We have released statement regarding the suppression of Occupy Wall Street and other Occupy movements nationwide. The statement can be downloaded here [pdf]. Please distribute it widely.
The text of the statement is as follows:
The significance of the violent, pre-dawn, nationally-coordinated, and illegal police assaults on Occupy Wall Street and Occupiers across the country is deep and profound.
The decision of the New York State Supreme Court to overturn a previously obtained temporary restraining order (TRO) permitting evicted Occupiers to return to Zuccotti Park was virtually unsupported by any substantive factual showing of a compelling government purpose. The ruling ignored altogether the legally well-settled issue of symbolic speech in First Amendment jurisprudence. Even after the TRO was issued, New York Mayor Bloomberg, the NYPD and security guards employed by the park’s private owners openly defied the initial court order and attacked those who attempted to return. The disregard of civilian authority by the police is a dangerous harbinger of what lies ahead. The beatings, arrests, and confiscation and destruction of equipment belonging to clearly-identified journalists from mainstream news organizations has left “freedom of the press” in tatters.
The impact of these events extends far beyond the Occupy encampments. Evidence showing direct involvement of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security –without any valid legal basis or legitimate national security justification– in conjunction with at least 18 mayors and their respective police departments amounts to a civil and possibly criminal conspiracy not just to break up the protests, but to bully the American people and ensure their continued domination by the “1%” just as millions are reduced to abject poverty, joblessness and desperation. A system that cannot feed, clothe and house its people ultimately turns to violence.
The response of the majority — of the “99%”– to this crisis is something the progressive and revolutionary legal community can and must help influence. We can no longer confine our role to that of legal observer, technician or “first responder.” Even as we continue these important functions, we must at the same time go beyond and forward to play our part as the legal architects of the new and just society which “Occupy” has so eloquently articulated and envisioned. Here in Madison we have been largely spared the police violence of Wall Street and Occupy Oakland. Yet here, too, is political and economic repression in the form of massive budget cuts and destruction of vital social services; the ban on cameras and placards during sessions of the Wisconsin Legislature; the introduction of “fugitive slave” Arizona-type anti-immigrant legislation, the evisceration of collective bargaining rights and the imposition of voter ID requirements designed to disenfranchise the poorest and least organized among us. The violence of hunger, sickness and homelessness haunt our streets no less than that which was used to crush democracy in the streets of New York.
Thus, in the name of our own community and in defense of the besieged across this country, we in the National Lawyers Guild, Madison Chapter call upon all in our profession to answer the call of the moment: to explain these events to the people; to re-double our efforts to defend all existing legal protections and rights to which we are entitled; and to begin the process of creating a new, revolutionary jurisprudence that will guide us to a just and equitable society.
Interim Board, Madison Chapter, National Lawyers Guild
Contact us at: madisonnlg@gmail.com (We authorize and encourage reproduction and distribution of this statement.)
