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| Photo Credit: Nick Hogman |
Cook County Associate Judge Thomas Donnelly has ruled that the
arrests of more than 90 Occupy Chicago protesters last October were
unconstitutional. Many of the arrests were enforced under reason of having a
city wide curfew; a curfew that Donnelly says is often not enforced on events that
the city supports. In his ruling he stated that the arrests last October came
after hundreds of members of Occupy Chicago refused to take down tents and
leave Grant Park when it closed at 11 p.m.
Donnelly compared the protests to President Barack Obama's victory rally in the same park in 2008. Which didn’t clear out until the early
hours of the next morning around 1:30 am. "The city arrested no one at the
Obama 2008 presidential election victory rally, even though the Obama rally was
equally in violation of the curfew," Donnelly wrote. Roderick Drew,
spokesman for Chicago's Law Department, said the city will file an appeal of Donnelly’s
ruling. "The city is disappointed with the decision," Drew said.
“The activists were legally participating in free speech”
said Sarah Gelsomino, a People's Law Office attorney representing the
protesters. "Hopefully this sends a clear message to the city that they
must better respect the First Amendment rights of protesters no matter what
their message might be," Gelsomino added. The protesters were an off-shoot
of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Occupy Chicago, and were demonstrating
against corporate greed.
Earlier this year, the city decided to settle a lawsuit for
$6.2 million in connection with the arrest of 700 people during a 2003 Iraq wardemonstration. The settlement came after a federal judge called the
department's handling of the protests "idiotic." These rulings are a
clear embarrassment to the police department, which has come under fire for its
handling of protests dating all the way back to the 1968 Democratic National
Convention. The 1968 DNC is known for the violent police brutality that was
inflicted on peacefully resisting demonstrators.
I have to agree with the judges decision in this case. Although I may not support the idea of the Occupy movement , the demonstrations were within reason. Unlike many protest the participants and demonstrations of the occupy movement were withint reason and hardly cause for arrests. Just because the city may have found it inconvenient to have hundreds of demonstrators fill a public park does not justify them to use a loophole to remove individuals from the park.
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