Protesters being arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge (
@DarylLang/Twitpic)
Yesterday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
signaled that he does not consider the ongoing occupation of Zuccotti Park to be constitutional:
“The Constitution doesn’t protect tents,” he said at a news conference in Queens. “It protects speech and assembly.” [...]
“We can’t have a place where only one point of view is allowed,” he said. “There are places where I think it’s appropriate to express yourself, and there are other places that are appropriate to set up Tent City. They don’t necessarily have to be one and the same.”
Bloomberg's comments suggest there will be future confrontations between local law enforcement and the occupiers at the main encampment in lower Manhattan.
Expect legal confrontations in the courtroom as well. A substantial number of the demonstrators who have been arrested plan to seek trials, rather than deals or pleas, if charges against them are not dropped:
Lawyers representing about 800 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested in the past month demand that prosecutors drop the charges.
If not, they say they won't deal and will insist on going to trial - putting pressure on the already overloaded Manhattan criminal courts.
"I'd like to suggest to the DA's office the appropriate way to deal with these cases is outright dismissal," said defense lawyer Martin Stolar.
"The leverage is, we take them all to trial."
If this happens, The National Lawyer's Guild will represent the protesters pro bono:
“We are prepared to try every single case,” said Stolar, whose organization has offered to represent the protesters. ‘For any clients who want to take the option of, ‘I’m innocent -- I’m not pleading guilty,’ we’re prepared to provide them with pro bono counsel to exercise their right to go to trial.”
With arrests piling up in numerous cities, legal battles will likely be a feature of the Occupy Wall Street movement indefinitely.