The police have arrested 38 people at OccupyAustin on Saturday night. Apparently there is some new rule about not allowing table with food on them to be set up at City Hall between 10pm and 6am. Some of the arrests were over those, and the rest of them... "trespassing" is the charge I've heard, which makes no sense. City Hall is public property. There are things you can and cannot so there, as there are in most public places, but this is all clear as mud right now. Thankfully, there was no violence on the part of either side, and no known injuries.
There is a video stream of the event archived here, along with current live chat and video here, where I am now watching a live stream of at least some of the people being released from jail. This is all going to be hashed out in a public forum. At least that's what I'm hoping. Transparency.
News coverage from the Statesman (our newspaper).
One of the weird things about these arrests is that they happened just a couple of blocks from Sixth Street, which is always closed off on Saturday night so the partiers can stumble freely across the streets, and on a Halloween Saturday night on top of that!! It would have been difficult to find a drunker, rowdier place than that... but get that food table outta here with yer bags of hot dog buns and bottled water - it's a threat to health and safety.
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