Police arrested 12 members of the Occupy movement on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court after a chilly afternoon of protesting the court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
After a set of three warnings that it’s illegal to protest on the steps of the Supreme Court, police started making arrests about 2:30 p.m., cuffing protesters with plastic ties before leading them down. Eleven were arrested on the steps after police surrounded a group of about 40 to 50 occupiers, while one was arrested inside the building, said Patricia Estrada, a public information officer for the Supreme Court Police.
The arrests came shortly after a rally on the Capitol’s East Front lawn organized by Move to Amend, a coalition of left-wing groups opposed to the 2010 ruling that made it legal for corporations and other organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections. Though this rally’s speakers used rhetoric consistent with Occupy Wall Street, some members of the income inequality movement said they felt left out of the event. All told, the crowd earlier this afternoon peaked at about 200.
“We want to have our voice heard,” said Darrell Prince, who came to Washington this week from New York as part of Occupy Congress. “There’s a mic. It should be an open mic.”
Meanwhile, people like Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin and radio host Thom Hartmann stood up on a rostrum with statements against the high court’s ruling that gave rise to the organizations known as “super PACs.”
“Do we respect these institutions?” Benjamin asked, referring to the Capitol in front of her and the Supreme Court on the opposite side of First Street NE. “No!” the crowd replied.
Dick Eiden, an activist from Orange County, Calif. who is making an independent bid for the seat currently held by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, was in the crowd again, waving his campaign sign and cheering the speakers on. He acknowledged his campaign’s thin pursestrings, but said if he manages to pull off the unthinkable and defeat the wealthiest member of Congress, he’ll look for ways to undo the Citizens United ruling. Not that he’s expecting attention from any super PACs during the race.
“I have to first beat the Democrat in June,” Eiden said. (California has open primaries, in which the top two candidates of any affiliation are advanced to a general election.) “And then there might be some super PAC money after me,” he continued with a chuckle. “I think elections should be completely publicly funded.”
Jim Cosgrove and Laura Unger, who work for the Communications Workers of America, said that even though the Citizens United ruling technically applied to labor unions as much as corporations, it wasn’t an even playing field.
“It’s like comparing a brick to a marshmallow,” Cosgrove said.
As the Move to Amend demonstration continued, members of Occupy groups gradually crossed the street, where Supreme Court Police officers were ready with barricades in front of the high court’s marble plaza. Some of the cries and chants the occupiers approached with were less than kind, with one man waving an upside-down American flag telling police officers that their badges were “tin pieces of shit.” He was drowned out as more protesters crossed the street with the usual Occupy chants of “The whole world is watching” and “We are the 99 percent,” and some directed specifically toward the judicial branch, like “Whose court? Our court?”
Some protesters tried to get a laugh out of the cops, with one young woman telling officers that their uniforms were sexy, eliciting at least one smirk. Later on, as the crowd outside the court swelled, protesters knocked over the barriers and moved up the first three steps. Officers stepped back a bit, but appear to be keeping the protesters at bay.
The chants also continued to verge on the absurd. There was an altered version of the children’s tune “The Song That Never Ends”—”yes, the revolution goes on and on my friends”—and a brief breakout of “Hokey Pokey.” (No modified lyrics, however.)
