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Judge: Police can broom Occupy Boston whenever they like
By adamg on Wed, 12/07/2011 - 3:59pm
Occupy Boston tweets the judge who'd issued a temporary restraining order against any police moves to oust the occupiers from Dewey Square has lifted the ban, ruling the city can now carry out the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy's request to get them off its land. The Globe tweets City Hall says there are no immediate plans for eviction.
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Comments
We should run a lottery to
We should run a lottery to pick the day Mayor Menino finds it 'necessary' to order BPD to evict.
Freezing
Let them stay at least until the weekend when it is suppose to get down to 20 degrees at night.
Menino's Statement
(Repeating what I said in an
(Repeating what I said in an earlier UH story)
A significant portion of the Occupiers are homeless.
That means they have been breaking the law by sleeping outdoors, every night, for months before OccupyBoston began.
And now they break the law by sleeping outdoors at Dewey Square.
If the city doesn't have a safe place for them to sleep, then clearing them out amounts to saying "go break the law where it won't bother people with the mayor's home phone number."
Agree or disagree with Occupier politics, but this camp is a lot safer for those homeless than the back alleys they've been sleeping in beforehand.
And this is a lot more important than how soon the Greenway Conservancy can start reseeding the grass at Dewey Square, especially at a time when the ranks of the homeless are swelling.
Omri
There are plenty of shelters around for the homeless. They know where they are and will often times choose the alleys for one reason or another.
Many of them are huge troublemakers though and are not welcome back because of various problems they have caused at those shelters.
Many of them are huge
Many of them are huge substance abusers or mentally ill though and are not welcome back because of various problems they have caused at those shelters.
Sad, but true.
Actually, OccupyBoston has
Actually, OccupyBoston has been more diligent at policing the troublemakers than many of the shelters. That is what's drawn some of the homeless there. And the shelters do fill to capacity on some nights, driving the homeless out to the outdoors. There WERE plenty of shelters around. But we're in a new Great Depression, and the ranks of the homeless are swelling.
Section 8
This city is overloaded with Section 8 vouchers. Methinks there must be other reasons these people are homeless. The real people who are struggling are the working poor who don't get subsidies.
Uh, because it's a city.
Boston draws in the homeless from all over New England.
Snob zoning?
If you are too poor to have a car and your community has no qualified housing, you go where there is housing - or get put where there is housing.
Are you also aware that it is terribly difficult to rent an apartment in the Boston area for what SS disability pays ($12K a year - I do a relative's taxes).
That maybe be true Omri,
but OccupyBoston also tolerates drug use more than the shelters do. Weed and Alcohol simply aren't allowed in shelters, even though weed and alcohol aren't that bad in the grand scheme of things. When you have to deal with the homless 365 days a year with government money, you simply can't allow certain things.
And no, I have never heard of shelters being 100% full and turning away those that need shelter for the night due to overcapacity. The shelters have a network and always find a place for those who need it. During the winter nights they will even come pick you up if you call 911.
"but OccupyBoston also
"but OccupyBoston also tolerates drug use more than the shelters do. "
That does not jibe with what I've seen at OB every time I went there. Yes, there are homeless there who are clearly mentally ill, but that does not mean they are under the influence.
"And no, I have never heard of shelters being 100% full and turning away those that need shelter for the night due to overcapacity"
Then you need to be brought up to date.
We're in a depression. The homeless ranks are growing.
And OccupyBoston is now an authentic Hooverville.
I'm not talking about the mentally ill
I'm talking about the casual drug use that goes on in OccupyBoston and there is a significant amount. Nothing that should raise serious concerns in my opinion but enough that would not be tolerated in any of Bostons shelters. The serious mentally ill homeless that constitute a significant percentage of the Boston Homeless do not live in the occupy areas.
And no, I don't need to be brought up to date. You might need to find out how the Boston shelter system works. Just because the homless ranks are growing because of a depression doesn't mean the shelters can't find the space to help those who ask for it or need it.
finally
http://youtu.be/GIeWjLC_SB0
Finally what?
What does it matter to you whether the city is allowed to remove them or not?
This is a great question
Unless you're a banker or one of the three people who likes to hang out in that park regularly, why would you be so determined to end this?
Also, an account from the eviction at St. Louis.
http://www.theagitator.com/2011/12/06/how-it-ought...
BPD, don't put us in a New York state of mind.
Space Savers
If it snows on Friday or Saturday, then they have to give them 48 hours to move, right?
Oh, I'm sorry - these aren't space savers taking over public property as privately-controlled space. They are people petitioning for redress of grievances.
http://obrag.org/wp-content/u
http://obrag.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Occupy...
Tents
The first snowstorm, I am saving my parking space with a two-man tent. I heard the City will not move tents from City property.
Well-reasoned
A well-reasoned decision by Judge McIntyre. Let's see if the executive branch can now step in and finish the job.
What's your hurry?
Seriously. That piece of space is still just a highway median. It looks a lot better than the Central Artery it replaced. It's a lot nicer to get across, and that's made the east side of the Greenway much more valuable and vital.
But it's still just a median. There is no pressing reason to send in the gendarmarie.
Tinderbox
From the testimony of the fire marshal et al., the report in the Nation, etc, it seems that it's just a matter of time before something cataclysmic occurs at the camp. The sooner it gets shut down, the better. And yes, that goes for the homeless, too - no one should be living in a fire trap.
Baloney.
The same city that's been complaining about fire safety issues has been diligently confiscating anything the Occupiers brought in to improve those issues. Not that they're anywhere near that bad over there.
It really ought to be beneath our Mayor's dignity to cause a problem and then use it to have his way. But that's what he's done with the safety issues at OccupyBoston.
The first time I walked
The first time I walked through the encampment in November(when it was unseasonably warm), I was struck by how close the tents were to each other and how exposed they were in the open valley that the Rose Kennedy greenway forms.
It took me back to my backpacking days when one learned quickly to set up out of the wind in cold weather. I'm frankly scared to death for the occupiers that one camper will decide to try using a heating device with an open flame in one of those tightly packed nylon tents, covered in blue vinyl tarps.
IMHO, the organizers and the city should have moved the encampment up to the Boston Common where the camp could be set up behind some windbreak and to better spread out the tents. As it presently exists, I fear it's a firetrap.
and
they melt to dealt?
honestly, I'm not seeing the fire hazard angle. Those tents are not very flammable, and if one does catch it's not this raging, Styrofoam fireball. Furthermore, they're all in ground level tents, easy to vacate.
I'd be more worried about someone getting trampled than anything. Fire really is a misplaced worry. There's not much there to fuel a dangerous fire.
Fire and trampling go hand in hand.
I think the fire issue has to do with nighttime sleeping and what happens if there is a small fire and people panic and trample each other.
And are there any mini-propane tanks for heating grills? I had to do 10 annoying hours of community service in college for a roomate who left one in a dorm over winter break that I had no idea about.
Thats fair
But I don't think there's much fuel in the camp itself. Not enough to create a constant fire that would cause a propane canister to go.
As for trampling, they are in a park outdoors. There's actually not that many of them. There's really nothing funneling / penning them in.
If anything, I'd be more worried about trampling deaths when the police cordon them off and move in; leaving them no escape. That sort of procedure almost always results in trampling injuries.
You would hope they give them a fair deadline
and then just start at the edges.
At this point the city would
At this point the city would be doing Occupy Boston a favor by evicting them. They made there point months ago, but since them have been consumed with building a permanent, protest community that has virtually no more influence than apocalyptic, side-walk preachers yelling about the end times.
Once the occupiers were able to receive press coverage, they found that there was considerable support for their main proposition that the present American economic system benefited the upper classes more than the majority of Americans. Once they made that point, there effectiveness ended.
Like the Whose Food folks in JP, Occupy Boston has in effect become a self-important, parody of itself. The important questions that were presented to the public by both groups, become lost in self-important silliness as a protest movement is absorbed into the hard work of trying to run an ad-hoc community. Zeal, drumming and sloganeering is not a substitute for strategy and goal setting.
Talk of living outside in the winter, that the occupation itself is a statement of free speech deflects from the real question, what will be the political legacy of the occupation movement.
Sadly these distractions make it much more likely that the Occupy movement will be nothing more than historical trivia.
Surprisingly readable decision
Although I disagree that "Park regulations" should be able to override core Constitutional rights.
But my favorite part has to be where the judge entered into the court record that Greenway is a "median strip".
That's just it
You can't just say that their consitutional rights are being violated - that's what the judge just decided.
They have every right to protest in Dewey Sq, the issue comes to actually camping there. The Globe had a good discussion about this in the Sunday Globe, talking to various law professors in the area.
I found a link to the article
Link here. Though you may need a Globe subscription - sorry
You can't just say that their
You can't just say that their consitutional rights are being violated - that's what the judge just decided.
Sure you can; not only can opinions differ, but it's also possible for courts to simply be wrong. The entire appeals process is based around the concept of disagreeing with a court's ruling. And even after you exhaust your last appeal, you can still disagree, and the court can still be wrong. Look, for example, at Bowers v. Hardwick, where the Supreme Court said, in 1986, that it was constitutional for a state to criminalize consensual homosexual sex engaged in privately, and Lawrence v. Texas, where the Court not only said that such a law was unconstitutional, but that Bowers had been wrongly decided in the first place. Don't put courts up on a pedestal.
nobody's "putting the court
nobody's "putting the court on a pedestal," they're recognizing what seems very much like a sober decision by the judge. the crux of the matter is that "while Occupy Boston protesters maybe be exercising their expressive rights during their protest, they have no privilege under the First Amendment to sieze and hold the land on which they sit." they never filed for any permits or had support from the greenway conservancy, and effectively had been squatting.
the crux of the matter is
the crux of the matter is that "while Occupy Boston protesters maybe be exercising their expressive rights during their protest, they have no privilege under the First Amendment to sieze and hold the land on which they sit."
In which case the exception to peaceable assembly and free speech would swallow the rule; it's impossible to gather together anywhere to protest without necessarily excluding others from being in the same place to some extent, simply because available space is limited.
A better decision would have been to order Occupy to make reasonable efforts to share the space with "parents with young children, vendors, and wheelchair-bound people" and to render the site safer against fire and to order the city to cooperate with such efforts. (E.g. allowing the installation of wheelchair accessible temporary walkways, fireproofed tents, safe methods of heating, fire extinguishers on site, etc.)
Instead the court suggests that they decamp to a different site on one of the islands in the Harbor, and that this wouldn't be at all inimical to their attempt to get their message out (which the court concedes, there is).
Also, it's sad to see people still relying on O'Brien; it's a pretty lousy case.
tl;dr: The court went too far. It could have (and IMO should have) addressed the city's reasonable concerns without giving the city the right to destroy the camp, arrest the protesters, etc.
Great insight. I agree that
Great insight. I agree that the court could have ordered occupy to address the safety, health and access issues (thereby giving them leverage to do so with the city) for the protection of all and to insure access by all.
Still, the central question to be addressed by the court was whether this form of protest - occupation - was 'protected' free speech.
Her decision rests on the concept of seizing land and she cites how they defend their encampment with interlocked arms as evidence of seizing public land but I think her interpretation is off base.
She neglects the symbolic nature of that act. They are engaging in classic non-violent resistance, WHICH IS SYMBOLIC SPEECH. It says, for moral reasons, we are committed to our protest, and you are wrong to oppose it.
No one thinks that by interlocking arms, they can protect their encampment against police force... as much proportional force as is necessary to effect eviction. Non-violent resistence is protest and mostly, it is not an effective means of protecting 'seized' public land.
Perhaps the issues mentioned above, safety, health and access are enough to address the central question but I wonder if the judge feels the need to limit the duration of the seizure. Somewhere along the way adverse possession comes into play.
Somewhere along the way
Somewhere along the way adverse possession comes into play.
Well, in MA that takes 20 years, and since it's a public park, I don't think it would be possible anyway.
Can you post a link to the judge's decision?
Thanks.
The Decision
Here
a well-reasoned decision.
the first amendment makes no provision for the seizure and extended occupation of a parcel of public or private land. furthermore, the city isn't moving them in order to silence them, as they have been practicing their free speech unimpinged for months. the court found the city's claim of hazardous conditions reasonable and valid. i would like to see the reaction to this ruling by the various herald commenters and columnists who went bonkers when the judge issued the restraining order.
there's a chilly night time rain outside my window as i type. the occupiers should be thankful for the ruling! also, they should be grateful to the city for hosting them these long months (in lieu of paying back the money they owe us from the extended police details). they should also be surprised they've made it this long. there must be some interesting conversations going on in those damp tents right now.
Sad
Menino seemed pretty confident yesterday that this was how it would go. Wonder if he got an early heads up. I think the fire stuff sounds phony, but I'm not an expert. So the public cannot seize and hold a public space as part of political speech? Someone forward the judge's decision to Syria- the despots'll be pleased to hear they were justified in their own strong-handed crowd dispersal tactics- really, where do we draw the line?
So much for erring on the side of freedom and democracy.
" So the public cannot seize
" So the public cannot seize and hold a public space as part of political speech?"
yes, they can, here in america, if they have the required permits.
first of all, however, the greenway is not public land. it is private land stewarded by the rose kennedy greenway foundation, a non-profit corporation.
secondly, your use of "the public" presumes that the public is uniformly in favor of the political speech in question. since not all bostonians support the occupation, you can't impose the wishes of one segment of the public on another's.
nothing in the first amendment indicates that a group can seize and hold indefinitely, against the wishes of the land's caretaker and the public in toto, while in violation of several health and safety codes. finally, just for a little perspective, one difference between the city of boston's and syria's response is that boston has not utilized snipers, issued kill-on-sight orders, nor tortured its own people.
No law abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble
And to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Still looks like a peaceable assembly to me.
BTW, if Dewey is indeed "private", who pays property taxes on it? And the police overtime thing is perfect Kafkaesque absurdity. Did Occupy request 10 cops a night to protect them from their own protest? Perhaps Menuno can punish the protesters by calling off the police. Let them focus on real police work.
The Greenway is NOT private land
I don't know who started this whole rumor, but it's wrong. The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway is leased to the Conservancy by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which OWNS it. Google "Kennedy Greenway" and "Massachusetts Turnpike Authority" together and you'll find a copy of the lease agreement online on the Greenway web site.
It sticks in my craw because to me, this whole misinterpretation symbolizes how the wealthy are taking over our public resources. The Greenway's mission statement doesn't say anything about taking in public input or serving community needs--and now people believe it isn't even a public park, when the Massachusetts law that authorized the lease specified that it *is* a public park.
However, the Mass. Turnpike Authority no longer exists
so presumably the land is now owned by the Turnpike Authority's successor agency, the Mass. Department of Transportation?
So it's a state-owned public
So it's a state-owned public park with an unelected board that sets its rules and manages funds, improvements and permitting if any?
so much fail
in this comment.
Who do you think supplies the permits?
OWS should sue the city much like the creepy Phelps clan does. Like it or not free speech is the basis our republic was founded on. Just because something is icky, bothersome or not of your political persuasion doesn't mean it's illegitimate.
Take the city to the bank in court for both their over-reactive response and illegal position and maybe you'll get a change of heart next time.
The whole point after all is to annoy and petition officials like Menino to put pressure on them to do the right thing. Instead, Menino had effectively silenced this gadfly and it's back to BAU, sucking up to rich developers with offers of taxpayer money for construction in East Boston.
Of course Menino got a heads up
Someone always has a friend who will make a phone call, the court system is THE most political branch in terms of hires.
The fire stuff is completely phony. Boston is full of illegal apartments, no proper exits, violations galore, many in basements. Menino could care less.
How many
Abandoned warehouses and apartment buildings are still in Boston with little being done?
Those are the real fire hazards in this town, and it's going to take a Worcester 99' style accident before mumbles gets serious.
He made tome comments a few years back when one went up like a candle, but since no one was hurt, he made his statement to alleviate concerns and now that all is forgotten, it's not longer an issue.