The first member of the Occupy San Jose protests to be cited at City Hall climbed a large wall in the plaza and was still there as of Monday morning. The man, identified by another protester as Shaun O’Kelly, reportedly climbed the wall in protest of other members of the movement being removed from city property. O’Kelly was previously cited for camping on the plaza.
Five people were arrested in the plaza for illegal camping around 3:20 a.m. Monday, San Jose police Officer Jose Garcia said. One was cited and released at the scene, and the other four were booked into Santa Clara County Jail, he said.
Occupy San Jose protester Peter Brown said that at least three tents were pitched outside of City Hall when he left on Sunday afternoon. He said that when he returned early this morning, O’Kelly was already on the wall.
Garcia described the wall as “decorative” and estimated it is at least two stories high.
“It’s pretty tall,” he said.
Garcia said it could be dangerous to try to remove the man, so police are going to let him be for now.
“We’re just going to wait him out until he comes down,” Garcia said.
As of 7:30 a.m., the man was standing on the wall holding a sign that read, “Stand up for what you believe in.” He would occasionally flip the sign to show the back, which read “Knowmore.org.”
The man had also hung additional signs on the wall that appeared to be made out of cardboard, listing numbers of police officers and protesters.
Bay City News contributed to this report,.
Pick and Choose what factual content to post, horrible conduct SJI.
They should move the falcon camera to view this incredible news!
Listen people!!! Time to bail out this City before it’s too late !!!
San Jose is one of the cities on the verge of bankruptcy !!!…Oh well, there’s goes the city employees’ retirement pensions.
Support this dude on top of the wall for his cause !!! City of San Jose Employees, OCCUPY the entire City Hall Building and your cubicle prisons once and for all and remove Reed/Figone dictatorship!!!
7 U.S. Cities on the Verge of Bankruptcy
http://www.wealthwire.com/news/headlines/2045?r=1
San Jose isn’t even close to filing for bankruptcy. Reed keeps posturing but the reality is San Jose is very sound fiscally. The problem is, they pick and choose when to be rich, in the case of getting a good bond rating, and when to claim to be in the poor house, in the case of union negotiations. Any city that declares bankruptcy immediately becomes a pariah in terms of hiring, retaining employees, attracting business and investors, etc. San Jose won’t go down that path, but they sure will threaten it in order to hoodwink their citizens into blindly following their orders.
Maybe the mayor should reduce the 10,000,000 to 11,000,000 million they consume of the city budget annually. Stop their buy back time program where in stead of a bonus they give one another time which is then sold back to the city for cash, stop paying for perks to all sorts of political organizations, stop the business incentive program for union 99 which allows them to give one another a considerable pay raise for job performance which is really just doing the job they were hired to do at the start.
How about doing what private corporations do support their employees and ask the employees to reduce costs. Employees see waste daily and are in many cases in a position to reduce it but with a city manage that does not care for anything but his lobbyist they have no motivation. In other words become a leader. Scrap the ball park because it will be stopped in court when they declare bankruptcy. No doubt reed will punish city workers if he loses his bid for a ball park.
Maybe the city should have a contest to name the protester with the local charter schools? Nice to see Deb pulling police from neighborhoods to babysit the huge turn out of protesters…..thanks Deb for leaving our neighborhoods unprotected because you don’t like the protesters in front of your castle.
The wrong Mayor is being recalled…
I agree with the protestor at City Hall. Make Figone come down and explain herself.
Old Frank
If the protestors want to camp out, let them. Just make sure they go to the planning dept for a camping permit.
I actually applaud this quick thinking protester for “taking the high ground” when the city decided a late night raid would rid them of the “blight” of civil disobedience on their pretty plaza.
Reminds me of the tree sitters in the Redwoods. But those protesters were blocking loggers from clear cutting old growth forests (sometimes on private land, more often on public lands leased to the logging companies.) I believe they were widely praised as having the courage of their conviction to put themselves in harms way for their principles.
What’s different here?
Are only popular causes considered protected forms of free speech and public assembly? If they were occupying the plaza to protest the oil companies and the destruction of our natural environment, would they get booted also?
At the end of the day, we’ve pushed real hard to be a big city with all the trapping like a vital downtown, landmark city hall, big league sports teams, annexed population to push us over the magic 1 million mark, etc. So isn’t this what goes with the big city, a little messy civil unrest and political speech as well as poor and homeless people who might not enhance your property values as much as you might like?
It’s downtown. Nobody goes there. Who cares?
But if the city started charging admission to paintballer’s to light up the guy on the wall – I’m there with bells on.
Here’s a link the the Frank Capra film “John Doe” from the Great Depression that taps into similiar feelings of distrust, anger and fear as in todays uncertain “Great Recession” world.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xemdij_meet-john-doe_shortfilms#rel-page-1
I think its public domain, but if not, I cry protected political speech and fair use, and if you wanna sue me, go for it.
Thank you Occupy San Jose!
http://news.yahoo.com/banks-cave-debit-card-fees-victory-occupy-095100911.html