CHICAGO, IL – As the Chicago Police Department closed in on those who had barricaded themselves inside Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic last Thursday, I realized this was a terrible time for me to be going away from Internet access for the next 48 hours.

If you aren’t up to speed, here’s the situation.  Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s budget, 6 of the 12 public mental health clinics in Chicago are scheduled to be shut down.  Adding insult to injury is the fact that the clinics slated for closure are uniformly located within the poorest, hardest-hit neighborhoods of the city.

In other words, those who need it most will no longer have access to mental health services.

The Mental Health Movement associated with STOP Chicago has been working for the past 4 years to protect mental health clinics from closures and privatization.  When Emanuel’s budget was about to pass, they staged a 10-hour sit in outside the mayor’s office that Occupy Chicago joined in solidarity.  With the Woodlawn Clinic set to close on April 30th, however, it was time for drastic action.

Last Thursday night, doctors, patients, activists and Occupiers barricaded themselves inside the clinic while others supported the occupation from outside.  Shortly after midnight, CPD cut their way into the building with chainsaws, arresting 23 people.

When I returned to the land of Internet connections on Saturday, it was to the welcome news that the clinic had been re-occupied with a small tent city established on an empty lot across the street.  Eviction seemed imminent but they held through that night and the next, despite severe wind and thunderstorms.

After work on Sunday I was able to join the occupation for several hours in the afternoon and evening.  Before heading out, I blindly tweeted an offer to drive any interested northsiders down to participate in the occupation.  I got one reply, a political science and sociology student from Northwestern University named Isa–formerly a stranger, now a friend and first-time Occupier.  People at the encampment also tweeted me with supplies needed, which I was able to deliver.  And, naturally, I brought homemade cookies–because it’s not a revolution until somebody bakes cookies.

If I didn’t know better, my first impression would not have been that this was the site of an embattled protest.  As we approached the camp we saw people sitting together–talking, laughing, and sharing a bite to eat.  A long table was overflowing with food donated throughout the day and a makeshift grill gave off the scent of fresh barbecue.  Music played, people danced.  It had all the makings of a great block party–plus, of course, some large protest banners and a few police vehicles idling nearby.

I introduced myself by my Twitter handle and joined the group in discussions of philosophy, recaps of the arrests, and just plain socializing.  One Occupier said (and I’m afraid my memory is not good enough for this to be an exact quote): “I don’t care if they arrest me.  My friends will bring me books to read, and when I come out I’ll have even more knowledge and power.”  It began to rain; everyone rushed to cover the food table with tarps.

The cafe on the corner has been more than kind about letting us use wall sockets and bathroom facilities during business hours.  A small group of us were recharging ourselves and our various electronic devices when I noticed an Occupier, one of the 23 arrestees, talking to a Chicago police officer.  It’s a conversation I wish could be duplicated with every police officer in the city.  She explained why we were out there protesting and how the closure of public mental health clinics would affect him directly, as he would be encountering untreated mental health patients out in the streets.  He listened attentively and seemed to understand what was at stake–but told her the order to arrest came from above.

This occupation is the work of the Mental Health Movement and STOP Chicago–we at Occupy Chicago are joining in solidarity.  As such, the core Occupy Chicago members whom I’ve gotten to know over the past several months were interspersed with other activists and those whom use the clinic and know firsthand how devastating it will be to lose it.  It was humbling and inspiring to be amongst both those who have worked so hard to keep the clinics open and those who will be directly affected by the loss of this community resource.

The evening concluded with a meeting to discuss next steps and possible uses of the occupied space.  We haven’t held a space for over 24 hours in Chicago until now, and the possibilities are exciting.  It’s in a community where we haven’t held any actions or done much outreach, but now we’re out in the open, talking to the neighbors and spreading the word.  All of that gives me a great deal of hope that we can change hearts and minds by reaching out to those who need our help the most.

Update: As I was writing the final paragraph about being hopeful for the future of this occupied space, the encampment was surrounded by squad cars and threatened with mass arrest.  After dismantling the tents, the police left without making any arrests. Many stayed overnight anyway, sleeping in cars or staying on the sidewalk.

UPDATE (April 17th 5:35pm): Woodlawn was briefly re-occupied this afternoon just after 2pm.  CPD moved in almost immediately, demolishing tents and destroying personal property. Two Occupy Chicago participants standing on public sidewalks were arrested, including press liaison Rachael Perrota.

-Rachel Allshiny-

The story was originally published at The Daily Kos.

When cars and trucks pass underneath our glowing signs, the drivers and passengers retain a memory of the message, distributing it to both nearby and far-flung locations. We hold the letters one-side-by-each, short-form messages of protest against long-form extremism, semaphores of solidarity picked up and swept across social media. This is the OLB, “coming soon to an overpass near you,” a group dedicated to tactics of visibility and voice, the importance of physical witness, community coherence and the power of purposeful play.

Last evening even the 80% prediction of rain broke in our favor. The 20% chance of no-rain won the early evening. It was odd being out and not feeling bone-cold. We had scoped out a pedestrian overpass we had never occupied before, a long arcing structure built over an extremely wide section of Milwaukee’s I-43, a bridge from East to West within an African American neighborhood of Milwaukee. These often overlooked structures are like fords in roaring rivers, stitching two banks of bisected communities back together.

More than twenty people showed up, so we were able to bring out multiple messages. “WALKER LIES” was newly possible because of the addition of a nice “S” to our lexicon, and as more people arrived we later spelled out “WALKER IS JOHN DOE,” referring to the ongoing investigation into campaign corruption that has enmeshed Walker and his closest Milwaukee County cronies. It is good to keep this reminder floating over the freeways. Our hope is that people either say “Oh, yeah… that issue is still out there!” or “Can you tell me what that whole JOHN DOE thing is all about?” Our first message of the night was pretty self-evident if you are paying attention. His lips move: he’s usually lying.

In order to get the beautiful photographs, I need to get down to highway level with my camera on tripod. The big gap in the fencing made this easy, and two of us were down taking pictures when the police came. Ugh-oh. Two squad cars pulled over, disco balls blazing and two Milwaukee County Sheriffs climbed the embankment towards us. They were fairly surly. I stood patiently waiting, taking pictures while I could, wondering what was coming next. I heard the lead cop in his walkie-talkie, “kkkssssshhh, yeah, we’ve got a bunch of protestors at the bridge…..  kkksssshhh…Trespassing on right of way….   kkkssshhhhh…. Complaints called in….” Complaints, I now understand, are called in whenever we come out. The frequency of police presence is dramatically rising in proportion to the increase in our national visibility.

They ran our licenses, told us to get off the easement. They reaffirmed our right to be on the overpasses, however, which was reassuring after our Portage incident.  ”You can be up there as long as you don’t affix those signs!” the Sheriff curtly stated. “Which is why,” I pointed out, “we have all those people up there, each holding a sign…”

I do understand the logic of our embankment banishment, even though we were way up on the side, quite far from the freeway. The problem is in getting the pictures. You’ve got to get close to get the shots. I ask myself, “What would Werner Herzog do?” and begin to think of ninja gear, camo-paint and invisibility cloaks. Proceed and be bold…

When the Milwaukee Police came last Wednesday out near State Fair Park on I-43, the first squad car parked and just watched. It was a little disconcerting. We were coming off the bridge to end our action, and figured it would be fun to line up the signs against the fence right in front of the squad, in order to make a unique display for the officer. Once thusly arrayed, I went up to the cruiser. The officer rolled down her window, and I said to her, “I’m sorry, are we causing a problem for you?” (which I think is more effective than “Are we doing anything wrong?”). We both laughed because I caught her with her cell phone out, taking pictures of the signs. She was going to post them on Facebook. She couldn’t share her political feelings with me, but she was really nice and really friendly.

A few minutes later when the paddy-wagon came ready to check us out or roll us in, she was already on our side. The officers talked among themselves for a while, looked at our signs, looked at our motley crew of kids and elders and everyone in between, all down-home Wisconsinites. After a while they said goodnight and left. It was all pretty gentle, yet their presence was, of course, a large part of the communication.

Last night, our encounter with the law was a lot less friendly. Everything was fine, but it was pretty terse and tense. OLB gently yet insistently pushes at the constraints around public assembly and peaceful protest. We are not there to argue with cops. We are there simply to be there, and to be visible.

The message seems to be getting out. After being featured in the Sunday NYTs two weeks ago, our Facebook “reach” shot to 69,503 people, far-flung across 20 different countries. (Please “Like” our page here.) Care2 did a nice article about us this morning. We’re talking with a number of other protest groups around the country about possible splinter-group collaborations, and we are booked to appear throughout the state at events and overpasses. A lot is happening, and we try to balance it with other pressing duties of job and family.

Yesterday, at an academic conference at UW Milwaukee about the Occupy Movement, a student asked one of the panelists, “What does success look like to you?” The panelist, a brilliant radical Marxist (the kind of guy the rightwing is really talking about when they say the word “socialist professor”) got kind of esoteric and deconstructed the framing of the question and its blunt lack of nuance. I like direct questions, so as a moderator, I jumped in. “This movement succeeds or fails,” I said, “on whether it opens up new networks that bridge partitioned and multiple communities, including my own and your own. Success, for me, is about the opening of these new social spaces. The great thing about this model is how straightforward it is. It is all about process. All you have to do is go out and engage. By engaging, bridges will be built. It is that easy…”

It is that easy. Build bridges with diverse communities. Take the overpass as metaphor and arc yourself across bisecting structures. We can do this. It will take time, but through action and creativity and play we can model the same new and old solutions that are always within reach.

Overpass Light Brigade in Tosa from Noise of Rain on Vimeo.-Noise of Rain-

OCT. 16, 2011 – I arrived in New York City Wednesday morning on a one-way ticket from Chicago. My goal: to join the Occupy Wall Street movement. I came prepared to camp out in the occupied space, Zuccotti Park, also known as Liberty Plaza. I knew it was going to be cold and rainy for at least the first few days I was there. I knew that this would make camping out all the more difficult. And I knew that this would be a fitting and ironic baptism by “fire.”

With the help of fellow protesters, I set up my sleeping area that morning near the perimeter of the park. They provided me with two plastic tarps and recommended I take some cardboard for “cushion.” So I laid down the first tarp, placed a broken-down cardboard box on top of it, laid my sleeping bag on top of that, and then spread the second tarp over the top. At first, I just tucked the ends under the bottom tarp, like a bed sheet, but I realized that this was probably not going to be an effective water barrier from the rain. So I found someone with packing tape and they helped me tape the two tarps together, encompassing my sleeping bag in a waterproof pocket.

Or so I thought.

After a wonderful day of talking to a number of amazing individuals and the two-hour General Assembly in the evening, I was pretty well exhausted by 10pm (especially considering that I had not slept at all the night before). With a full heart, I climbed into my sleeping cell. The ground was hard and I didn’t have much room to move around, but it was surprisingly warm in my little cocoon. I was also embraced by a comforting sense of safety and solidarity with the people around me. In my area, some were already fast asleep, while others chatted from their sleeping bags. In other parts of the park, there were soap-box discussions, committee meetings, a small drum circle, and other activities interspersed between tarp-covered bodies. This calm murmur of human activity was like a spontaneous community lullaby. The intermittent drizzle of raindrops against my tarp was the crisp harmony complementing a soothing melody.

Soon, the rain began to pick up speed and force. I felt myself become the drum against which nature hammered out her emphatic crescendo. A peaceful energy surged through my body. I felt at one with the world. I felt grounded, solid and true. It really would have been the perfect lullaby, if only the tarps had held out. But once my toes sensed frigid rainwater seeping into my sleeping bag, I knew it was over. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep in the park that night. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep at all.

So I spent the rest of the night wandering around the financial district of New York City, umbrella in hand, pausing beneath awnings every so often. I sat in a late-night Mc Donald’s for an hour or so until it closed, then rode the subway around until it opened up again just before sunrise. It struck me that this night of sleepless transience, a temporary and chosen experience for me, was, quite disturbingly, a persistent, involuntary reality for the homeless citizens of this planet. This realization was jolting. This realization was more chilling than the rain. This realization was a humbling welcome to the long, hard fight I came here to join.

Stavroula Harissis

This story was originally published at The Portland Occupier

The following is an open farewell letter to my local Occupy movement.

An open letter to Occupy Medford:

Before Occupy, I spent countless hours dreaming of being involved in helping to change our country. At times I thought in extremist absolutes about how to make that happen. At other times, my trains of thought were more humble. But in the end, these revolutionary theories were just words and I was coming to realize that unless I did something, anything, that my words were worthless. So I started to look for something locally that I could volunteer for and support. And that’s when Occupy happened.

I initially saw Occupy very differently. Another protest, another cause… another group of well intended people holding cardboard signs at people on their way to work. Of course, I was wrong. Whether it was the tactical beauty of a 24/7 protest or just an energy that had been building in people over the last few years, Occupy spread like fire from New York across the country. Within two months protests and encampments could be found all around the world.

From afar I watched and read news coverage of hundreds of protests, all crying out for change. Up close I participated in local protests, marches, the port shutdown, etc., and knew these events were replaying themselves all over the country. In the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, with thousands participating and millions sympathizing, I thought our country was in for a drastic and sudden paradigm shift.

As Occupy Medford started, either by luck or ability or both, I found myself becoming a facilitator and an organizer. Suddenly I was running meetings, planning and attending protests, writing press releases, and giving interviews. Simultaneously I had just started a new full time job and was finishing my associates degree. Needless to say, it was a hectic first few months. Of course, I didn’t do any of it by myself. But despite the time crunch and not always knowing what to do or what to say, I loved every minute of it.

But it has barely been six months and Occupy has slowed down. It’s impossible to say exactly why Occupy hasn’t been able to maintain its momentum. I think there were a few factors involved. Occupy lost almost all of its permanent encampments, decreasing visibility and synergy between protesters. Organization and rules for a direct democracy movement became a tiring process for a lot of people. After all, we aren’t used to all having a say and a voice; usually we have the “luxury” of leaving that up to someone else. And there was always the question of goals. Of course the corporate owned media was wrong on this and always detrimental as a whole to the movement. Occupy always did have clearly-stated goals. We just had a lot of them, and it was hard to narrow them down enough to bring focus. But regardless of what happened, it’s very clear that Occupy looks a lot different today than it did just a few short months ago.

As I’m getting ready to move, and having scaled back on my involvement in our local Occupy movement, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on Occupy. What have we accomplished and where does it go from here? And in between old feelings of overwhelming optimism and now some lingering pessimism, I’ve reached a personally satisfying answer for now: Occupy has and will continue to change the world.

To have a meaningful revolution, we need a society that is educated and self-aware and treats its citizens with respect and compassion. Without this kind of revolution, all we are doing is temporarily changing the power structure. I think that working toward fundamental change is exactly what Occupy has helped do. Thousands of older generation activists have been able to get new energy and momentum; thousands of young people have been changed in some way by this movement. By becoming more involved in both Occupy and the dozens of other work groups, campaigns, and social causes affiliated with it, Occupiers are helping to change the world. In this light, Occupy has already won.

Occupy Medford and the people in it have definitely changed me and have given me the direction and the voice I was looking for. It showed me that my generation is capable of mobilizing, of giving of ourselves and recognizing that we can change things, even if only a little bit. As a whole, and as individuals, if we can continue to do that, by occupying, by protesting, by organizing, or by volunteering: then we will change the world.

Thank you Occupy Medford…

Much love,

-Benjamin Playfair-

Editor’s Note: Since being evicted (and re-evicted) from Liberty Plaza, Occupiers in New York started a new encampment in Union Square where they faced nightly closures of the park by police. In response, occupiers have developed a new tactic: sleeping on sidewalks. Some have chosen to sleep in front of banks, others on Wall Street itself. This comes from a twelve-year-old court case called Metropolitan Council Inc. v. Safir which states that sleeping on sidewalks as a form of political protest is protected first-amendment speech. This page will serve as a place for first-person stories from occupy’s newest front-line – the sidewalk.

Last Sunday I spent the night livestreaming occupiers sleeping next to the banks by Union Square. The core homeless population of occupiers had been taking quite the beating from the NYPD since M17. At Union there were random arrests throughout the day, for sleeping, for holding banners, etc. At night the police tracked them and did everything in their power to prevent people from sleeping, leaving them tried and on-edge. People need to sleep! So on Sunday we tried a new tactic for the second time, sleeping in front of banks. Dear Officer Lambardo, a white shirt, tried everything he could think of: picking off people, calling in the community cops to ask if we wanted to go to shelters (a pre-arrest move which didn’t work because we made it known that we were sleeping on the streets for political reasons), Lambardo even detailed cops to each bank with orders to keep their lights on – quite annoying. I followed dear Lambardo (at a distance) live streaming him on his Blackberry for hours during the cold night, no arrests occurred. The next day people returned to Wall Street. Finally a place to sleep, at least for now. On Wednesday I slept on Wall Street, it was great.  There was real community, not so many cops, right across from the stock exchange, a priceless view. In the morning, some great outreach. There’s plenty of room, suggest more come down, just be sure to get up before they wash the sidewalk and bring extra food, pizza is always good. -Anonymous-

Editor’s Note: A version of this story originally appeared at the Portland Occupier.

Seeking love and affection any way I could, I found myself pregnant at 15. Knowing I did not have the parenting skills necessary to raise a child, I gave her up for adoption. Then I went on a drive to prove to the world that I was a good human being. With no help from my family, I got myself through college, and, eventually, with the help of my husband, graduated with an MBA. My goal: to be vice president of a Fortune 500 company. Why? This was the ultimate measure of success for a woman in this country. I worked hard, stuffed my feelings far down into my soul, and started climbing the corporate ladder.

As I climbed, I noticed that the difference in pay between myself and the people reporting to me got bigger and bigger. This made no sense to me. These people were working just as hard as me, and had specialized skills I didn’t have. I couldn’t even DO some of their jobs! At one point I asked the human resources people if I could give some of my pay to my team. That suggestion was met with disbelief, and the response was that the HR department was working to increase the disparity, in order to provide people a greater incentive for for working their way up. I kept silent.

Eventually I reached the point where the VPs started inviting me to their homes on the weekends. I knew what that meant. They were seeing if I would fit into the tight social circle which exists at that level. I talked antiques and gardening with the wives, and golfing and global economics with their corporate husbands. I listened to them discuss their homes in Florida, their fishing and golfing trips, their travels to Europe and the Caribbean.

It became clear to me that they only socialized with others at their level within the corporation – tightly held in their carefully constructed bubble of safety and ignorance. I realized that if I actually reached my long-held and hard-fought goal, these people would be “my friends”, my social circle. It sickened me. I realized that if I actually reached my goal, I would be desperately unhappy, and would have to muzzle my voice and my life 24/7. I saw that the huge salaries were part of an ego game, to which everything was sacrificed. Nothing else mattered. I toyed with the idea of going along with the game, and changing the corporation from within. But I would have been alone in my efforts, and it would have been overwhelming.

So I quit. I quit the company, and ended up quitting my 20-year marriage and my country, and I moved to New Zealand to start a new life. I became an independent business consultant and focused on helping New Zealand entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed. Then 5 years ago, I moved into the gift economy – giving my time and skills to individuals and small nonprofits around the world who were dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor. I had no home, no car, and no worries. A year spent volunteering for people with disabilities in Kashmir, the most militarized place on earth, was the beginning of my activism.

Then, while volunteering for the Catholic Worker movement here in the US, Occupy was born. Now here was a cause that could handle everything I had to offer, and more. I had a plane ticket to take me back to Geneva in March 2012. I cancelled it. There is nowhere else on earth I can do the most good to help the world than right here in the U.S., in the heart of the beast. But this time I am not alone. I am surrounded with like-hearted people. Together, we will create the world we dream of. A world of acceptance, shared values, integrity, transparency, meaning, affection, love, and community. Everything I sought after since childhood is wrapped up in this package called Occupy.

-Diane Emerson-

Editor’s Note: May Day is approaching quickly with just over two weeks left, injecting new enthusiasm throughout the movement. As we find new strategies to voice our concerns to the public, we revisit an old one: here, we present again occupier Bill Allyn’s use of creativity to extend his message over the Internet and ultimately the mainstream media.

This is the story of how, for 3 minutes, I occupied the mainstream media (well, sort of). First, I wrote a poem, and put out a graphic version on Facebook (it was Sept 28th, 2011—11 days after OWS began.)

By the time I woke up the next morning (ok, afternoon…), someone had done a spoken-word version on Youtube, which already had about 700 views. That version now has over 43,000 views, and there are scads of copycats and different versions, including Greek and Portuguese subtitled versions.

Then I turned it into a song in my little home “studio.” I had written the song at the same time in late September, but for some reason didn’t release it on Youtube until February 13th, 2012. Here is the song & video.

Within 12 hours of posting this song/video to Youtube, Iran’s Press TV contacted me for an interview (about 3 minutes), which was broadcast globally.

I don’t know if it’s inspiring to anyone else, but it is certainly inspiring to me to know that I can write a poem/song in order to make my voice more heard, and it actually worked, and got me (a nobody, trust me), on world news… It really can work! It did for me. I got good exposure for the Occupy Movement, and 3 minutes of my “15-minutes-of-fame”, so now I’m only owed 12 more minutes. 

-Bill Allyn-

This story was originally published in The Occupied Chicago Tribune

On Saturday, April 7, Occupy Chicago began their Chicago Spring: the name of not just a day of citywide action, but everything planned for the next two months including protests at the NATO summit in May. The day itself was given the hashtag #TakeTheSpring on Twitter, a reference to the movement’s two attempts to #TakeTheHorse (i.e. camp out at Michigan and Congress), which led to 300 arrests and much debate about strategy and tactics. By the end of Saturday, there had been no camping, no arrests and little debate about one thing: With a conservative estimate of over 1,000 people participating, the first day of the Chicago Spring was an unqualified success.

The Occupy Chicago Press Committee’s Rachael Perrota had assured me beforehand: “Saturday is already a success. The diverse communities and groups participating, and the internal organizing structure that grew around A7, will be with us, and strengthened by this day of action, long after NATO has come and gone.” But of course, I had to see for myself.

A Necessary Win

Frankly, it felt to this observer (and to other people there with whom I spoke) as if Occupy Chicago was in need of a clear win.

The movement had been thrown too many curveballs recently: The G8 relocation was a victory itself, but one that required plans to change and made some people wonder if the NATO summit protests will still be such a big deal. Plans for May were also complicated by the unsolicited assistance (or, depending on your point of view, attempt to hijack the Occupy Chicago name) by the magazine Adbusters. Even the unseasonably warm weather of the last few months seemed to throw the movement off balance: The indoor space at 500 W. Cermak, full of potential but also expensive and high-maintenance, was secured for a Chicago winter that never came.

There had been too many marches and rallies where the numbers seemed too low for a city Chicago’s size, too many understaffed committees, too many burnt-out and exhausted individuals. And too many internal debates: about Adbusters, about privacy, transparency and live-streaming, about the Occupy Festival, about the merits of the indoor space versus outdoor occupation. Some of them may have been necessary, but none of them were easy and many of them felt interminable.

Good Omens at the Eagle

The first indication that the day would be a success began, for me, in Logan Square, where Occupy the Northwest Side held an “Occupy the Eagle” action in front of the monument of that name. Local residents brought and accepted donations at a Give/Receive Circle, speeches included an impassioned and affecting call for solidarity from a representative of the Chicago Teachers Union, a mock auction sold off “the historic symbols of Logan Square and the Chicago Northwest side” to the highest bidders, and volunteers from a crowd of 50-60 people joined in an eviction blockade rehearsal/training.

Editor’s note: Last fall, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, a group of concerned citizens in a rural town in Eastern Oregon began to organize to show their solidarity. The community sent us this inspiring video last month. Below, Occupy Halfway shares their plans for continuing their movement this spring.

HALFWAY, OR–We slowed down a bit in winter to retrench and discuss what we really felt was important to this community. We live in a mostly conservative ranching town. We wanted to find issues and a focus which would likely bring the people in town together. After a great deal of thoughtful conversation and research we have decided to focus our efforts on http://www.movetoamend.org and resolutionsweek.org. Both are addressing the SCOTUS decision that allowed corporations to flood our political system with un-transparent, unlimited money.

We’ve created a flier covering Citizen’s United, SuperPACs and the problem with corporate personhood. We plan on tabling and running discussions during the spring in hopes of creating common ground and building trust across the red/blue chasm. When we talk to people it’s not hard to find agreement about corporatism and crony capitalism. This is very important to us as we are a community that relies on each other. These bonds are important to us. How we get along is more important to many than politics. So we’ll be tabling and talking and hoping to translate occupy to folks here.

There are occupy groups popping up throughout Eastern Oregon. Many are discussing whether or not to call themselves occupy at all, as the imagery that most people see out here is very unflattering. It’s rather hard to compete with what people are exposed to—which is obviously a very distorted picture coming from the mainstream media. Hopefully, we can help show the diversity of the movement. It is important that people understand how wide and deep it is. I hope that people in occupy keep talking across those lines that divide with respect at the center of all we do.

We also have a community member who has arrived fresh from the fight in Wisconsin—so he is very fired up!

Most people in the group are over 50—so we are not going to be camping out. Old bones don’t like that. But we will be doing what we can!

Onward!

-Liz McLellan-

TUSCON, AZ – Six months of my participation on the front-line of the Occupy movement have come and gone, and my disdain for Tucson’s police force and cops in general has evolved to outright disgust. In this movie-like past six months I have been arrested forty times and so far twenty of those cases have been dismissed. That is the good news, the bad news is the local police force has escalated from strictly …enforcing the law, to outright breaking the law in order to quash the Occupy Movement. The fight over the use of public land for the sake of free speech and peaceable assembly has gone back and forth so far, but most recently there is no place in the City of Tucson that can be occupied twenty four hours a day, even for the purpose of peaceable assembly.

Currently the debacle that has peaceful protesters banging their heads against the
wall in Tucson is the Tucson Polices denial of Tucson City Code 11-36.2(b)4. It
reads;

Section 11-36.2. Prohibited conduct; exceptions.

(a) No person shall sit or lie down upon a public sidewalk or upon a blanket, chair,
stool, or any other object placed upon a public sidewalk or median during the hours
between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. in the following zones:

Except a person:

(4) Who is exercising First Amendment rights protected by the United States
Constitution, including free exercise of religion, speech and assembly; provided,
however, that the person sitting or lying on the public sidewalk remains at least
eight (8) feet from any doorway or business entrance, leaves open a five (5) foot
path and does not otherwise block or impede pedestrian traffic.

In the past two months the Tucson Police Department has completely ignored this code
and used Tucson City Code 16-35 (No person shall obstruct any public sidewalk,
street or alley in the city by placing, maintaining or allowing to remain thereon
any item or thing that prevents full, free and unobstructed public use in any
manner, except as otherwise specifically permitted by law.) to arrest and remove
people from the sidewalk.

Being a person that has had my first and fourteenth amendment rights violated by the
actions of the Tucson Police Department obviously I hold a bias, but even the most
cop friendly people can see the obvious violation of our Federal, State, and Local
laws. This will seem even more obvious when I have the other twenty criminal
violations I hold dismissed, but that will not regain our rights.

I will continue to occupy the front-line putting my mental, emotional, and physical
safety at risk to expose the injustices in our city, state, and country. It will be
an uphill battle and I may not accomplish a thing. But, it feels great to have a
purpose, and if I do not do something now than when should I?

-Jon McLane-