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    City Police Evict Occupy Baltimore

    By Donal on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 9:24am | Social Justice

    We now have kittens in PA, so we can't walk around in bare feet anymore without stepping on something they've batted under the door. Which I did Sunday evening. As I was pouring hydrogen peroxide over the hole in my heel this morning, the WBAL traffic crawler noted that a large police presence had closed traffic at Pratt & Light. At the same time, WBAL's weather cutie Ava Marie was telling us about the Festival of Lights at the Power Plant, which is not very far at all from McKeldin Square. I had the feeling that the festivities would not be including Occupy Baltimore, and I couldn't help but wonder if Darrick's taunting of the mayor at the Santa parade had set the stage for this morning's eviction.

    Sure enough, the next teaser was Bye Bye Occupy, and after commercials for new cars and new floors, reporter Kim Dacey told us that police in riot gear descended on the OB encampment at 3:30 AM and evicted several dozen occupiers without arrests or incident. Many of the OBers went to a nearby homeless shelter. A few were interviewed, saying how disappointed they were in the suppression of peaceful protestors.

    “It’s not what I expect from a democracy or America, which was built on the right to peaceably assemble and to voice dissenting opinions. That makes us stronger,”

    OB's website called for an emergency General Assembly at 10 AM this morning, which set the location for tonight's GA at War Memorial Plaza.

    I suspect that in years to come, police will wish that Occupy sites were the worst of their problems. There have been minor incidents, like a stabbing last week as two women fought over a cat, but considering the over 180 Charm City murders in 2011, Occupy Baltimore was a comparatively safe place.

    In any case, closing down Occupy sites is like masking the symptoms, while the disease goes septic.

    For their parts, Occupiers are already looking to the future. As reported in the Baltimore Brew, “... the idea that it was winding down is true in perception only,” [Damien] Nichols said. “There has been a great deal of activity online and in peoples’ living rooms. We are focusing on problems in the city and going into the community. There’s a lot more from us to come.”

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    Occupy Moves to the Home Front

    Occupy Wall Street found a new home this week—not a new park, or a plaza, or a square, but a house. Just weeks after the eviction from its encampment in the financial district, hundreds of occupiers joined local community members in a foreclosure tour of the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn through the rain, which concluded with a celebratory block party as a family reclaimed a foreclosed home owned by Bank of America.
     
    As the march passed, I heard a local woman saying, “This was a long time coming.”
     
    The action was one of many anti-foreclosure actions taking place in communities across the United States yesterday; the Guardian reported actions in at least 25 cities under the banner of a new Occupy campaign, Occupy Our Homes.

    by Donal on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 7:47pm

    A City Paper article claims that divisions were forming in the Occupy group.

    Police Dismantle Occupy Baltimore Encampment

    Issues of safety had chal­lenged the encamp­ment from its early days. As the makeup of the peo­ple on-site evolved and changed, many of the young activists who started the move­ment came to the site less and less, pre­fer­ring to dis­cuss the movement’s plans and philoso­phies off site or over the sev­eral inter­net mes­sage boards that group established.

    Begin­ning a few weeks ago, “emer­gency food requests” began to reg­u­larly appear on Occupy’s Google mes­sage board. Atten­dance dwin­dled at the iconic “gen­eral assem­blies,” which were sup­posed to be held each evening on the square so that the group could decide what it wanted to do through con­sen­sus. On Dec. 9 there was no gen­eral assembly.

    Tom Keifaber, for­mer owner of the Sen­a­tor The­ater and los­ing can­di­date for City Coun­cil pres­i­dent, began crit­i­ciz­ing Occupy mem­bers on the local group’s inter­net mes­sage board, prompt­ing the cre­ation of a “mod­er­ated” Google Group board to keep Keifaber out. (Any­one can join, but “trolls”—those who engage in ad hominem attacks, off-topic rants, and gen­eral obtuseness—can be banned.)

    by Donal on Wed, 12/14/2011 - 9:24am