Lawsuits over free speech, again and again: Cities that broke up Occupy camps face lawsuits

Posted by: adonis49 on: December 27, 2011

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Lawsuits over free speech: Cities that broke up Occupy camps face lawsuits

For the time being, most major Occupy Wall Street encampments in the U.S. have been dispersed, but regrouping around the corners. City governments are facing a flurry of lawsuits in which protesters are asserting their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and challenging authorities’ use of force to break up tent cities.

In this photo from Nov.18,  Davis Police Lt. John Pike uses pepper spray to move Occupy UC Davis protesters while blocking their exit from the school’s quad in Davis, Calif. (The Enterprise, Wayne Tilcock, File / Associated Press )

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Yvette Felarca is among those suing campus police and administration officials at the University of California, Berkeley, after officers forcefully dispersed a group of Occupy protesters and others rallying for public education last month. Felarca, a middle school teacher and organizer with the civil rights organization “By Any Means Necessary” filed the suit. Felacra said: “I was standing, arms linked with other demonstrators’, before a line of police officers. The police moved in after some tents were set up on a lawn. I was chanting and yelling when a police officer hit me in the throat, in the ribs, abdomen and back with his baton, and I watched others bear repeated blows”.  She resumed: “The brutality was absolutely designed to chill the speech of students in the movement and literally try to beat and terrorize our right to criticize, to think critically and to act on that criticism.” The university has called it “disconcerting” that the suit contains “so many inaccuracies.”

Sobel, of the National Lawyers Guild, is planning a lawsuit in the case of the pepper-spraying by campus police of peaceful protesters at the University of California, Davis, video footage of which went viral.Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the lawsuits an important check on police power. She noted that authorities haven’t been uniformly excessive around the country, but pointed in New York City to mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge — which are under litigation — as well as the pepper-spraying of several women and the dark-of-night breakup of Zuccotti Park.

Donna Lieberman said that her group has been concerned for years about police tactics, but that the response to the Occupy movement shines a light on them in a way that “engages and offends a new sector of the public.” She predicted there will be other lawsuits about excessive force, civil rights violations and mostly likely people’s rights to get back into Zuccotti, which she said police have blocked from public usage with their pens.

Donna  said: “I think what’s been happening with Occupy is so reminiscent of what happened during the Republican National Convention in 2008, as people get together to engage in that most American of pastimes — protest — it almost always generates a defensive and repressive response from law enforcement. Occupy is no exception.”

Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn., said police overreacted to the Occupy movement in some cities, which probably earned protesters some new support. Still, he noted, protesters’ First Amendment rights are not without limitation.  Gene said: “We’ve always had to balance our rights. No one can really claim you have an unfettered unlimited First Amendment rights. The courts are there to say, wait a minute, that goes too far, or that’s OK. It is part of that give and take. Of course we all wish our rights were never intruded upon.”

Note 1: You may read https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/one-sided-non-violent-revolution-even-in-democratic-systems/

Note 2: Article reported by Niedowski from Providence, R.I. Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela in New York contributed.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Tags: adonis49, By Any Means Necessary organization, Donna Lieberman, First Amendment Center in Nashville, Gene Policinski, New York Civil Liberties Union, Niedowski, women, writing, Yvette Felarca