sanger argued that black leaders should be involved in the effort to deliver birth control to the black community.
“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs,” she wrote (PDF).
Roger Simon was asked about Rick Perry’s ridiculous embrace of birtherism, which in an honest society, should have laughed him out of contention completely. But the media isn’t ready to give up on Perry yet, even if polls show that Americans have given up on him. But the Politico’s Chief Political Columnist thinks a little bit of racism helps in the GOP primary.
And finally, Pat Buchanan, who deserves no platform—either on MSNBC or here on PBS’s The McLaughlin Group—warned the president off supporting the OWS protests because we know those dirty hippies are going to start fighting with the cops. Hate to break it to Hitler’s apologist, but it looks like the other way around.
And just because he might surge again in the polls (God help us all), here’s Rick Perry speaking at some mega-church this weekend: