Friday, October 28, 2011
Law and Order Occupy Nashville Evicted from Legislative Plaza
Posted by Jeff Woods on Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:12 AM
State troopers arrested a couple dozen Occupy Nashville protesters before dawn today and hauled them away to jail in buses. They were enforcing a 10 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew imposed at the Capitol complex by the Haslam administration only yesterday afternoon. The protesters were cited for trespassing but Metro night judges are balking at those charges, and the demonstrators are going free this morning.
Comments (13)
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So when they said "we're not gonna enforce it tonight," they really meant "be out tonight because we're going to wake you up with arrests in the morning."
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A disgraceful attack upon the First Aendment, which apparently only works in favor of the teabaggers in Tennessee.
Looks like the protesters can now file suit against the Tennessee Department of Safety for violating their civil rights and issue subpoenas to determine who originally filed the "criminal complaint(s)" with the Tennessee Department of Safety --- that is if the troopers do not fess up first as to who filed the criminal complaint(s) against the protesters peacefully assembled at the Tennessee Legislative Plaza.
I am deeply troubled by this and blame myself for not going out from the very beginning to show my support. I have talked to so many people in Nashville who are strongly behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, and all of us should have been out there. But still probably won't because we're lazy, busy, embarrassed, old, tired, cynical.
But I for one am sick of our corporate overlords. They own the Legislative Plaza and every "lawmaker" in it. The United States, as I think Jeff Woods once wrote, a corporate oligarchy and we are all serfs, expected to feed the beast without complaint. If we complain, we're fired, demoted, ostracized. If we try to protect ourselves from oil spills, foul air, erosion of our standard of living, our freedom of expression, our simple delights in mountains, oceans, blue skies, we're crushed. They just buy the regulators who are supposed to protect us for a few bottles of Jack and a roll in the sheets with a lissome lobbyist.
If you want to know what the goals of Occupy Wall Street are, they are just that...to take back our country from the cabal of the mega-rich and their Wall Street collaborators.
The middle class is disappearing and contrary to what Republicans maintain, the middle class is the job-creating class. We are the ones who buy the things that drive our ephemeral economy now, since we now longer have a manufacturing base. If we just sell each other stuff, we've got to have enough of the pie to buy some damned durable goods, not just Pop Tarts.
This is a slippery concept, and doesn't lend itself to nice chants, like "Hell No, We Won't Go." But it's an outrage that the 1 percent controls so much of the nation's wealth and aren't fucking satisfied even with that.
It is appalling that something like this would happen in a state whose very nickname derives from its willingness to send its young men to fight for the cause of freedom.
This might be helpful:
615-741-2001
Governor Bill Haslam
615-741-2081 OR 615-862-5050
Steve Cates, Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of General Services
615-251-5175
Tennessee Highway Patrol Colonel Tracy Trott
615-251-8587
Tennessee Highway Patrol
615-862-8123
Criminal Justice Center (where protesters were detained)
615-741-3481
Tennessee State Police
615-862-6000
Mayor Karl Dean
Let's light up those switchboards like Christmas trees! You're welcome.
You communists can protest all you want. But you can't live on public property. Go home, take a shower, and come back tomorrow. When the War Memorial starts to smell like bonnaroo people need to go home and clean up.
@vektek:
You are missing the point. The state has declared we CANNOT protest all we want. Free speech apparently is only valid from 9am-4pm.
I intend to mail the governor--or, as I like to call him, Il Duce--a copy of Section 23 of the Tennessee Constitution, because he apparently hasn't read it.
§ 23. Right of assembly; redress of grievances
That the citizens have a right, in a peaceable manner, to assemble together for their common good, to instruct their representatives, and to apply to those invested with the powers of government for redress of grievances, or other proper purposes, by address or remonstrance.
I encourage you to do the same.
How many of you who express so much outrage over the actions of Commissioner Gibbons managed to whisper the slightest criticism of the behavior of the professional protesters who rely on violence as part of their activities at WTO, G-10 and other events?
I am not in favor of removing the protesters either but it is undeniably true that there are ties between the OWS organizers and the people who feel free to employ violence to achieve their ends. While this has been most notable in New York and a few other places, the Governor and Commissioner of Safety have every reason to worry that these violent agitators will show up here to.
When the Tea Partiers marched here in Nashville there was no violence. No attacks on businesses. No public filth. Tea Party members went home after making their point and got involved in politics. The same was true nationally. Nothing like the violence involving the OWS was seen. And Tea Party members didn't steal from each other.
Since all you supporters of the protestors have a non-existent record of standing up against the violent left in other places, excuse me if your denouncement of Tennessee officials for being proactive rings as hollow as knocking on Keith Olbermann's head.
@Stellabardo, Min, et al: You write such grandiose prose and makes it sound like your fellow believers are so noble as to care faithfully and unflinchingly for each other. In reality, though, you're co-conspiritors are mostly a bunch of slobs - as always - with grand ideas but low moral bases which leads to failure of common enterprises unless those enterprises involve civil morass (crapping in the bushes.) As an example of failure there are the hippie communes. All those high-minded people getting together for the common good. Why did they fail? Too many worthless jerks taking advantage of the situation. Legislative plaza is being occupied by those same jerks who believe life would be better if something was taken from somebody else and "redistributed." Obama's has been doing that for three years, now. Is life better? No!
America is the greatest country there's ever been and you want to change the very structure that made it great? Your problems begin with you thinking everybody can have everything. Well, they can't. Nowhere in the world is that possible. Enough people with your mindset can make it possible to reduce the wealth of the rich, but the poor will still be poor and will always be poor.
The one thing on display with the occupiers is their envy and greed for what others have. Instead of figuring out a way to elevate themselves and make their lives better through their own efforts, they scream for "change." They're all, and you are too, greedier than those they're protesting.
