For the past few weeks, a small group of rag-tag occupiers have set up a shanty town in Keiner Plaza, the site of many St. Louis Tea Party rallies. They have done so without a permit and without insurance — things the city demanded of the St. Louis Tea Party before they were allowed use of the space. Demonstrators plug their laptops and space heaters into the park’s power outlets. Should an accident occur, the lack of insurance will place the city on the hook for liability. Yesterday in an interview with Mayor Slay’s spokesman Jeff Rainford, I learned that the city isn’t exactly keen to bring the group into compliance with the law.
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The cost for renting out Keiner Plaza isn’t cheap, though not as expensive as permits for usage of federal park space. A letter to my STLTP Co-Founder Bill Hennessy detailed a list of actionable and monetary requirements before the city would allow an August 4th, 2011 Tea Party event to take place:
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These regulations were followed with our last two events at Keiner, April 2009 and November 2009. In a statement released via blog post on Friday, Mayor Slay admitted to having offered occupiers a “free” permit, which they refused:
But, we went a little further than just ignoring the Occupy encampment. The City offered a permit and, even wrote one, but Occupy’s occupiers declined it.
Over the past several days, there has been a rising tide of complaints. I know, and the Occupy participants know, that they cannot stay there forever. Bad weather and other programming for Kiener Plaza are racing each other to mark the end of their tenure.
The City’s Parks Department has prepared a list of ordinances and regulations which it believes Occupy is in current violation. We will present that list to Occupy.
I expect that we will reach an accommodation that allows Occupy to use Kiener Plaza, to exercise its First Amendment rights, but to follow City ordinances and regulations.
The city should have evicted the occupiers when the free permit was refused and city law broken. When the St. Louis Tea Party lost its insurance the night before the November 2009 protest, we had to scramble to replace it, or the city would have disallowed the demonstration. Rainford’s excuse for the city’s allowance for breaking the law was that the occupy group may not have beeen able to afford the permit, but they were able to afford a Cardinals World Series sign.
Since the unions “donated” the port-a-potties and mass-produced pro-union signs, you’d figure that they could also bear the cost of obtaining permits — permits which would offset the cost of the electricity the occupiers use — instead of forcing city residents to pick up the tab. Perhaps the unions could have also bought the group insurance coverage. I’m not a fan of tyranny via regulations and permits, but the Tea Party followed the law — partly by force, partly out of good faith — and many now feel that faith was squandered.
Rainford tried to make this about protecting free speech, so if it is, why then was the city less interested in the Tea Party’s free speech? Why did the city demand that the Tea Party pay for their free speech via permits and insurance while giving the occupiers a pass? Why did the city attempt to withhold the Tea Party’s right to free speech and peaceful assembly by revoking use of Keiner the night before a rally due to insurance? By Rainford’s logic, that would be the promotion of one group over another before the law, which itself is a violation of civil rights.
OWS vs. TP: To the left, Occupy St. Louis rally with a tally of 500 people. To the right, a tea party rally with a crowd estimate at 10k, according to the park rangers.
The St. Louis City Mayor has created a problem now since his administration declined to enforce the law a month later. Due to rising complaints from city dwellers and area businesses, Slay’s office was forced to issue a condemnation, which predictably, the occupy group is contesting:
If this morning’s events are any indicator, it looks increasingly unlikely that Occupy St. Louis protesters will leave their camp at downtown’s Kiener Plaza without a fight.
Friday, Mayor Francis Slay warned the group that it was violating several city laws. He said complaints were building and, with bad weather approaching and other events scheduled in the plaza this month, it was time for an end to the occupiers’ “tenure.”
The city’s parks department had even prepared a list of ordinance violations to present to the group.
[…]
But, this morning, Occupy St. Louis alleged that Slay’s announcement was just another instance where the city bent to corporate leaders. This time, said the unsigned statement on the Occupy St. Louis website, it was the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis who had swayed the mayor’s decisions.
[…]
“There are lots of people complaining. I’m not going to point at one versus the other,” he [Jeff Rainford] said. “I’m not going to get into it. What I would prefer not to happen is to have this personalized.”
The city, he said, would not meet with occupiers today, nor would it discuss the issue in the press.
“We’re gonna cool off,” Rainford said this morning. “It’s probably going to get inflamed anyway.”
“All I’m trying to do is to keep this from becoming Oakland,” he said. “I’m trying to get this solved with no violence.”
So the city is refusing to enforce the law because the self-described “peaceful” occupy group may act like domestic terrorists and riot and damage property? Isn’t that more reason to stop this now? The city makes itself a larger accessory the more this continues.
*At the time of this writing, St. Louis local news reported that occupiers were considering moving their encampment to the Arch grounds, possibly even directly under the Arch. That’s federal territory where the permits are incredibly more expensive (the Tea Party has three times paid for use of the space) and fall under federal jurisdiction as it is a federal park.
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