Photo by @fightbackradioA member of Occupy D.C. was arrested midday Sunday after pulling down the notices that the National Park Service posted over the weekend as a final warning that the ban on camping at McPherson Square would begin being enforced.
The incident, captured on video, shows the occupier, who has been identified only as “Lash,” pulling down the fliers that NPS staff and U.S. Park Police officers posted on the tents that have filled the downtown park since last October. A group of officers followed the protester to the southeast corner of McPherson Square, where a pair started to restrain him. After struggling to pull away from the officers’ grips, the protester was hit with an electric shock, sending him collapsing to the ground and prompting a flurry of obscenities from the few dozen other protesters looking on.
“Lash,” who early in the video can be heard saying, “Here’s your fucking trash, you fucking pigs,” while ripping fliers down, was wearing a red T-shirt and pajama bottoms with no footwear. (In a version of the video posted by Occupy D.C. alongside a petition to stop the Park Service from enforcing anti-camping rules, those comments were edited out.) Another voice in the video, possibly that of the person holding the camera, warned him he was risking arrest. After being cuffed and pulled to his feet, “Lash” was advised by another protester to sue the Park Police for excessive force and wrongful arrest.
Whether “Lash” was acting out or merely being more expressive than his peers about the current mood at Occupy D.C., the four-month-old protest is at a crossroads. Enforcement of its camping ban at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza, home of another Occupy settlement, begins at noon today, six days after a congressional hearing in which House Oversight Republicans hammered NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis and D.C. officials about the protests’ extended stay in two public parks.
On Sunday afternoon, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton asked in a press release that demonstrators react to enforcement efforts “with the same respect and civility that NPS and the District of Columbia have shown to Occupy D.C.”
“A split within Occupy D.C. now would be difficult for the public to understand, since Occupiers are not being evicted,” Norton said in the release, hinting at the earlier incident yesterday. “If some resist the enforcement of the camping ban, they could reinforce critics who see them as young people on an adventure and could destroy the unity of their message against income inequality, which has captured the country and changed the conversation in Washington.”
At the hearing last week, Norton got choked up at times when comparing the Occupy Wall Street movement to her own participation in civil rights protests in the 1960s.
Last night at McPherson Square, members of Occupy D.C. were mostly mum about their plans for today, but ideas were afoot. On the edge bordering K Street NW, a rabble of occupiers worked to erect a large sign reading: “‘High Noon’ U.S.A. Park Police Showdown.”
