As copycat Occupy Wall Street encampments around the country confront the inevitable legal tangles that come with a nationwide sit-in style protest, a growing army of First Amendment-loving lawyers is shepherding the demonstrators through the legal system at no charge. ...McClatchy
A number of commentators, wise and unwise, who have tried to parse the similarities and distinctions between the tea party movement (Koch-bought) and the Occupy movement (sui generis, with increasing signs of support). A McClatchy reporter finds that Occupy has attracted a legal team, coast to coast, defending the movement from the establishment's effort to cripple it. There's a good deal of dispute out there about whether First Amendment rights include the right to camp in public space.
The resulting legal skirmishes have spurred the largest mobilization of pro bono protest attorneys since the anti-war movement of the 1960s and '70s.
Attorneys appear to be jumping in to join the guild as soon as they're needed.
Many of the volunteer barristers are members of the guild, a liberal group that has defended the First Amendment rights of thousands of protesters and controversial figures since 1937.
However, attorneys with no guild affiliation or history of protest involvement are also coming forward to help in the estimated 200 U.S. cities where "occupy" protests have sprung up to oppose economic inequality and corporate greed.
Criminal defense attorney Daphne Pattison Silverman of Houston was watching a television interview with a guild lawyer for the Wall Street protesters when she decided she wanted to help.
"I just felt completely energized and I could just tell this was an organization that was worth looking into," she said.
In addition to starting a local guild chapter in Houston, Silverman has recruited 10 other lawyers to assist the Occupy Houston protesters.
A former attorney in the Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps, Silverman chafes at any perceived contradiction involving her past military service and her current work on behalf of government protesters.
"To me, the same oath I took in the military to support and defend the Constitution is the same oath I take as a criminal lawyer, and now as a budding First Amendment lawyer," she said, adding that her work sometimes requires "telling the government that they've made a mistake."
One lawyer in Cincinnati asks the key question about long-term protests and camping.
"What if we had shut the civil rights movement off after three days?" she asked. "Would we have had the Civil Rights Act? Would we have had Martin Luther King Jr.? Would we have had progress? No."
And one of the great embarrassments to endure in America is that many on the right would still like to abolish the Civil Rights Act.
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AM New York describes intervention by lawyers in the dispute between Occupy and the city over portable generators.
The protesters, represented by attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild, said that the confiscation of six generators and fuel on Friday was a pretext by the city to begin dismantling their lower Manhattan encampment, which has been in place since Sept. 17. The FDNY said cited r safety reasons.
"Contrary to the Mayor’s public justifications, the seizures were not motivated by health or safety concerns," the group said in a letter Saturday addressed to FDNY Commissioner Salvatore Cassano.
"Without articulating any identifiable hazard posed by the generators, the city removed a source of heat for hundreds of people one day before the correctly predicted onset of freezing temperatures and snow," the letter said.
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And in Denver:
After violent clashes with police Saturday, Occupy Denver demonstrators focused Sunday on getting arrested activists out of jail and promoting a peaceful message.By late Sunday night, Occupy Denver organizers said all but one of the 20 protesters arrested Saturday had been bonded out of jail with donations from volunteers.They also said the National Lawyers Guild mobilized more than 45 attorneys willing to represent those arrested for free.
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For a closer understanding of the relationship of Occupy to the powers-that-be, check out an hour-long discussion live at 10 ET this morning about Occupy Philadephia. On board for the discussion are two headliners who are sympathetic to the movement and the city of Philadelphia's Managing Director.
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