We have all said from the beginning that while the goals of the Occupy Wall Street crowd were not wrong, their tactics have been quite lacking. Wall Street didn’t necessarily cause the horrid collapse of the American economy, they’re just trying to figure out a way to profit as much as they can from it. Although at times it may seem like the right thing, or the only thing, to do, wagging your finger at Wall Street isn’t doing us a whole lot of good, because of the legal structure they’ve built up to protect it.
Occupiers may be slightly angry at Wall Street or corporate America, but it’s ”the law” that will be in charge of actually stopping their movement, because it’s not like they can’t fight back. The police have already shown the people in Oakland what they are capable of. City ordinances, curfews, and unsympathetic judges are the people and the things that can turn Occupy Wall Street into something much worse than it already is.
But maybe, just maybe, the protesters are starting to understand what the true power is. And if they can get some fully trained lawyers on their side, they may have a shiny bit of hope.
During their fight with the law, members of the Occupy Nashville may have had an actual victory they can celebrate. The Tennessee reports:
State officials capitulated to Occupy Nashville protesters Monday and agreed to stop arresting people for violating a newly imposed curfew on Legislative Plaza. A federal judge said regulations created last week in response to the protest were ”not legally” put forward by Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration.
The state back down in the face of a federal lawsuit filed Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee on behalf of Occupy Nashville. The lawsuit alleged that the arrests and the new regulations were violations of the protesters’ First Amendment rights. The ACLU requested a temporary restraining order. State attorneys did not object at a hearing Monday afternoon, and U.S. District Judge Aleta A. Trauger granted the request.
We are allowed to talk as much as the want to about how much the rules are skewed and how we don’t want to follow them, but they’re still rules, and we have to follow them. They can be bent, but they can never really be broken. So, for once in their lives, they’re going to have to play by the rules. This change for them is going to happen very slow, and definitely in small increments. Change will happen at a ballot box or a courthouse.
This change can happen with severe perseverance, and a lot of patience. But that is something that lawyers can help them with. Lawyers are very good and relentlessly keeping up with an issue for years and years, long after the fact that the protesters have gone home.