Associated Press & The Washington Post – 2011-12-27 19:58:48

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/cities-that-broke-up-occupy-camps-now-face-lawsuits-over-free-speech-use-of-force/2011/12/22/gIQAr192BP_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop

WASHINGTON, DC (December 22, 2011) — Most major Occupy encampments have been dispersed, but they live on in a flurry of lawsuits in which protesters are asserting their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and challenging authorities’ mass arrests and use of force to break up tent cities.

Lawyers representing protesters have filed lawsuits — or are planning them — in state and federal courts from coast to coast, challenging eviction orders and what they call heavy-handed police tactics and the banning of demonstrators from public properties.

Some say the fundamental right of protest has been criminalized in places, with protesters facing arrest and charges while doing nothing more than exercising protected rights to demonstrate.

“When I think about the tents as an expression of the First Amendment here, I compare it to Tahrir Square in Egypt,” said Carol Sobel, co-chairwoman of the National Lawyers Guild’s Mass Defense Committee.

“Our government is outraged when military forces and those governments come down on the demonstrators. But they won’t extend the same rights in this country,” she said. “They praise that as a fight for democracy, the values we treasure. It comes here and these people are riffraff.”

A handful of protesters began camping out in September in a lower Manhattan plaza, demanding an end to corporate excess and income inequality, and were soon joined by scores of others who set up tents and remained around the clock. Similar camps sprang up in dozens of cities nationwide and around the world, but patience wore thin, and many camps — including the flagship at Zuccotti Park and in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore. — were forcibly cleared.

Public officials and police unions have generally defended moves to break up the camps, citing health and safety concerns. They also said that responding to problems at Occupy encampments was draining crime-fighting resources.

Protester lawsuits are now beginning to wend their way through the legal system, and attorneys say more are likely on the way.

The National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California sued the Oakland Police Department in federal court in November, saying police and other agencies violated demonstrators’ Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force — including “flash-bang” grenades — against demonstrators who posed no safety threat. The suit says officials also violated their First Amendment rights to assemble and demonstrate.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan on Wednesday announced an independent investigation into the police response.

In Austin, Texas, this week, a federal judge has been hearing the case of two Occupy protesters who were arrested and later barred from City Hall under a policy their attorneys call overly broad and say amounts to a ban on speech. The Texas Civil Rights Project says around 106 people have been banned since the protests began, in some cases for up to a year. The policy says a criminal trespass notice may be issued for “unreasonably disruptive” conduct.

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