Last week, police moved to break up Occupy encampments in Los Angeles and Philadelphia and arrested and charged hundreds of occupiers. On a smaller scale, Occupy Charlottesville protesters shared the same fate. At 11pm last Wednesday, the exact time when the curfew for Lee Park kicked in, Charlottesville police descended on the public park and gave occupiers their first warning to vacate the premises.
A small group of protesters sat on the ground, locked arms and waited for police to physically remove them. Ultimately, police arrested 18 protesters and charged them with trespassing. Although their act of civil disobedience garnered a sliver of national media attention (it was even featured on “The Countdown with Keith Olbermann”), the future and well being of Occupy Charlottesville is all but certain.
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Protester Bailee Hampton sits in a circle locked arms with fellow occupiers and waited for police to remove her from Lee Park. While most of the arrestees said they were treated fairly by Charlottesville police, Hampton filed an official complaint. (Photo by Chiara Canzi) |
Some occupiers believe that the time for physical occupation has come to an end and have encouraged the group to rethink its protest strategy. Others are unmoved from the original model of dissent and believe that even a small form of physical occupation is vital for the survival of the movement.
Of the 18 people arrested, 16 were released and charged with trespassing and two were given summonses. Of them, eight are men and 10 are women; several live in and around Belmont and only one is listed as homeless. One protester was also charged with indecent exposure for stripping naked as she recited the declaration of the national Occupy movement. They all will appear in court on December 16.
The day after the arrests, occupiers gathered at the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall to share experiences. While most of the arrestees felt treated fairly by police, a few reported being roughed up.
The next day, Shelly Stern and Bailee Hampton filed official complaints against Charlottesville police officers for the way they were treated during the arrest.
“There were four people who carried me away from my spot in the circle,” Stern told C-VILLE. “I did not feel threatened, they were not physically harming me, the cuffs were a little tight, not a big deal. I did notice that I was being taken in a different direction than my prior arrestees.” As soon as she was out of public sight, Stern said she was “assaulted by a Charlottesville police officer who said, ‘You will walk’ and he rammed a metal rod up under my right ear, which was very intentional, a pressure point, and he put his other hand around my neck forcing me into the metal rod.”
Stern said she wants city police to recognize the abuse of power.
“I was not a safety risk,” she said. “It was because I was an inconvenience that I was harmed.”
Lieutenant Ronnie Roberts told C-VILLE that when such a complaint is filed, it becomes a personnel matter investigated and handled by the Office of Professional Conduct.
“As for this incident, I was not familiar with it,” he said.
Roberts said the eviction of Lee Park went as expected.
“I think overall for the operation itself and the activities of Lee Park, we did not find what we call aggressive behavior toward law enforcement in a physical way,” he said. He added that officers heard “a lot of shouting” from the protesters against law enforcement, but said that each officer is trained to deal with “people shouting obscenities and things of that sort.”
Now that Lee Park is cleared and city officials have said they have no intention of issuing another permit for the space, the group is faced with the painstaking task of choosing a new location. Prior to the eviction, occupiers planned to relocate to the George Rogers Clark Park near the University of Virginia campus, but UVA officials warned occupiers that any encampment on University property would not be permitted and that the University would “take enforcement action to prevent the attempted establishment of an encampment on University property,” including issuing notices for trespassing, according to a letter signed by the school’s new Chief Operating Officer Michael Strine.
“Quite simply, the University is not a campground and is not set up to support an indefinite encampment,” the letter said.
City Councilor Kristin Szakos, who was among the crowd that gathered on the sidewalk on the night of the eviction, believes the group needs to go back to discussing the issues that brought them together in the first place.
“The kind of logistics of just setting up camp, what’s allowed and all of that, have sort of taken up a lot of the dialogue time, or the action time,” Szakos said. “It may be that at this point, there can be more discussion of some of the issues that brought some of the folks there. That would certainly be something that I think would be a positive thing that could come out of it.”
While occupiers analyzed other options, including the grassy area next to Friendship Court and the grounds of Monticello, considered by some a great way “to go out,” a few believe the time has come to focus on political action.
“I want to continue this process,” said Hampton, who was the only occupier arrested to identify herself as “homeless.” Referring to pursuing the core values of the Occupy movement, she acknowledged that physical occupation has taken its toll on members who actually camped out. Hampton even suggested choosing a new name.
“It’s a joke to call ourselves Occupy Charlottesville because we are not occupying shit,” she said.
In the meantime, the group agreed to appear before City Council on Monday night to express their disappointment for how, they say, the city handled the eviction from Lee Park.