10/17/2011:  Police Interference with Occupation, Appeal to Mayor and City Council.

The Raleigh Police Department has NOT (yet) asked protestors to leave. However, over the last few days, *some* of the officers have:

1. told some people (even disabled) that they cannot sit down (other times people are allowed to sit)
2. said they consider us being there "unlawful" and are only "tolerating" it for the time being,
3. told people they cannot place their signs between the bars of the barricades (since they are city property and signs cannot be placed on city property) and,
4. told people today at 4pm today to remove all of their supplies and refreshments, even though those items were not blocking the sidewalk. (We have offered these refreshments to the police on multiple occasions and they've refused.)

The increasing interference is what we're protesting against by calling and emailing the city officials. It seems they are putting pressure on our group to disband.

We are asking people to start contacting the city manager, mayor and city council members to protest the increasing police interference with the protestors. We believe, if things continue as they are, that it is only a matter of time before the protestors are asked to leave - or until the circumstances become such that it is hard for the protesters to stay.

At the advice of the Legal Committee we will try to address the City Council at their scheduled meeting at 1:00 PM tomorrow. We can't officially request to be on the agenda because you need to make that request a week in advance. We did, however, ask them to hear us (or at least one person) anyway given the immediacy of the need to discuss the continuation of the Occupation with them.

We were expecting to hear back from the Department of Administration today on negotiations for us to continue the occupation. We were told we'd have a response by 3 PM today. We ended the day with no new news. It seems like we should give them until tomorrow afternoon, and then if there is still no response, we might want to put out the call for people to call that office, too, to apply citizen pressure. 

NEWS RELEASE, 10/16/2011: Arrest of Peaceful Protestors Exercising First Amendment Rights

With the arrests of peaceful Occupy Raleigh protestors over the weekend (see the Blog for a detailed account of recent events), we want to reiterate that we are fighting to represent the rights and interests of the 99% of Americans without millions of dollars to spend on political influence. Corporations have the Supreme Court's approval to use money as free speech; the only way that the People can make our voices powerful is through civil disobedience - and by even risking arrest to defend our rights.

We firmly believe that our actions are justified. The power of the State is vested in the People. The State Capitol is the People's grounds. We elected the Governor who presides over it. The Constitution requires no "permit" to exercise free speech or to peacefully assemble. We as Americans needn't receive "approval" to demand redress of grievances. In keeping with this idea, The Nation published a column on Oct. 16 entitled "The First Amendment is our Permit." However, our First Amendment rights are endangered if no one will stand up for them. Nineteen of our group stood up for these rights on Saturday and were subject to arrest for doing so.

The day after the arrests (10/16) the general counsel of the Department of Administration spoke with an Occupy Raleigh organizer and an attorney who has been working with the movement. Although we were disappointed that the DOA did not reach out to the group last week to negotiate a mutually acceptable resolution to assemble at the State Capitol beyond the allotted four hours, we are nevertheless very pleased that the DOA has made this gesture. We look forward to hearing any good-faith proposal that allows us to exercise our First Amendment rights to call attention to the economic injustice in our country.

We are continuing forward with an ongoing occupation of the Capitol square sidewalk in this interim period. Representatives of the group are staying throughout the night, every night, to sustain the occupation. We’ll need reinforcements, so please come down and help support this cause, 24/7, for however many hours you can.

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ABOUT OCCUPY RALEIGH

We are a group of concerned citizens who wish to raise awareness and demonstrate before the Capitol in support of economic justice and against corporate influence over our elections and political process. Our purpose is to engage the public in this dialogue and make the voices of the people heard. We want local and national legislators to hear our concerns about ways to remedy economic injustice and the unfair influence the wealthy have over the political system.

We are a peaceful, non-violent resistance movement that aims to encourage people to participate in democracy and use their voices to influence positive change.

We are not a traditional political party nor are we trying to overthrow government. Rather, we are a populist uprising that seeks to place the political power back in the People’s hands where it belongs. We are willing to extend our protest indefinitely to effect change.

Find out more about this movement at www.occupywallst.org and www.occupytogether.org.

Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Explore our wiki: http://wiki.occupyraleigh.net

http://www.occupyraleigh.org/