City Council has told Occupy Charlottesville that they’ve got to move out of Lee Park tomorrow, Henry Graff reports for NBC-29, but it’s not at all clear that they’re leaving. City Council is no longer willing to extend the special use permit that’s allowed the protesters to camp out in Lee Park for the past six weeks, and they’re increasingly sympathetic with neighbors who would like to regain normalcy in the park. The city has suggested a series of potential alternate sites, with McIntire Park at the top of the list. Occupy Charlottesville’s reaction is mixed. It’s by no means a monolithic group, as can be seen in the minutes from yesterday’s general assembly of members. While some or even most members might move to a new location, there are some members of the Charlottesville group who won’t leave unless it’s in handcuffs, a confrontation that the city is clearly eager to avoid.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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Let me get the right. Occupy folk are upset that….dang it, I still do not know what they propose as a solution…
Now its time to put down the dope, cut your hair, and get to work actually paying you own way instead of making a mess my tax $$ will have to clean up.
It is easy to complain. Solutions are a wee bit tougher and whining does not ease that reality.
We could swap out “Occupy” for “Tea Party” and “cream puffs” for “dope” and your comment would still apply. :)
Far too many tea partiers need to back away from the buffet and stop looking for things to complain about. Manufacturing problems to distract from issues also fits under the “lead, follow or get out of the way” rubric.
Everyone wants others to make changes in the world. I suggest that insterad of trying to change the world, we just try and change the little piece of it we can.
And I go sleep knowing that my family does very much their share of this.
I hope the Mayor reconsiders putting this group in McIntire Park. Having this group so close to our high school could place our children in harms way.
IT the part on the other side of the tracks by the golf course. But I bet they fold up camp pretty quickly if they cannot run for Lattes or have food easily brought to them.
Really, the best place for them, would be in front of the Free Speech monument. Its in front of City Hall, the transit center has public bathrooms and there is a large lobster trap down there for shelter. Why is its City Council’s job to find a place for them anyway?
This whole seeking permission and permitting of what is essentially a protest really rankles my jimmies. Free speech ‘zones’? Feh.
That said, I think they should be moved to danpri’s lawn.
#occupydanpri
“Free speech zones” are antithetical to free speech protesting. The goal is to cage ’em up and throw away the key.
They would not last 5 minutes on my lawn. I would make them do some work to contribute and they would be gone.
After all this time danpri, I never realized you were clint eastwood! I loved you in Gran Torino.
Oh and by the way, your stereotype is showing.
No right is unlimited, time, place, and manner restrictions have always been a part of 1st Amendment law, and saying you can’t permanently appropriate an entire public park for your own purposes is not remotely the same as saying you can’t stage a protest or express your views.
Dang Yo, did not you were Hmong. Now run along with your petulant postings little one.
“time, place, and manner restrictions have always been a part of 1st Amendment law”
By ‘always’, you of course mean 2003. Yes?
“and saying you can’t permanently appropriate an entire public park for your own purposes is not remotely the same as saying you can’t stage a protest or express your views.”
While I tentatively agree, I would argue that crying fire in a crowded theater isn’t even remotely similar to stuffing everyone with a political t-shirt or sign into a cage like this:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5849/firstamendmentzone2.jpg
Either way, it makes little difference to me personally. Lee Park or danpri’s lawn, I have always resented being put in any kind of box. I prefer my revolution to be be more subtle, more elegant.
Cville officials seem to have been pretty decent up to date. And a quasi-permanent appropriation by protesters is something that needs to be addressed some fair way – agreed.
But from that to declaring ‘free speech zones’ that are nothing more than planned isolation camps is something entirely more nefarious.
interesting article in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy?INTCMP=SRCH
Well, not that a notorious liberal such as her would have an axe to grind if she was actually arrested with them. Perhaps if she took her political advisor ability with the occupiers in the political arena they might move forward, but I suspect the occupiers are unable to match her history of 15K month to advise pols on clothing and women.
That and the fact that just because someone “wants” to do something does not mean the world needs to let them do it forever. And since this is local blog, and keeping it local it sure seems that they have been given pretty much everything they need, up to and including a nice dry warm place to sleep tonight if they wish to keep camping at Lee park.
Sadly for the guardian, this is not even journalism. It is a biased, self serving one sided piece meant to inflame. Plenty of cities are working with the occupiers far more than the occupiers are working with the cities.
I’m with Dan—that’s a terrible, terrible article. (FWIW, I’d never heard of the author until I read the article.) She makes some spectacular leaps of logic, and appears to know virtually nothing about government or politics.
Richard Grossman, well known activist comments shortly before his death:
Referring to the Occupy movement, Mr. Grossman advised protesters to consider the structural reasons that power is “arrayed against the 99 percent.”
“There’s no shortage of corruption and greed going all around,” he told the Corporate Crime Reporter. “But corruption and greed are not the problem. They are diversions.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/richard-l-grossman-organizer-who-sought-to-curtail-corporate-power-has-died/2011/11/28/gIQAdWLM6N_story.html
I think the occupiers would have a lot more local followers and supporters if they would take on local issues that clearly demonstrate Grossman’s quote above.
Examples being: the Nature Conservancy Dam/Electric Pipeline Plan and Biscuit Run tax credits for the wealthy, with no willingness on the part of the elected officials to shine the light of day on either process. Time for the sleeping masses to awake in Charlottesville and stop these local scams supported by the majority of our elected officials.
How about a teach in ?
http://www.readthehook.com/102215/biscuits-and-gravy-lawmakers-dodge-calls-unshroud-tax-credits
http://www.readthehook.com/99648/flaws-tripled-rates-spun-numbers-and-conservancy-conflicts-why-war-dredging-slogs
If you want to laugh or cry read this –
” We are the One Per Cent ” this weeks New Yorker:
We’re angry. We’re angry at something we’re calling “imagined frustration.” By this we mean that, except for Congress, the White House, banks, major lobbyists, and the editorial boards of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, no one is listening to us. And we’re tired of it.
You claim to know something about us. You think we are rich beyond comprehension, that we can do anything we please at any time, go anywhere we want at a moment’s notice, wander the earth in a state of constant bliss, enjoying abundant and fabulous sex. Perhaps you do know us.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/11/28/111128sh_shouts_kenney#ixzz1f95c2M00
**** – That is an excellent article from a feminist I actually respect. Leaps of logic? No, just connecting the dots using an evolved human brain that can process much more than simple binary logic. Granted, history is rife with abuses of this capacity, including contemporary religious beliefs, but that doesn’t invalidate it in this case. Know this: you will never get irrefutable proof, especially when the means to obtain it is severely impaired by a lack of power to do so and the powers that are do everything to restrict any fair evaluations.
Take a look at the recent local case of Cville cops covering up for one of their own after he was rapping in his cruiser mowing over a handicapped man crossing the street. And that case is one out of many many more that actually got some attention from the media!
City Girl – love the New Yorker link. Thanks.
First, the caveat: I know, if I want to make my own political statement, I can do it however I want to and the OWS folks are entitled to do the same. But… my beef, locally, is that I have no sense that there is the slightest bit of engagement with the community in the protest. I work downtown, just a few blocks away from Lee Park, and I have not had the slightest bit of contact with the protesters. It feels more like a private club where they have their clubhouse, but that just leaves them preaching to the choir – each other. I don’t understand why they aren’t out in front of the local branches of the mega-banks, like Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Or why they weren’t out at the big chain box stores, where employees had to give up a big chunk of their Thanksgiving holiday to work “Black Friday” sales. Yeah, yeah, I know, I could walk over the Lee Park to talk with them, but shouldn’t they be trying to engage with the public a bit?
Naomi Wolf is a bit of a Truther, and it’s not hard to figure out where her political leanings lie. She has written some things that are pretty “out there”.
I like Camille Paglia’s line about her being “a Seventeen magazine level of thinker.”
I am surprised you are not familiar with her, Waldo. (Not that you are a Seventeen magazine level of thinker, or anything of the sort.)
Reading the DP today I get the impression some of the occupiers like to think Charlottesville is Bull Connor’s Birmingham,circa 1962.
All they are doing is making fools of themselves. I have lost any sympathy I may have had for their cause and I expect others have too.
UVa is absolutely correct (see the DP) in saying they cannot occupy UVa property.
They have made their point, whatever it is, by spending weeks in Lee Park. The city should not have backed down and given them an extension before Thanksgiving.
Go, and take all the panhandlers and worthless bums that infest this town with you.
There, Harry Landers. HollowBoy explains clearly why the #Occupy folks do not “try to engage with the [rest of the] public”. Countless violent engagements would surely ensue!
“Go, and take all the panhandlers and worthless bums that infest this town with you.”
~Gospel of Mathew, 21:12
“It’s one for all, and all for one
We work together, common sons
Never need to wonder how or why”
~Geddy Lee, 21:12