Tucson Arizona ? Violating Protesters Constitutional Rights To Peacefully Assemble

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Comment by Claude on October 20, 2011 at 11:42am

In our fourth story — despite those words in the First Amendment, several cities — including Tucson, Arizona — have begun enforcing petty laws with hefty fines in an attempt to financially force the Occupy protesters to break up. Starting Saturday, police in Tucson began writing criminal citations to anyone in Armory Park past 10:30 P.M. prevailing local time. Fifty-three citations were issued on Saturday, 32 Sunday, and between 30 and 40 on Monday. Each citation comes with a penalty of up to $1,000 in fines, up to six months in jail, up to three years on probation. And, yes, many protesters have received several citations.

Tucson authorities stressed to the protesters that the law does not prohibit their right to peaceably assemble, but prohibits camping in the park. The Arizona constitution, though, takes all this one step further which makes the citations seem even more egregious. According to Article Two, Section Five of that state constitution, “The right of petition, and of the people peaceably to assemble for the common good, shall never be abridged.”

Similarly, Occupy Dallas participants were forced to relocate from Pioneer Plaza to a park outside City Hall after Dallas city officials informed them that to obtain a permit to gather in the park, the group needed an insurance policy — a $1 million insurance policy. Joining me now one of the organizers for Occupy Tucson, Craig Barber. Good to talk to you again, sir.

BARBER: Thank you, Keith. Thank you for having me back.

OLBERMANN: How do you fight accumulating $1,000 fines?

BARBER: We fight it any way we can. We’ve put out posts on our website and our Facebook letting the public know what is going on about the $1,000 fines, about the misdemeanor charges that are being handed out every night. And we’ve linked to our city council web page, which has their email addresses and their phone numbers, encouraging the public to demand that the charges against the occupiers be dropped and also that TPD — the Tucson Police Department — stop using these tactics to intimidate the protesters.

Fortunately. from what we’ve been hearing from our attorney from the National Lawyers Guild, who has an avenue of contact with the city, they have been getting flooded. Their phones have been getting flooded and their email boxes have been getting flooded. So, our community is definitely behind us in this and they have been showing it. And, additionally, we have been hearing from this attorney, the tone that he has been hearing from City Hall has been changing. Again, nothing publicly coming out one way or the other as far as policy is concerned, but definitely a more conciliatory tone.

And another avenue that we’re taking right now is as we speak, Occupy Tucson is marching down to City Hall. There’s a city council meeting occurring right now. We’re holding a rally out in front of City Hall and we’re also sending in representatives from Occupy Tucson to participate in the public-speaking aspect of that meeting.

OLBERMANN: Given the state and Federal Constitutional citations that I just read, do you — in addition to community pressure and the possibility of some sort of negotiated settlement with the city — do you have legal action that you can take?

BARBER: The attorney from the National Lawyers Guild, who has been helping us out all along, has advised me that he thinks we have a very strong case for our actions in the park being protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. And he thinks that it’s definitely a protected right, what we are doing — the spirit of the law as far as the city code, which is, you know, providing or putting the curfew on the park, which is preventing us from being in there after 10:30 — he thinks that the spirit of t