TRI In The News

Occupiers May Stay in Lee Park ... For Now

From The Daily Progress
Original article available here.

Occupy Charlottesville activists have been given more wiggle room this week as local officials balked at a previously imposed Thanksgiving deadline by deciding the group can stay in Lee Park indefinitely until a better location is found.

Mayor Dave Norris said Tuesday that officials have settled on a “win-win” outcome by ensuring downtown residents that they’ll get their park back in the near future, while also allowing the occupy group to continue its activity elsewhere.

“I’m imagining that it will be a matter of days, as opposed to a matter of weeks or months, before we find another site,” Norris said. “…In my mind it doesn’t have to be a public park. I’m open to ideas.”

The occupy activists marched on City Hall Monday night to request that the 11 p.m. park curfew remain lifted past Thanksgiving. During one of the most well-attended City Council meetings in recent history, more than 50 speakers urged the councilors to continue to accommodate the movement that sprang up on Oct. 15 as an offshoot of the national occupy movement against economic inequality and corporate greed. The council essentially delivered a mixed verdict, voicing a desire to return the park to its former state while simultaneously invalidating the Thanksgiving deadline, which both the city and the occupiers have been eyeing for weeks.

On Tuesday morning, city staff members met to sort out the logistical details. In a reversal from earlier statements, city officials said the occupiers’ special-event permit would be extended past a previously agreed upon 30-day window, without setting another deadline.

“We will continue to deliver three-day permits [today] to Occupy Charlottesville but do not intend on establishing an end date at this point,” city spokesman Ric Barrick said in email. “Our charge is to find a suitable location for their activities that is not a neighborhood park and work with them to continue a dialogue of open communication.”

Instead of a neighborhood park, Barrick said the options include larger areas such as McIntire Park, Darden Towe Park and other open spaces.

One idea that Norris seems particularly intrigued by is a proposal from lawyer John W. Whitehead of the Albemarle County-based civil liberties group the Rutherford Institute. In a Monday letter to the City Council, Whitehead said he had met with occupiers and was willing to help work on the creation of an alternative “free speech forum” for them and other groups. Norris read aloud from the letter at Monday’s meeting and suggested that city officials look into Whitehead’s proposal in the coming days.

In an interview Tuesday, Whitehead said he’s looking to create a modern-day equivalent of the public forums seen in ancient Greece and Rome, which he said would be “probably unlike anything in the country.” Whitehead said his idea involves an existing public space, possibly a park.

“What I’m going to suggest to the mayor and the council, is that there needs to be a free-speech task force to see if this would be possible,” Whitehead said. “It’d have to be close enough to the seat of power, such as where the City Council meets, so that people could walk down to engage City Council.”

Whitehead acknowledged that his proposal doesn’t mesh well with the occupiers desire to camp out overnight, saying the idea involves activity that takes place for a limited period of time, which could prove “quite restrictive” to those who would want to camp.

Whitehead said he thinks a task force could be assembled in a few days, and he hopes to finish a memo by today or early next week.

It remains unclear how receptive the occupiers are to the idea of heeding the city’s request to move to another location.

On Monday, occupier Bailee Hampton led the activists assembled in City Hall in a call-and-response group statement, which focused on making the case against the Lee Park curfew.

“Our First Amendment rights that protect our human rights to peaceably assemble, to petition our government for a redress of grievances and to have freedom of speech, must trump our local ordinance regarding curfew in the park,” Hampton said Monday. “Even during the hours of the curfew, we use our time to come together to make plans, educate one another and talk about ideas that are bigger than us all. We must continue to do so. Only when you stay put, can you grow roots.”

Hampton could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

North Downtown resident Colette Hall, one of the few who stood at Monday’s meeting to urge the council to restore Lee Park to its former state, said councilors ducked their responsibilities by using the Whitehead letter as an “out” to avoid taking a direct vote on the park’s future.

“It’s their responsibility to take a vote so the people know where they stand,” Hall said in an interview Tuesday. “When you don’t take a vote and you come up with just a general agreement, that to me is kind of a cop-out...It’s your responsibility to say this is where I stand and here’s my vote, up or down.”

It was the City Council that allowed the protest, Hall said, so it should fall on the council to find a solution.

“They’re going to not take a stand if they think they can negotiate, which is not a bad thing, but the neighborhood is still in limbo, the library is still in limbo, the churches are still in limbo and in a way, the occupiers are still in limbo,” Hall said.

Norris said he’s gotten positive feedback from other North Downtown residents who are glad the park will be restored, but the occupiers’ activity offers no reason for a police crackdown.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to dig their heels in Lee Park. What they are going to dig their heels in on are their rights to free assembly and free speech,” Norris said. “…If we agree as a community that this is an activity that should be allowed to occur, then we have to figure out where can we find a site where their rights are in less conflict with other people’s rights.”