Post by JohnsfThis is a link to a United States District Court, S.D. New
York, June 12, 2000, Opinion and Order.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10724177128590739675&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as
OccupyWS (Wall Street) is benefiting from this decision by being
allowed to sleep on sidewalks as a form of protest.
Not so. For the most part, the N.Y.C. OccupyWS participants
are not benefiting from it. They benefit instead from self help -
that is, from increasing mass organizing and mass participation. That,
however, often is offset by comparatively huge numbers of police most
of whom just stand around doing nothing most of the time while
personally benefiting from large overtime pay premiums until the
police are instructed by a studiedly soft-spoken but aggressively
strong-willed and cynical mayor (who, personally, is part of the 1% of
the 1%) and by city's out-of-control police commissioner to bash heads
and to make mass arrests, whereupon the police do so and most of the
N.Y. city judges then dutifully endorse them in having done.
Post by JohnsfWhat would OccupySF (San Francisco) have to do to get
equal treatment?
At least these three things -
1. Organize and muster a large enough coalition and enough
participants to be able to negotiate effectively with the SF mayor and
others in the city's political establishment to get at least equal if
not better treatment, then continue in their street and related
actions regardless whether they succeed and arguably all the more so
if they do not succeed in achieving such an agreement that would be
honored.
2. As an ancillary-supplementary matter, bring and
aggressively while persuasively prosecute lawsuits in both the state
and federal courts along the lines of the one in N.Y.C., Metro.
Council etc. v. Safir, 99 F.Supp.2d 438, which you cite, bearing in
mind, however, that the plaintiffs and their lawyers who do this would
have to rulings such as in Occupy/Sacramento etc. v. City of
Sacramento etc (No. 2:11-cv-02873-MCE-GGH, Nov. 4, 2011)
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3321012392234706729&q=+2:11-cv-02873-MCE-GGH&hl=en&as_sdt=2,33
and to expand on rulings such as in Occupy/Fresno (Calif.) v. County
of Fresno (No. C 11-01894 CRB, Dec. 13, 2011)
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2334094934694138081&q=+2:11-cv-02873-MCE-GGH&hl=en&as_sdt=2,33
3. Not lose sight of the now overwhelmingly prevalent reality
that very much unlike what was, for a brief time, somewhat available
through courts in the late-1950s until not long after the early-1970s,
i it no longer is the 1960s and 1970s, is no longer achievable because
it has become a Fool's Errand to suppose that Occupy organizers and
participants will be able to obtain relief that would be both
meaningful and enforceable from the courts.
GoTo and implement no. 1 above using no. 2 as a limited
stop gap back up.