This afternoon, San Diego Police re-erected barricades at the Civic Center Plaza in an apparent effort to control access to the Plaza. Barricades have been re-set to control access from Third Avenue.
Occupy San Diego activities are due to begin around 5:30 pm with committee meetings and the General Assembly at 7pm. Hundreds of demonstrators and supporters usually show up for these meetings.
At one point around 4pm four dozen plus police officers moved into the Plaza area, and moved the barricades into place along the Third Avenue entrance. Now, people have to squeeze through about a 2 to 3 foot opening. Just minutes earlier, during a teach-in at the Plaza, police surrounded those at the teach-in, in what was an act of intimidation according to the teach-in organizer.
Many people were intimidated from going back into the Plaza, but at approximately 4:30 pm most of the police exited the area and some moved back in. One report said that the numbers of officers had been present to protect the barricades and the fire truck that came to fill them up with water.
On Friday night during the huge rally of solidarity, the barricades had been tipped over and the water flowed into the Plaza.
Police are controlling access to the Plaza in order to enforce their new rules that only personal belongings that someone can have or wear on their person are allowed in, which means no sleeping bags, tarps, furniture or tents.
Police and others have removed all signs and banners so there is no indication that an Occupy event has been going on. People are being allowed to sleep in the grassy area right along the Theater on Third Avenue but not in the Plaza.
With the barricades police can control what people can bring into the area.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
These barricades are deeply disturbing and threatening. They endanger our civil liberties and our physical safety. Time to contact the ACLU?
I second the ACLU.
“Chairman Mao did not fail, Revolution will prevail” I understand the police presence and posturing may be intimidating to members of the 99% gathered at the site. Hang in there. Understand that while the police are there, they cannot be intimidating and harrassing the homeless or protecting the 1%. I served in Viet Nam and witnessed revolutionary actions by the oppressed eventually send us running. Hang in there, history will remember your valor.
bump!
The mayor and city council have clearly decided to actively oppose the message of this protest action, and are hiding behind an abuse of local ordinances that were not written for the purpose of infringing upon our right to peaceful assembly.
These local ordinances (and elsewhere, some state statutes) have, for years, been encroaching upon our rights. Now is the time to push back, with mass popular support, to get these laws thrown out and off our backs.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
NO LAW means NO LAW.
And Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment extends this ban to the states (and local governments):
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
We need to not only do a swarm of legal challenges to these local laws that are violating our rights, we need to use mass direct actions to do civil disobedience against these laws. What will the authorities do if 1000 people violate the “illegal lodging” ordinance and, upon arrest, REFUSE BAIL and force the City officials to decide to either drop the charges of pay mega-dollars to house and feed us indefinitely?
Get inside the barricades & pretend they are George Bush’s “free speech zones.” Commence w/ business.