By Rebecca DiFede — This weekend, after months of “occupying” McPherson Square with little to no trouble, 31 occupiers were arrested by D.C. police officers and escorted off the premise. It may be surprising that this is the first arrest since the inception of the DC faction of the movement however the infraction is even more surprising.
Members of the Occupy D.C. movement decided to erect a large wooden building in the middle of their encampment in McPherson Square, so as to have a place to hold their “general assembly” meetings and be better protected from the elements. When police asked them to remove it, members refused and stood in solidarity around the structure, many held onto it, unwilling to move. The police had given the occupiers a one-hour deadline to start dismantling the large building, and when the protesters refused the police had no choice but to begin arresting them.
The reaction to police involvement was not amicable, and many resisted arrest and taunted police as if daring them to attempt to arrest them. One protestor even urinated off of the top of the structure before the police removed him from the roof. For a movement that claims to be about peaceful protesting and gaining support from others, that was deplorable at best.
The police only requested that the large plywood building be taken down. They even had a building inspector from the city of Washington come to the encampment who observed the structure, deemed it “unsafe”, and recommended that it be removed.
The police did not, however, attempt to disrupt the hundreds of tents and make-shift homes that cover almost the entirety of McPherson Square and stated that they were only concerned about the building and had no intention of removing them from the park.
This is a bit shocking, due to the fact that Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, the man who has just been charged with attempting to assassinate President Obama, is one of the more recent residents of the Occupy D.C. camp. Ortega-Hernandez hid at the Occupy D.C. encampment prior to the assassination attempt, and fled for Pittsburgh by the time police searched for him among the tents and piles of tarp in McPherson Square.
This movement claims to be peaceful and working towards a world where everyone can exist together, and yet one of their supposed members shot nine rounds at the windows of the White House with a long range rifle. Further proving the insanity of the Occupy factions, after a rally in San Diego their Occupy movement held a moment of silence for Ortega-Hernandez, citing him as one of them (as in, a member of the larger Occupy movement) and praising his dedication to the movement.
Well at least now Ortega-Hernandez and his structure-building friends can occupy a whole new destination: jail.
Rebecca DiFede is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government.
