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► reblogged from peterthemeter (originally babytheleopard)
Gov. John Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said this evening they were working on how to handle the growing tent city of protesters camped in a park between the Capitol and city hall.
After meetings between city and state officials earlier today, Hickenlooper and Hancock, both Democrats, issued a joint statement just before 7 p.m.
“The Occupy Denver protesters are on state property,” the pair said in the statement. “The state and city are working together to find a solution that balances Occupy Denver’s First Amendment rights with growing concerns around public safety and public health in violation of city ordinance and state law.”
Hickenlooper’s chief of staff, Roxane White, accompanied by three other staffers, personally spoke to camp dwellers this evening, but protesters said they weren’t budging.
The joint statement came a day after Hickenlooper appeared on KOA Radio’s Mike Rosen Show and expressed concern over the dozens of tents that have been pitched in the park, which contains a veterans’ memorial. A number of those camped are homeless people in Denver who were drawn to the event by the prospect of a place to put up a tent and free food being offered.
The joint statement also came days before a U.S. Naval Reserve event is to be held in the park on Saturday. Veterans groups say the park is also the site of a planned Nov. 5 event honoring fallen soliders in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Occupy Denver organizers on Tuesday sent a letter to Hickenlooper asking for a “variance or waiver” to city and state laws so that they could stay in the park.
“We will ensure that the park remains an open and welcoming space to the general public and citizenry of Colorado,” a letter from Occupy Denver’s “General Assembly” said. “Gov. Hickenlooper, there are already multiple tent cities across Colorado. The only difference is that ours isn’t hidden from the general public.
“If you are truly concerned about the precedent set by our occupation, we invite you to work with us to create a Colorado in which tent cities are no longer a necessity.”
It’s not clear that Hickenlooper could grant such a waiver even if he was inclined to do so. State law makes camping overnight on state-owned property where it has not been specifically allowed a misdemeanor. And state regulations set by the Deparment of Personnel and Administration, which administers the Capitol Complex, specify that camping is not allowed around the building.
Hickenlooper told Rosen on Tuesday it was unclear what the state’s legal options were.
“As close as I can understand, they are on state property,” the governor said, “but we don’t have a jail to put them in, and we haven’t been able to find a way that the city – the district attorney – will prosecute them.”
The confusion didn’t seem to be cleared up by talking to other agencies, either.
Colorado State Patrol Sgt. Mike Baker said the district attorney’s office does not typically prosecute state misdemeanors enforced by the patrol.
But Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney’s office, said her agency regularly prosecutes state misdemeanors but that the multi-jurisdictional questions may come in cases where there is a corresponding city ordinance that bans a behavior.
In those cases, Kimbrough said, the offense may be prosecuted by the city attorney’s office. Queries to the city and the state about the legal issues were answered only with the joint statement.
Hickenlooper’s top officials met with Hancock’s staff earlier in the day, but it was not clear what actions – if any – might be taken. At one point Tuesday while speaking on Rosen’s show, Hickenlooper pointed out that New York’s solution to camped protesters appeared to be waiting for cold weather.
The forecast calls for sunshine and highs in the 70s the next few days, with partly cloudy skies Saturday.
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► reblogged from evanfleischer (originally brooklynmutt)
For weeks now, mainstream media outlets, and some in the movement itself, have struggled with one pervading question about the Occupy Wall Street protesters who began gathering in Zuccotti Square on September 17: What do they want?
It’s very clear, after all, what they don’t want: That is, they don’t want the economic or social status quo to continue unabated.
But now, there may be something approaching consensus emerging, at least via the movement’s Tumblr blog and guerrilla PR team.
On Sunday, prolific ecofinance blogger and Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal, akaRortybomb, posted an eye-opening analysis of the movement’s ideology based entirely on the wording of protesters’ signs that appear in the Tumblr blog’s photos.
Konczal explained his methdology as follows:
“I created a script designed to read all of the pages and parse out the html text on the site. It doesn’t read the images (can anyone in the audience automate calls to an OCR?), just the html text. After collecting all the text on all the pages, the code then goes through it to try to find interesting points.”Read more click above link
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► reblogged from stfuconservatives (originally dcu)
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► reblogged from letterstomycountry (originally millie-bell)
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► reblogged from letterstomycountry (originally letterstomycountry)
Interviews With Millionaires: “Please Raise My Taxes”
a series of interviews with members of the top 1% who explain why they believe raising taxes on themselves and their peers is necessary, moral, and the right thing to do.
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► reblogged from airshowdisaster (originally airshowdisaster)
We wouldn’t be on Wall Street if we didn’t already have an implicitly unifying message: We hold the banks, the millionaires, and the political elite they control, responsible for the exploitation and oppression we face — from capitalism, racism and authoritarianism to imperialism, patriarchy and environmental degradation.
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► reblogged from calvinhobbesdaily (originally calvinhobbesdaily)
you got it calvin.
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► reblogged from btgphoto (originally think-progress)
stop taking our movement and co-opting it! i like you, thinkprogress, and i agree that people should vote. but the occupation is anti-status quo. we want a system overhaul, not slight modifications.
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► reblogged from thedailyfeed (originally thedailyfeed)
Ben and Jerry’s is the first corporation to support the Occupy Wall Street movement. The company ppsted the image above to its website, along with the following statement:
We, the Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, compelled by our personal convictions and our Company’s mission and values, wish to express our deepest admiration to all of you who have initiated the non-violent Occupy Wall Street Movement and to those around the country who have joined in solidarity. The issues raised are of fundamental importance to all of us.
The company also lists the causes they support, including fighting class inequality, unemployment, and the high cost of education. Read the full statement here.
this seems a bit…backwards? occupyeverywhere is anti-corporation. and you, ben & jerry’s, are a corporation.
