Tucson Citizen.com
Tucson Progressive -

Tucson Progressive gets a ticket at Occupy Tucson

by on Oct. 29, 2011, under Arizona, Capitalism, corporatists, democracy, Free Speech, old hippies, organizing, Trickle Down Economics, Tucson

TPD has been ticketing Occupy Tucson protesters every night for 2 weeks. (Image credit: Pamela Powers)

Friday night was Friends and Family Campout night at Occupy Tucson. Since I had not seen any video of the non-infamous ticketing process, I decided to camp out.

After dinner at the camp and a late night stop at Hotel Congress with a friend, I snuggled into my sleeping bag about 10 p.m.

About 45 minutes later, I was awakened by Tucson Police officers rousting campers out of their tents and issuing citations for breaking Armory Park’s 10:30 p.m. I got out of my tent to video the process and got a ticket.

Tucson’s somewhat passive aggressive approach to dealing with the Occupation is making national headlines, as more than 350 citations– which carry a maximum fine of $1000 and 6 months in jail– have been issued. In the first 2 weeks of the Tucson Occupation, the city has spent more than $37,000 ticketing Occupiers who are exercising their freedom of speech and protesting the corporate takeover of our country.

CREDIT: dancepartner30
CAPTION: The Tucson Progressive gets a ticket at Occupy Tucson

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 29th, 2011 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Arizona, Capitalism, corporatists, democracy, Free Speech, old hippies, organizing, Trickle Down Economics, Tucson. Tags for this post: , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

RSS feed for this post (comments)
  • Tip O’Neill

    How cute – they use iPads to ticket you now :)

  • Lyndon B. Johnson

    Ah thawt we’d settled all this back in the 1960′s.  Now leave the lady (and the uthuz) alone, y’all. 

  • Carolyn Classen

    Pam, I see that as a citizen journalist/blogger here at Tucsoncitizen.com you wanted a first hand account of being cited by the Tucson Police Dept.  Two of the Occupy Tucson activists/organizers were on KUAT Channel 6 recently:
    http://www.azpm.org/politics/story/2011/10/24/1830-occupy-tucson-why-participate/

  • fraser007

    LOL Pay the fine….. You folks want to change the USA but balk at a fine for staying overnight at a park? How laughable. Guess the rules dont apply to you.
    So much for your left wing revolution. Guess that 1% company owners who built your computer are bad guys.

    • http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucson-progressive Pamela

      I think Tucson’s city government doesn’t think the Constitution applies at Armory Park. 

      Fraser, you’re probably old enough to remember the sit-ins and teach-ins of the 1960s. This is the same principle.

      Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press are our rights as Americans. Corporate greed and corporate personhood are destroying out country and enslaving our workers. CEOs (who make an average of $9 million a year regardless of performance of their companies) have told their political minons to “rethink” the minimum wage and break the unions in order to make American businesses more competitive. How about rethinking the maximum wage?

      This is what Occupy is about. 

      • fraser007

        Your sounding like Leftfield……………And dont compare sit-ins of the 60′s for human rights with your leftwing park sleeping. Nobody is shooting fire hoses at you or keeping Blacks from voting or lynching people. Your a bunch of posers.
        Big bad revolutionaries cant even pay a park fine. Try sleeping in any other park. Guess you are all special.

      • fraser007

        Ohhh I thought most of the Tucson City Council were liberal democrats?? Do I see a little self hatred going on here.

        • leftfield

          fraser, you should be happy that people are involved in the Occupy movement.  People who have worked hard and played by the rules, only to see no hope for upward mobility, no job prospects, unaffordable medical insurance and “wealth redistribution” upwards, are not going to be receptive to your message that everything is just fine and all they are really after is “your stuff”.   However, if things continue the way they have been and they are not able to voice their discontent through the Occupy Movement,  they might just be open to my message.  Be happy they still have enough in the system to believe it can be reformed.  

          • fraser007

            Nice words. But the local lefties who are there dont look like they would have any job prospects. If they ever had a job other than a bead store or a head shop. Oh I bet there are some computer type folks. Whatever,

            • tunkashila

              “Whatever”, the last refuge of someone who got owned and no longer has an argument left, only assumptions and opinions.

              • LJ Simpson

                I think sleeping in a park, going to the bathroom in a plastic bag, refusing to shower and making our community look run down is the last refuge of someone that has no argument left.

                • The Baron

                  Or perhaps no other options.  When everybody ignores you, the tactic is to become unavoidable.  Besides, this community’s been looking run-down for years, thanks to corruption and stupidity on the part of our “leaders”.
                  Personally, I think the tents are an improvement.  Just a modern Hooverville, nothing more nothing less. 
                  Don’t like it? Quit allowing this nation’s elite to loot our treasury with impunity.  Agitate your congressperson for immediate legal action against the thieves-show the protesters how it’s supposed to be done.  Then see how much good it does.  I wish you luck. 

                  • LJ Simpson

                    Don’t like it, wait a month and the protestors will be gone. Check back in a month for the validity of this comment.

    • Long John

      Not to mention the company that makes their tents, sleeping bags, cell phones. What about the Sharpies you use to make your protest signs, are they on the ‘good’ list of corporations? What about the Nikes one the majority of the protestor feet.

      Just a bunch or bandwagon jumpers without real passion nor conviction.

      • http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucson-progressive pamela

        LJ, you sound like one of the few people who spoke at the city council meeting aggainst the Occupiers. We are not anti-business. We are anti-corporate control of government. And we want corporations (like Bank of America) to pay their fair share of the upkeep of this country.

        • Long John

          Just a sample of some of the protestors I’ve met.

          #1 – Out of work for three years. Wife does not work, two children.
          #2 – Student in second year at U of A. Does not have a job.
          #3 – Mother of one, had child with her, has not worked since 2002.

          How are they paying their fair share of the upkeep of this country? Seems to me they are on the ‘take’ side of the equation. Using tax dollars, but not putting anything in. This is fine, but if the issue is greed and paying into the system, they have no basis for complaint.

          • tunkashila

            They may not pay income taxes, but every person you listed undoubtedly pays sales taxes, excise taxes, fees to use “public” lands, etc.  Just because they might not be in the same income bracket with you is no excuse to discount their very real concerns about what has happened in the country we all share.  If anything, it seems you’re the one with no basis for complaint.

            • LJ Simpson

              Are you even from AZ. What excise tax and public land tax do youthink the people in my example are paying? Seems like they are taking more money out of the system than they have paid in, do you think otherwise?

              • The Baron

                Yep, been here 26 years so far-how ’bout you?  And I own land, possess a job, pay taxes, etc.  
                It doesn’t matter to me how much people pay in-the point is they paid.  Is societal worth now measured by the size of one’s enforced contributions to the state?  If you want to take a balance-sheet approach to things, the financial firms got over 100 times what has ever been put to welfare in one stroke and used it for fraudulent purposes with no accounting.  And they now expect us to pay it off. 
                Speaking for myself, I’d much rather my tax money go to feed someone than pad a banker’s retirement account.  Not sure of your priorities…

                • LJ Simpson

                  Baron, are you also, tunkashila? If not, I was not replying to your comment.

                  In case you did not follow the flow of these comments, I first replying to PP’s comment about paying our fair share. ”And we want corporations (like Bank of America) to pay their fair share of the upkeep of this country.”

                  • The Baron

                    I know you were replying to the other guy, I was just agreeing with him and putting in my 2 cents, which is what this forum is for. 
                    In the case of B of A and how much they pay into the system, it’s nothing-in fact, they received a $1.9 billion credit last year on top of the bailout money.  All 3 people you met may well not pay into the system, but they didn’t get anything close to the amount Bank of America did.  So who’s the societal leech again?

  • dollarshort

    Pease provide us your home and office address so we can camp out there. People who want to break the law seem to be the first to call the law when they are faced with the same situation. I wonder how many homeless and illegals need a place to stay tonight?

  • shane

    In the 1960s and early 1970s, protests in parks were usually legal – even overnight. But in the past 30-40 years, there has been a quiet and insidious campaign to restrict these rights in public spaces by passing ordinances restricting access to parks.  Constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and free speech don’t mean much if you have no physical public space to exercise those rights.  It’s incorrect to describe the protestors efforts as thinking that the rules don’t apply to them as fraser 007 says. It’s more accurate to say that the protestors are contesting bad laws that hamper exercise of basic constitutional rights. And for dollarshort, no need to call an attorney. There are many attorneys concerned about the erosion of constitutional rights who are volunteering to provide legal aid for the protestors.

    • http://tucsoncitizen.com/tucson-progressive pamela

      Shane, that’s interesting. I heard that the 10:30 pm ordinance was a decision by the parks and rec director in 1970 or so. What’s fascinating is that not all Tucson parks have curfews or permit requirements. DeAnza Park (Sone and Speedway) is one of those. It’s as if Tucson officials have decided to push the homeless and others who operate best in darkness to certain areas of town using these ordinances.

      • Long John

        “I heard”; always the sign of a serious journalist.

    • leftfield

      The eventual plan, no doubt, will be to privatize the parks and other public spaces.  This will be done under the guise of reducing costs, but one consequence will be that you will no more be able to gather and demonstrate in those spaces than you can today in that ne plus ultra of post-modern public spaces: the shopping mall.   The parks will be open to the public, but since it will be private property, the new owner, American Megacorp, and not the constitution, will decide what the limits of free speech will be.  

      • Steve Holt

        I don’t get it. Don’t you want to see the constitution scrapped? Aren’t you all about regime change?

        • The Truth

          I think he is about the billy goats walking on his bridge.

          • tunkashila

            …said the pot to the kettle.

        • tunkashila

          Nope, just for the system enforcing its laws on every level, not just against those who protest its lack of action.  You must be on some serious drugs to cook up the idea that people demanding their rights to protest under the Constitution would be seeking its destruction at the same time.  Time to adjust the dosage or switch prescriptions!

          • Steve Holt

            Who are you, and why are you answering a question addressed at leftfield? Do you seriously think I was referring to the movement as a whole?

  • Mikey78

    Maybe we should go occupy the white house. That’s government property, right? I wonder how that would go over. Also, DeAnza park closes at 10:30. All city Parks close either at sunset or at 10:30.

    • The Truth

      I hear the center westbound lane of I10 is public space and has no curfew, maybe the resistance should move there.

      If they insist on camping in downtown, how about pick up a broom or rake and pitch in cleaning up our city. I’m not talking about cleaning up after yourself, how about really doing something that matters, make our town look nicer. Lazy people, looking for attention to put meaning into their unemployed, failure life.

      • tunkashila

        Yeah, people so lazy they take more than a day out of their lives to go work towards the society they believe in, unemployed or not.  Don’t pay too much attention or you might have a revelation about what constitutes real laziness while you tap out your screeds from the comfort of an office or your bedroom.

  • alohapuna

    The first thing I would have expected was for the city council to issue a proclamation supporting Occupy Tucson as a part of the great national effort, Occupy Wall Street. As far as I’m concerned, the Tucson City Council has spoken. They have sent out the message that they are part of the problems that are being protested. As one who has helped on many campaigns, I’m deeply disappointed.

«
»

The Tucson Progressive

Pamela Powers Hannley writes the Tucson Progressive blog on the TucsonCitizen.com and contributes articles to the Huffington Post and Salon.com. She has had more than 30 years of experience in written, visual, and electronic communication—including freelance writing, photography, graphic design, and consulting. In addition to blogging for the Citizen, she is the Managing Editor of an international medical research journal.

Hannley has authored medical research articles, print magazine and newspaper stories, and numerous cancer prevention and self-help publications.

She has been a blogger since 2006, joined the ranks of Tucson Citizen bloggers in October 2010, and started contributing to the Huffington Post in 2011 and to Salon.com in 2012.

Hannley holds a masters’ degree in public health from The University of Arizona and a bachelors’ degree in journalism from The Ohio State University. She is a native of Amherst, Ohio but has lived in Tucson since 1981.