62 | CI NCI NNATI | FEBRUARY 201 2

/BY WI LLI AM POWELL /I LLUSTRATI ONS BY JOSEPH LANEY

WHAT DID THE OCCUPIERS
AT PIATT PARK WANT? ONLY
A FULL-SCALE REALIGNMENT
OF WEALTH IN THIS COUNTRY.
AND CLEAN BATHROOMS, TOO.
I T WAS T HE PROT E ST S 1 3 T H DAY,
perhaps a bad sign. More than 100 demonstrators and support-
ers were packed into the eastern block of the park, a grassless
stretch of urban terrain that runs down the center of Gareld
Place between Vine and Race streets. The central walkway was
littered with tents and tarps in bright blues and reds, and the
parks lights, strung from metal arches, made everything glow. It
felt a little like being back at Boy Scout camp, only the pubescent
boys had been replaced with politically disillusioned adults.
Rumor had it that after a week and a half of citationsand
escalating chest-pung and smoke-blowing on all sidesthe
police were preparing to make arrests. The source of this infor-
mation was a little murky, but somehow the protesters knew
what was coming. They had taken down the large white supply
tent at the front of the park, as well as their food tent, and rallied
their non-camping supporters. Some of the more experienced
activists were training others on the proper way to be arrested,
which requires more skill than one would assume; passive resis-
tance (i.e., going limp) counts as resisting arrest in Ohio.
The buzz of nervous anticipation was palpable. Josh Spring,
the director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Home-
less, was giving a 10-minute pep talk about civil disobedience.
We will be peaceful! he shouted. A dozen or so protesters re-
peated his words so that everyone else could hear, a trick the
Occupy movement calls The Peoples Mic, an ingenious if
sometimes annoying substitute for a P.A. system. Justin Jere, a
former member of the boy band 98 Degrees, a former candidate
for both City Council and mayor, and current owner of what
may be the citys largest collection of porkpie hats, led a series
of chants. In unison, the Occupiers cried out, We. Are. The 99
percent. Once that was beaten to death, Jere sang out, Tell me
what democracy looks like. And the crowd yelled back, This is
what democracy looks like. (It was raging, Jere told me later.
We knew that we were going to be arrested, but that wasnt
going to stop us.)
Meanwhile, a group of Occupiers marched in circles hold-
ing signs. Taken together, the slogans summarized the groups
major grievances. First and foremost, theyre mad: 99 percent
angry. The richest 1 percent of the population holds 40 percent
of the wealth, a gap that is only growing: People over prots. Cor-
porations and lobbyists inuence politics, leaving regular folks
feeling voiceless: Money out of politics. While the working class
lost their homes, big banks received massive bailouts: Too corrupt
to fail. And my favorite sign, a Jay-Z reference: The 1 percent has
99 problems, and this bitch is one. (Runner up: That stu trickling
down on you isnt money.)
As time passed, people became a little restless. Dan La Botz,
a 66-year-old Spanish teacher, adjunct history professor at the
University of Cincinnati, and socialist, led songs on an acoustic
64 | CI NCI NNATI | FEBRUARY 201 2
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FEBRUARY 201 2 | CI NCI NNATI | 65
guitar. I asked an older guy if he planned to get arrested. Nope.
I did all this in the 60s, he said, but back then we had acid.
To kill time, I struck up a conversation with a streetcar-sup-
porting naturalist, a couple who worked at a bike collective, and a
guy named Alex. They hypothesized that the arrests were coming
because Carl Lindners funeral parade was scheduled to pass by
the next day. I pointed out the obvious irony of the city remov-
ing members of the self-appointed 99 percent in deference to
a member of the other 1 percent. But the conversation quickly
turned from the evils of corporate greed to the new iPhone that
Apple had unveiled a few days earlier.
Around 11:30, some of the television news trucks that had
been parked across the street gave up on catching any breaking
news and left, and the naturalist followed. I overheard a girl telling
Jere that people were tired but were afraid to drink coee with-
out a 24-hour public bathroom in the vicinity, a problem that had
been dogging them throughout the occupation. Someone said
the police were probably waiting until after the news and might
show up soon, but Jere thought theyd hold o until the middle
of the night to wear the protesters down.
Around midnight, yawning and shivering, I convinced my-
self that no one was getting arrested that night and went home.
Within 20 minutes, the police hauled 23 protesters o to jail and
cleared their stu from the park.
FOR MORE THAN TWO WEEKS, FROM
that Thursday night through November 8, Election Day, when
Occupy Cincinnati turned one month old, I partially embedded
myself in the group. I stayed out late enough to witness the next
night of arrests and over time attended eight general assembly
meetings, two marches, a few nighttime protests, a teach-in,
a candlelight vigil, a bank protest, and even the ocial Occupy
Cincinnati Halloween
Party. To ll in the parts
I missed, I interviewed
roughly 30 members
of the group and their
lawyers, as well as a city
councilman, a police
captain, the city man-
ager, the city solicitor,
a bona fide 1 percenter,
and more. Since these
protests played out as
political theater, my aim was to talk to as many of the actors as I
could in hopes of nding a moral to the story.
With a Twitter feed (@OccupyCincy), Facebook page (Oc-
cupy Cincinnati), website (OccupyCincy.org), and committees
for every possible need (including direct action, legal, education,
and food), Occupy Cincinnati is better organized than your aver-
age protest. But because the movement strives to be leaderless
(I like to think of it more as a leaderful movement, Jere told
me, whatever that means. . .) and because no one in the group will
make a decision without mass approval, communicating with
them can be a pain. Individually, Occupy Cincinnati members
were more aable, though many made special requests; I heard
the phrases o the record, attorney-client privilege, and not at lib-
erty to say more times than I can count.
Participatory journalism sometimes requires situational eth-
ics, so I made up a few rules as I went along. I abstained from vot-
ing at Occupy assemblies, at the request of the group. I generally
refrained from chanting, unless I really agreed with the message
(What do we want? Free speech! When do we want it? Now!). I should
also disclose that I accepted one candy bar and one pen from La
Botzbut hes a social-
ist, so taking a handout
from him is essentially
the same as not accept-
ing one that a Republican
didnt oer.
In my effort to fig-
ure out the meaning of
Occupy, I learned some
fascinating things about
park rules, the petti-
ness of local politics,
anarchists, the logistics (hygienic and otherwise) of living on
a gloried sidewalk, and what really goes on inside the Justice
Center. In the end, I came away with a deeper understanding of
the problems facing the country and an appreciation for what it
takes to Occupy.
ECONOMI C AND POL I TI C AL UNREST
was the mother of Occupy Wall Street, but its father was Kalle
Lasn, the 69-year-old cofounder of AdBusters, an anti-consum-
erist magazine based in Canada. CONTI NUE D ON PAGE 1 08
THESE ARENT ABSTRACT
THINGS, ROCO TOLD ME. WHEN
YOU START TO SLIP DOW
N THE
ECONOM
IC LADDER, IT HAS REALLY
CONCRETE EFFECTS IN YOUR LIFE.
108 | CI NCI NNATI | FEBRUARY 201 2
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CONTI NUE D F ROM PAGE 65
62 | CI NCI NNATI | FEBRUARY 201 2
/BY WI LLI AM POWELL /I LLUSTRATI ONS BY JOSEPH LANEY
WHAT DID THE OCCUPIERS
AT PIATT PARK WANT? ONLY
A FULL-SCALE REALIGNMENT
OF WEALTH IN THIS COUNTRY.
AND CLEAN BATHROOMS, TOO.
It was Lasn who had the idea for a camp,
came up with the name, and set the date
for the protest to begin: September 17,
his mothers birthday. Once Lasn planted
the seed, early organizers on the ground
in New York Citymany of them self-
described anarchiststook over, giving
Occupy its horizontal structure and es-
tablishing the rst camp in the country at
Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.
Last fall, Occupy Wall Street gradually
gained a place in the national conscious-
ness when the groups various clashes
with police drew media attention. As
more protests popped up across the coun-
try (and the Internet), a handful of fans
in Cincinnati created a Facebook page to
start an occupation of their own. One of
the first organizers was Nathan Lane, a
35-year-old journeyman electrician, who
had been watching the events in New York
with excitement and maybe even a little
relief. I had a long litany of grievances
with the state of our government and the
level of corruption throughout the sys-
tem, Lane says. We have been waiting
for this moment.
Locally and nationally the media has
been obsessed with one crucial question:
What do the Occupiers want? When pro-
testers struggle to articulate an answer,
the movement is criticized for not hav-
ing clear goals or demands. I think they
need to sharpen their message, says for-
mer mayor and Towne Properties partner
Arn Bortz, whose company owns several
buildings on Piatt Park. Looking for dark
conspiracies of corporate inuence over
elected ocials is nave and simplistic and
not really productive at all.
Its true that, despite the wealth gap
these people are fighting, many of them
enjoy a standard of livinglaptops, smart
phones, fancy camping equipment, ex-
pensive nicotine habitsthat would be
the envy of a couple billion people across
the globe. But if you forget about Occupy
and focus instead only on the cold facts
of the state of our nation, it doesnt take
long to conclude that something is amiss.
According to an Associated Press analysis
of census data, 48 percent of Americans
now either live in poverty or are classied
as low-income. And income inequality
the gap between the rich and the pooris
greater in the United States than in any
other developed nation, not to mention
Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran. The American
Dream, that familiar buzzword-lled nar-
rative about self-made men who pull them-
selves up by their bootstraps to go from rags
to riches, appears to be withering. Based
solely on class mobility statistics, high
school history lessons on the Norwegian
Dream would be much more appropriate.
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When faced with figures like these,
Occupy argues that any political or eco-
nomic system that creates such inequal-
ity is fundamentally broken. And they see
nearly everything in the news as proof that
the government serves only the wealthiest
few. So it may not be a demand, but Down
with the rich is a pretty clear message.
OCCUPY CINCINNATIS rst victim was
Kathy Holwadel. This was an accident.
In the weeks leading up to their opening
march on October 8, Occupy Cincinnati
organizers tried to put together a peaceful
and respectful demonstration. They held
planning meetings, applied for a permit
to use Fountain Square, and met with po-
lice. We just opened up the dialogue,
says Captain Doug Wiesman, the former
commander of District 1. They were very
appreciative of us meeting with them.
When the protesters passed along the
map of their proposed route, police asked
them to start at Lytle Park instead of Saw-
yer Point, where another event was sched-
uled. No problem, said the Occupiers.
What they didnt know at the time was
that Holwadel, the business manager at the
School Amici, an Italian language school,
had spent the past three months planning
an event at Lytle Park on that same day. As
a companion project to the Taft Museum
of Arts George Inness in Italy exhibition,
Holwadel had put together a month-long
celebration called Cincinnati Dreams
Italy. She persuaded Western & Southern
to let her use four empty historical build-
ings near the park as temporary galleries
for local artists (no small feat). To kick it
all o, Holwadel organized a bocce tourna-
ment. That meant building a bocce court in
the park, which in turn necessitated rais-
ing $6,000 and acquiring approval from
the park boarda body that is not always
accommodating of special requests, like
those from groups of camping protest-
ers. Shed even lined up pizza, gelato, and
espresso vendors to feed the attendees.
The tournament was about to begin
when hundreds of protesters filed into
the park, some of them with children who
used the bocce court as a sandbox. Occupy
Cincinnati apologized. Were so polite in
Cincinnati that we even have very polite
protests, says Holwadel.
But then the police accompanying the
demonstration started asking questions
about the Italian festival, and it quickly
became clear that the Taft Museum had
neglected to get a permit. The food ven-
dors were told to leave, the gelato melted,
and the bocce tournament was postponed.
Believe it or not, I like a good protest,
Holwadel told me later. It just was too bad
that it happened during my event.
Aside from squelching the bocce fest,
the opening march was a success. Roughly
1,000 people showed up to walk from Lytle
Park to Findlay Market and back to Foun-
tain Square, where they set up a sound sys-
tem and preached, chanted, and sang until
even Jere lost his voice. For organizers
who worried that Cincinnatians would be
more interested in watching TV than cor-
recting social ills, it was a proud moment.
FEBRUARY 201 2 | CI NCI NNATI | 109
110 | CI NCI NNATI | FEBRUARY 201 2
WINTER OF OUR DISCOUNT TENTS
We had this huge group of people shout-
ing about democracy and people over
prot, says Erik Crew, a 30-year-old para-
legal. It was a really nice answer to that
question: Do people want to see change?
It was clear from the beginning that the
movement appealed to a diverse group of
peopleblack and white, young and old,
middle-class and homeless. And it turns
out that the employment rate among the
protesters was far higher than those jerks
who drove by Piatt Park screaming Get
a job! assumed. Teachers, waitresses,
handymen, and social workers intermin-
gled with the customary cadre of hippie/
activist types. Generally, we have a usual
suspects crowd, says Aliya Rahman, a
29-year-old who stages protests for a liv-
ing at the Center for Community Change.
But [for the Occupy Cincinnati march]
we had all of these folks who I had never
seen come to anything.
Theres a reason for that. Put yourself
in the shoes of Aaron Roco, a 33-year-old
single dad. A couple of years ago, Roco was
a well-paid general manager in the hospi-
tality industry. Then he got laid o. Then
he got laid o thrice morefour times in
24 months. Now, hes working two part-
time jobs that he describes as far below
my pay grade and experience level. He
remains debt-free, but he struggles to pay
his rent and his 4-year-olds preschool tu-
ition. And given the state of our economy,
Rocos shoes might not feel all that dier-
ent than your own. This is something of
a universal situation in this country, he
says. These arent abstract things. When
you start to slip down the economic ladder,
it has really concrete eects in your life.
BY LAW, FOUNTAIN Square closes at 3
a.m., but the group chose 10 protesters to
remain past the deadline the night of the
march. One of them was Sonnet Gabbard,
a 28-year-old graduate student at the Uni-
versity of Cincinnati. Gabbard has been in-
volved in activism since high school, when
she wrote a letter to the editor standing
up for a teacher whose job was in jeopar-
dy because she had invited an HIV patient
to talk to her class. The teachers job was
spared and Gabbard found her calling. On
the night of October 8, Gabbard says, We
were all prepared for arrests.
But there were none. Instead, a dozen
or so cops and those 10 volunteers staged
a staring contest until sunrise, when the
Occupiers moved to Piatt Park. There they
set up camp and for the next week and a
half rode out almost nightly visits from
the cops, who handed out $105 citations
for being in the park after hours (the park
is closed between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.).
When the police arrived, they would an-
nounce that anyone who remained in the
park would be cited. Many of the protest-
ers would cross the street to stand on the
sidewalk, while those who remained in
the camp lined up to accept their tickets
(some pinned the citations to their jackets
as badges of honor). Occasionally, an o-
cer would show up on a horse or a Segway,
just to keep things interesting.
Despite some overblown media re-
portsin October for instance, The Cin-
cinnati Enquirer reported that Captain
Wiesman was having coee each morning
with the protesters when it really only hap-
pened once (Ive gotten a lot of crap about
that at the oce, he says)the police and
protesters got along quite well. Indeed, Oc-
cupy Cincinnati may have been one of the
best-managed occupations in the country
last fall. Wiesman and other city ocials
maintained regular contact with the pro-
testers; even after arresting them, he was
complimentary. Im just thankful that the
local Occupy Cincinnati protesters have
made a conscious decision to be a peaceful,
law-abiding group of people, he told me.
Because Piatt Park is not designed for
camping, the group faced some practical
challengesfood, water, where to go to
the bathroomthough little seemed to
faze them. The food committee posted a
grocery list on a bulletin board and on the
Occupy Cincinnati website. They cooked
at a kitchen in Northside and served meals
from a large blue tent. As for the human
waste issue, the protesters convinced their
homeless members to stop peeing in the
alley after the first couple of days. The
bathrooms at the Main Library were avail-
able during business hours. And at least
a couple of local businesses were willing
to let the Occupiers use their facilities
(though the Gareld Suites did complain
that protesters abused their restrooms).
In cases of major overnight emergencies, a
few camperssuch as Chelsea Tunnell, a
22-year-old waitress with an apartment in
Lovelandwere willing to transport peo-
ple to their homes. They deny that anyone
actually defecated in the park. Thats dis-
gusting, Gabbard said. I wouldnt want to
sleep somewhere that that was happening.
The experience of living together
helped solidify the group. Steve Howard,
a guitar teacher from Dillonvale, remem-
bers a new camper trying to set up his tent
one night. The wind picked up, and then
it started pouring. Then the sprinklers
came onbecause the city needs to be wa-
tering plants in the fall when its raining,
Howard said. Immediately, everyone in the
camp lent the soggy new Occupier a hand.
It was beautiful.
ANYONE WHO THOUGHT that the ar-
rests would break Occupy Cincinna-
ti didnt understand the meaning of the
movement. The core of Occupy is the con-
sensus decision-making process that they
use each night at the General Assembly
(GA). Some of the more radical Occupiers
nationwide would like to replace our ver-
tical form of representative government
with a leaderless, horizontal one modeled
on the GAa proposition that becomes
more disconcerting the more time you ac-
tually spend at their meetings.
Heres the basic protocol: Each assem-
bly is led by a moderator who pushes the
group through the agenda without voting
or taking a stand on any of the issues. Fill-
ing this role at many of the groups early
meetings was Jens Rasmussen, an actor
Loeb proposed a sweeping scheme
to convert the worlds governments
to consensus decision-making.
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from Brooklyn who was in town to play
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tion of Gruesome Playground Injuries.
(Rasmussen had experience with con-
sensus decision-making from partici-
pating in Iraq War protests in 2003.) In
Piatt Park, the moderator would stand
back-to-back with the statue of Presi-
dent Gareld, anked by two facilitators
and a secretary.
To avoid a free-for-all, participants
use a series of arcane hand signals. Rath-
er than applaud, members who like what
they hear raise both hands and wiggle
their ngers. To clarify what a speaker
is saying, you make a C-shape with your
hand. If there is factual information to
add, you karate chop the air with both
hands. If the speaker is droning on, you
spin your index ngers around in a circle
to signal wrap it up. If the speaker is
o topic or out of order, you make the
point-of-process signal (a triangle
formed using thumbs and index ngers).
And if someone just wants to voice a
regular old opinion, they raise one hand.
The facilitators call on people based on
the frequency with which they speak
meaning people who talk less go rst.
When it comes time to vote on an
issue, the same motion as applause
waving your ngers above your head
means yes. Extending your arms in front
of your body and wiggling your ngers
parallel to the ground means youre on
the fence. And making T. Rex arms
(pulling your arms to your sides, bending
your elbows, and wiggling your ngers at
the ground) means no. Any motion must
have 90 percent approval to pass.
The nal hand signalmaking an X
with your forearmsis the most severe.
It means that you are blocking the cur-
rent vote and will be given a chance to air
your grievance. Rasmussen advised that
this should be used only in rare circum-
stances when you have a strong moral
or ethical objection to the proposal be-
ing voted upon, an objection so strong
that you would leave the movement were
the motion to passwhich seems like
something from an episode of Survivor.
On October 21, the day after the rst
night of arrests, Rasmussen had just
FEBRUARY 201 2 | CI NCI NNATI | 111
112 | CI NCI NNATI | FEBRUARY 201 2
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nished explaining the severity of a block
when a woman named Courtney stood up
and blocked the meeting from even start-
ing. Many of the 23 people who had been
arrested the night before were not present
and she thought it was unfair to convene
without them. She also suspected that
some of them were being held against
their will at an undisclosed location. It
turned out the missing people were just
napping after an exhausting night in the
Justice Center. When everyone voted to
continue the meeting, Courtney stormed
off. (She returned the next day, though,
which removed some of the doomsday
aura from the blocking procedure.)
When meetings are actually able to
start, they go like this: First, people issue
challenges to the group. Things like, I
challenge everyone to come to the Hallow-
een party. Next, individuals can ask that
proposals be added to the agenda. A vote
is taken about each. Then committees give
reports. After that, the individual propos-
als that made it past the previous vote are
discussed and voted on again. Then there
are acknowledgementsI acknowledge
everyone who had the courage to be ar-
restedfollowed by adjournment with a
Tell me what democracy looks like call-and-
response.
Its a fascinating process, Rasmus-
sen told me. Absolutely, I thought. But ef-
fective? It really is democratic and open,
but still has enough structure that we can
actually work through things, he went on.
Even with this groups inexperience with
it, the process has held up every time.
That may be technically true, but the
process has two major aws. First, some
topicseither outlandish ideas with no
chance of ever reaching 90 percent ap-
proval or harmless proposals that should
pass instantlyare debated endlessly.
Second, because of the need for consensus
and the ability to block, it isnt dicult
for troublemakersradicals trying to pre-
vent the group from being co-opted by
reasonable peopleto gum up the works.
Case in point: At the GA on October 26,
a protester named Coulter Loeb announced
that a splinter cell, Occupy Clifton, had
formed at the University Cincinnati. He
proposed a sweeping and complicated
scheme for creating various sub-assem-
blies around the city, which would all
answer to the metropolitan assembly in
Piatt Park. His plan extended to holding a
regional assembly with other cities within
a month, a national assembly within the
year, and converting all of the governments
of the world to consensus decision-making
within the decade. Someone sitting next to
me joked that within the century the group
should occupy Mars.
This proposal required no discussion,
but that didnt stop the group from de-
bating it for an hour. A guy named Hugh
said the people from Occupy Clifton were
putting out slanderous material about Oc-
cupy Cincinnati and were not friends. An-
other person said that Hughs allegations
were dangerous. Someone else said the
Occupy Clifton folks should be present to
vote on subordinating themselves. There
FEBRUARY 201 2 | CI NCI NNATI | 113
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followed a discussion of a group starting
in Corryville called Occupy the Hood. And
on and on.
As Gabbard noted later, Democracy
isnt pretty.
ASI DE FROM THE citations, the groups
rst week in Piatt Park was pretty quiet.
During the second week, however, ten-
sions between protesters and city ocials
escalated, culminating in three successive
nights of arrests. Occupy Cincinnati red
the opening volley on Monday, October
17, by suing the city, the park board, and
the police department in federal court,
arguing that the park rules and their en-
forcement violated the protesters First
Amendment right to free speech.
That same day, Arn Bortz and a few
other business owners from around Piatt
Park went to City Hall to meet with Mayor
Mallory, city manager Milton Dohoney,
and city solicitor John Curp. Bortz and his
cohorts pointed out that the area around
Piatt Park is a residential neighborhood,
and that those residents have a legitimate
interest in having the park clean and ac-
cessible. (As Bortz put it: First Amend-
ment rights dont include defecating in
the park.)
That Tuesday, Judge Susan Dlott is-
sued a 28-hour temporary restraining or-
der preventing the police from issuing any
citations for one night, so that the city and
the protesters could discuss a settlement.
The two sides met at the main library but
no agreement was reached (and the law-
suit remained open at press time).
As if legal matters werent complicat-
ed enough, that Thursday the park board
amended its rules to include specic cri-
teria for permit applicationsmostly
policies the board claims it has followed
for years but had never put in writing. Ac-
cording to park board spokeswoman Deb-
orah Allison, park rules had not changed
since 1974 and the board felt it was time to
bring them up-to-date. The rule change
was not specically due to the protest,
she said. To which the Occupiers respond-
ed: If the rules havent changed in nearly
40 years, why change them now?
Meanwhile, at City Hall, four mem-
bers of City CouncilWayne Lippert,
Leslie Ghiz, Chris Bortz, and Amy Mur-
raywere urging the city manager and
police department to remove the occupa-
tion. Lippert and Ghiz threatened a vote
of no condence in Dohoney, and Lippert
oated a mostly powerless motion ask-
ing for arrests. Lippert was worried that
the selective enforcement of park rules
could open the city to litigation. It was
providing a powerful precedent, he said.
But according to Rob Linneman, a lawyer
for Occupy Cincinnati who is also using
selective enforcementto argue in fa-
vor of the proteststhe precedent isnt
all that powerful. That defense never
works, he said. Most judges will tell you
that if a police ocer doesnt cite the rst
person for speeding but cites the second
person for speeding, that second person
still has to pay that ne.
According to Solicitor Curp, the deci-
114 | CI NCI NNATI | FEBRUARY 201 2
WINTER OF OUR DISCOUNT TENTS
sion to move from citations to arrests was
simply about progressive enforcement.
The city was talking with the protesters,
trying to convince them to leave the park
voluntarily. The problem was that the Oc-
cupiers couldnt decide what they wanted.
There was never a clear line of com-
munication with clarity with this group,
Milton Dohoney said. It was really the
choice of the protesters. Were they will-
ing to abide and clear the park or not? And
there came a point in time when some de-
cided they werent going to, so they were
arrested.
The police action I witnessed was
highly ecient and orderly. Certainly the
protesters collective pride was bruised.
But things could have gone much worse.
(Just search UC Davis Pepper Spray on
YouTube and you get an idea.)
I was talking to a wisecracking protest-
er about his Occupy My Pants sign about an
hour after closing time on Friday, October
21, when more than a dozen police cruis-
ers came racing up Vine Street and sur-
rounded Piatt Park. Very quickly, Captain
Wiesman and roughly 30 ocers entered
the park and announced that it was closed.
Wiesman made it clear that anyone who
stayed would be arrested and that he
would much prefer if everyone just left.
About 100 protesters crossed over to the
opposite sidewalk; the 10 that remained in
the park sat down in two lines facing each
other. One by one, the police put them in
zip-tie handcus, walked them to a van,
patted them down, and loaded them in
while their comrades boisterously recit-
ed the First Amendment (CONGRESS
SHALL MAKE NO LAW. . .) over and
over. In the end, the police made 11 arrests
that night. In the heat of the moment, one
more protester joined the 10 in the park.
It has that eect on people, apparently,
Linneman said. People get their First
Amendment juices owing.
Once everyone was loaded into the
vans, they drove o to the District 1 police
station for the rst round of processing
and then to the Justice Center, where they
were fingerprinted, photographed, and
placed in cramped, bedless holding cells
for the night.
One of the arrested protesters was
Suhith Wickrema, a 48-year-old social
worker for Hamilton County. He has seen
the county lay off hundreds of people,
all the while paying millions of dollars a
year to the Bengals. For me, that is clear
evidence of the disproportionate influ-
ence private companies have in our public
policy, he says. Wickrema is in a wheel-
chair because of complications from can-
cer treatments, which made extra work
for the ocers who arrested him. While
changing clothes at the Justice Center, he
struggled with his socks. Both young cor-
rections ocers knelt down and put the
socks on for me, he said, adding that they
were wonderful.
On the whole, the only complaint I
heard from protesters regarding their
treatment was that some corrections of-
cers used harsh languagean indication
the Occupiers are probably not suited to
a life of crime. After a third night of ar-
reststhis time on Fountain Squarethe
occupiers ran out of bail money and gave
up on camping.
OCCUPY CINCINNATI dubbed the fol-
lowing week Education Week. The
group held various classes, on topics rang-
ing from yoga to urban planning, in meet-
ing rooms at the main library. Dan La Botz
gave a seminar on the industrial revolu-
tion. La Botz has a long history as an activ-
ist: participating in United Farm Workers
strikes led by Cesar Chavez, leaving col-
lege to join the working class as a truck
driver and steel worker, and blocking a
federal building to protest the Reagan ad-
ministrations moves in Latin America.
Surprisingly, his arrest in Piatt Park was
the rst of his life. In 2010, La Botz rep-
resented the Socialist Party in the race
for U.S. Senate. Rob Portman won with
2.1 million votes but La Botz garnered
26,454which is 26,454 more Socialists
than I would have guessed live in the state
of Ohio. He delivered a fairly typical col-
lege history lecture, with a little extra so-
cialist spin. Phrases like economic servi-
tude were prominent.
The week after Education Week was
Democracy Week, during which the
group tried to inuence the November 8
election. They didnt endorse any candi-
dates locally, but they did oppose the four
conservative City Council incumbents
who had spoken out against them, and
staged protests at their campaign head-
quarters. For some reason, Lipperts cam-
paign HQ was in his fathers gynecology
office in Christ Hospital, where the re-
ceptionists were none too pleased to have
a handful of occupiers demonstrating in
their waiting room. When a nurse insisted
they leave the doctors oce, the protest-
ers refused on the grounds that it was also
a campaign headquarters. Eventually, se-
curity escorted them from the building.
Did Occupy Cincinnati make an impact
on the City Council elections? Who knows?
But all four of those candidates lost their
re-election bids. And in a city that his-
torically favors City Council incumbents,
ejecting four in one year is unheard of.
SINCE ELECTION DAY, the group has
struggled to stay in the headlines. But
while cold weather has forced their meet-
ings inside and out of the public eye, Oc-
cupy Cincinnati is far from dead. Jesse
Jackson addressed the group on Novem-
ber 16, instigating another night of ar-
rests. On Black Friday, they chanted their
way through the aisles of several big box
stores. To protest subsidies for big oil,
they marched through downtown push-
ing a prop oil derrick built out of ladders.
And on December 21, they rued feath-
ers by staging a protest at the live nativity
scene at Krohn Conservatory, singing car-
ols and handing out yers in support of the
Anna Louise Inn in its fracas with West-
ern & Southern, the sponsor of the event.
Jesus was in fact born a poor child to poor
In my opinion the work of a popu-
list movement is not to put forward
a message, says Aliya Rahman.
116 | CI NCI NNATI | FEBRUARY 201 2
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parents that didnt have anywhere else to
go, Josh Spring told Fox 19 News. Thats
the same state that the women at the Anna
Louise [Inn] nd themselves in.
They are still waiting for their day in
court, though they thought it had come
in early December when Municipal Court
Judge Dwane Mallory presided over a hear-
ing for their motion to dismiss the charges
against them. The 12 municipal judges
who are hearing the cases agreed to use
the transcript from Mallorys hearing to
make separate rulings on the hundreds of
Occupy cases before the court.
Mallory runs an ecient courtroom in
which misdemeanor cases are often decid-
ed in a matter of minutes, but it was clear
from the start that this hearing was not go-
ing to be business as usual. Each side gave
lengthy opening statements, making gran-
diose, nuanced legal arguments and quot-
ing from various Supreme Court cases.
The Occupy lawyers say their case
hinges on the validity of the park boards
rules. Rob Linnemanwho along with
Jennifer Kinsley is representing the Occu-
piers pro bonobelieves the park boards
permit system is unconstitutional if it al-
lows them to discriminate. Linneman sees
the case as aligning with Shuttlesworth v.
Birmingham, a 1969 Supreme Court deci-
sion that declared a parade permit system
in Birmingham, Alabama, to be unconsti-
tutional. In the court of public opinion, it
doesnt hurt that the winner of the case
was a local hero, the recently deceased Rev.
Fred Shuttlesworth.
The citys lawyers say that these cases
have nothing to do with free speech. As
Curp puts it, Camping is not speech.
Among other cases, he cites Clark v. Com-
munity for Creative Non-Violence, a 1984
decision in which the court ruled that a
National Park Service regulation prohib-
iting camping on the Mall in Washington,
D.C., was constitutional.
But thats not all: Both sides also made
several technical arguments dealing with
the protesters legal standing; the city
charter; a procedural mistake in the fil-
ing of new park rules; and a letter that
Judge David Stockdale sent in favor of
the protesters to the other 11 municipal
court judges hearing Occupy cases. And
these were just the opening statements.
Linneman later spent the afternoon grill-
ing park board director Willie Carden
about the enforcement of park rules. The
next day, with no end in sight, Mallory
postponed the rest of the hearing until
the end of January in hopes that the sides
might be able to settle. When this issue
went to press in early January, talks be-
tween the sides had broken down.
BEYOND THE LEGAL wrangling and the
civil disobedience and the political ma-
neuvering, two basic questions remain:
What do the Occupiers want? And can
they achieve it?
Honestly, its my opinion that the work
of a populist movement is actually not to
put forward a message or a policy demand,
says Aliya Rahman of the Center for Com-
munity Change. Its to change climate.
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While Occupy has succeeded in shift-
ing the national discussion, the protesters
have loftier goals. They want real change.
How to go about getting it is the source of
much navel-gazing for the group, result-
ing in interminable GA debates. Reform
or revolutionthats one of the classic
questions in politics and social move-
ments, says Tony, an MBA student and
head of Occupy Cincinnatis legal com-
mittee who refused to divulge his last
name. Short-term reforms are nice
benchmarks. They can hearten people. But
the word revolution is on everybodys lips. I
think wed all like to see a real revolution, a
real top-to-bottom system change.
Realistically, the extent to which Oc-
cupy can make an impact will depend on
how well it can plug into politics. The an-
archists at the core of the movement will
never be willing to do that because they
reject our governmental system entirely.
Likewise, no politician is going to openly
align him- or herself with anarchists, not
to mention some of the even crazier peo-
ple9/11 conspiracy nuts and their ilk
that the movement has attracted.
But surrounding that radical core is a
larger body of slightly less radical reform-
ers who seem more willing to work politi-
cally. Occupy Cincinnati, which is more
moderate than its Wall Street counterpart,
has been successful at transferring its rage
into actions, such as its campaign against
City Council candidates.
The challenge will be to duplicate that
on a national scale, without falling prey
to the inertia of the two-party system. As
La Botz puts it: The Democratic Party is
where social movements go to die. So, can
Occupy organize nationally while main-
taining its independence?
Consider this anecdote: On November
3, Occupy Cincinnati held a protest at the
Fifth Third Bank at 429 Vine Street. Ras-
mussen was dressed as the Piggy Bank-
ster in a hog mask and suit, with fake
money protruding from his collar and
cus. As people walked past on their lunch
breaks, another protester would hand out
fake paper currency and urge them to
place it in a plastic bucket for Rasmus-
sen to eat. Whenever someone obliged,
he would dive in, making strange guttural
pig noises. Are these people on the verge
of xing America?
Certainly not. For now at least their
all-encompassing theory of corporate cul-
pability is still too vague, idealistic, and
nave. But its intriguing street theater and
the movement deserves credit for thinking
outside the box. Occupy doesnt have a po-
litical action committee or a team of lobby-
ists. Instead, theyve harnessed the power
of social media, forced police to tiptoe First
Amendment lines to break up their camps,
and helped nonprot credit unions achieve
record earnings last year. By taking a stand
and pushing the envelope, Occupyand
sure, the Tea Party, too, though they do
have PACshas helped keep our govern-
ment a bit more honest than usual, an es-
sential task in any democracy and one that
most citizens dont take seriously enough.
For that reason alone, long live Occupy.