Forum Post: #OWS Defends the Right to Peaceful Assembly - some get arrested - we will win
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 8, 2011, 1:37 a.m. EST by Peterbrauer
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNa8FZnsji0 On Saturday the 5th of November I saw the NYPD suspend the first amendment and arrest peaceful protestors for defending the constitution. These people were wrongfully arrested. Their constitutional rights were violently taken from them. To get this footage I had to risk my own arrest, which is not a safe environment for the press. This is not what freedom looks like. Our government is fighting us, but it cannot stop us if we remain non-violent. Jesse LeGreca really says it all better then I can. Please don't listen to people advocating violence of any kind.
We have our right to peaceably assemble. But that does mean peaceful. When we insist on doing something that breaks another persons rights, its not peaceful assembly anymore. Like for example, if we block a road and it keeps other people from using it. Then that is not peaceful-- we are violating their rights and the police can take back their rights for them. If we take a park and keep the kids from playing in it on the swings, then that is not peaceful ---we are violating their rights and the police can take back their rights that we took. when we blockade a port and close it and keep people from earning their paycheck, we are stealing their rights and the state can come in and take back their rights for them that we took. Peaceably does not mean 'you're not making noise' it means that you do not disrupt the peace and order.
Don't get me wrong, Im all for doing this, Im in a local camp, but don't spout hyperbole and that the state is violating our rights or the police are 'attacking'. they are not. They are taking back the rights for other people that we took with our occupation. Just to be clear. peaceful assembly does not equal forceful occupation. We are forcefully occupying. so far the cities are being really good about working with us so we can get the message out by occupying. But its real fine line we are walking, and when one too many citizens gets pissed they can't use their park that we took, or they can't drive down a road to visit their mom in the hospital, we're going to have to understand that we started this.
Lets be clear, we are breaking the law. Not that we should stop, but we should stop whining about people wont let us break the law. And just do it, just occupy, knowing that we are. Don't rationalize the occupation as lawful. Its not. But we might just might be doing one of the most moral things anyone's done in decades.
I completely disagree with you on just about everything. Where in the constitution does it say you have the right to walk down the side walk, walk through a park, earn a living, or have an easy convient life? The answer is it doesn't. But the first amendment gives us the unfettered right peacefully protest. Many, many laws have been written that are unconstitutional, and breaking those laws is legal. I do not think the police have the right to control our speech and assembly at their discretion. I was at a protest for planned parent hood in Foley square. Hundreds of protestors were allowed to gather, sit, and protest on the same steps of the court that the cops violently arrested Occupiers for trying to walk up. When you accept that the state has the right to decide what you say and how you say it, you abandon the highest law of the land and our strongest tool. The 1st amendment is ours, and we must defend it against all who would limit its scope and strength. Camping in the park might be illegal via state laws, but it is legal based on the Constitution which is above all local laws. Never let your local police force forget it.
What rights were the police taking back when they violently arrested peaceful protestors. Tell me one.
Thanks for getting the footage and getting it out here!
Every time I see these things recently, I keep thinking about how Bank of America expects to just dump the losers from $75 trillion in dicey derivatives onto the American public ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/bofa-said-to-split-regulators-over-moving-merrill-derivatives-to-bank-unit.html ). It may be the outline of the next big bailout, a few trillion dollars further in debt to make up for any $100 billion the Republicans ever hope to save. Every man, woman, and child in New York is being robbed for thousands of dollars, and the police are helpless to do anything. Even the FDIC doesn't have power, it has a "position on the subject". And the police are doing what? Lurking around outside the bank buildings, arresting people for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, or sitting where they should stand, or sleeping where they should sit, or writing in sidewalk chalk, all to protect the robbers from being yelled at by the people robbed.
Can you imagine how humiliating that must be? For people who once dreamed of growing up and catching the crooks and making the city safe, to end up doing busy work to protect the criminals?