Preparing for election year, #Occupy barred from camping in DC

Source: Liberty Confidential

As various enforcement agencies prepare for election year conventions, gatherings, and the inevitable demonstrations, new restrictions are being put into place. Recent moves restricting locations where protesters can gather is being called containment, safety, necessary, curbing free speech.

The latest news is the National Park Service will now bar Occupy DC protesters from camping in the two parks where have been living since October. They are being given the weekend to pack up and leave.

According to Reuters: “Occupy DC protesters must stop camping in McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza, both a few blocks from the White House, starting at about noon on Monday, the Park Service said on Friday.”

Even if in the name of safety, and in an effort to be courteous to others who aren’t there for the protests … it is also an opportunity to keep sign-wavers away from the cameras.

The Park Service will start to enforce regulations that “prohibit camping and the use of temporary structures for camping in McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza,” the agency said in a flyer distributed at the sites.

“Although 24/7 demonstration vigils and the use of symbolic temporary structures, including empty tents used as symbols of the demonstration, may be permitted in the park areas, camping and the use of temporary structures for camping is not.”

The two sites have been used as launch sites for numerous protests in Washington, including a demonstration that drew hundreds of people to the Capitol this month.

The McPherson Square site — which borders K Street — has drawn increasing criticism from Congress and the District of Columbia administration.

Earlier this week, National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis was called before a subcommittee hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District. Complaints included squalor and rats, numbers have been swelled by homeless people.

I wonder if, privately, folks in DC are also disapointed that the Occupy movement doesn’t seem to be something that can be easily spun to help the right or the left.

“We elected Obama, we had a Democratic Congress and it did not work. This isn’t about any candidate. It’s about how things are being run,” Thom Reges, 26, told Reuters’s JoAnne Allen while sitting next to a bench stocked with donated food and coffee in McPherson Square

According to Reuters: Sara Shaw, a McPherson Square protester handling contacts with the media, said the group would discuss its response at an evening meeting. She said 50 to 100 people are currently living in the square.

The Washington Post reports that some are already saying that they would be willing to risk arrest on Monday… 

Full post at Liberty Confidential