At Occupy Boston, we've taken a proactive approach to the possibility of forcible removal. Our lawyers filed an injunction.
The first hearing was this morning and the judge ruled in our favor, for now.
A Boston judge has ordered the city not to remove protesters or their tents from a downtown encampment without court approval, except in an emergency such as fire, a medical issue or an outbreak of violence.
As the headline states, this is a temporary judgement. There will be a hearing of fuller arguments on December 1. The judge has also order that there be a mediation between the parties between now and then.
What prompted this? Well, the raids on other occupations in the cloak of darkness, of course.
Per the ACLU/NLG press release:
Civil rights attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union went to court today
seeking to protect the rights of free speech, assembly, petition, and association for demonstrators at Occupy Boston in Dewey Square, in light of the heavy-handed police crackdowns in recent days on Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York, Portland, Ore., and Oakland, Calif.
Of course, we could have waited until a raid is underway, like they did in New York. But, as noted by a protester in "Attempting to Avoid Eviction":
“The courts aren’t open at 1 o’clock in the morning, and to the extent that there is now an apparent movement nationally for municipalities to seek to remove the protesters, no one thought it would be a good idea to wait until there’s some confrontation in the middle of the night.”
After seeing rubber bullets, tear gas, sonic weapons, beatings and more at other occupations, we're on edge here in Boston.
Learning that the mayors around the country are likely coordinating their responses, naturally leads us to suspect that Menino is part of the dialogue and will see fit to join the national power structure's plan to undermine public assembly.
You see, what we're learning is that it's not free speech they're afraid of. It's that pesky freedom of assembly. We've come out from behind our computer screens and we're building energy together. Say whatever you want in private, but don't cry out together in public. By doing some very minor civil disobedience - defying municipal ordinances which seek to limit our right to assembly - we have evoked the real nature of our government. If you gather peacefully, you will be treated as terrorists.
Well, perhaps we have them in terror of losing their unbridled power. If so, all the more reason to keep gathering. In more places and in greater numbers.
So, here in Boston, we're doing what we can to establish our rights in court before Menino and Patrick unleash their violent forces upon us again. Today, the judge has given us a little support to work this out. At least we now have two weeks where we do not have to live under the stress of the threat of violent invasion. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the end.
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On a personal note, I had a conversation with someone who works in state government recently. She expressed a lot of fear that if we didn't give up the camps, the government would escalate the violence and people would die. Her anxiety was palpable. I found myself going through a rapid set of emotions: feeling her anxiety, having some of my own, getting angry, then feeling clear and resolved in a way I rarely know. I turned to her and said, "What we're standing up for is profoundly important. If they want to threaten me with death, I'm ready to face that. I won't walk away from this out of fear."
I surprised myself. I knew I was ready for arrest. I hadn't taken myself all the way through this possibility, though. I wonder how many other people have gone through this process in light of all the violence the police around the country have perpetrated against us. I felt no anger when I responded to her. That was gone. I only felt a clear resolve.