Something Unusual is Happening
by digby
3rd police officer in a row I’ve locked eyes with whose simply said, “thank you for being here”. Something very unusual is happening…
dday took some video of protesters making plan for when the police come in —scheduled for right now — to force the protesters out of the capitol.
If you want to see any news of this, the only place you can see it is on Fox where they are talking about the “hate in the faces” of the protesters and comparing it to Libya — presumably with the protesters in the role of Qadaffi.
You can best follow this on Twitter. Just like countries in the Middle East.
Update: The first two to sit down to get arrested surrounded by photographers:
Update II: According to the twitter machine: so far, no arrests. Some off duty police are staying with the protesters in solidarity. Apparently, people will be allowed to stay if they move up a floor, but some protesters are staying to get arrested.
Update III: AFL-CIO live feed is offline, some say it was cut. (Have no idea what really happened.) You can get some live stuff from this feed. Or watch Fox, which is covering this live and making sure everyone is aware that these are nothing but Union Thugs who hate America.
Update IV: TPM’s Kleefeld reports:
Even the multiple police officers that I’ve spoken to say that they do not know whether there are plans to make any arrests.
At 3 p.m. CT, a small group of protesters held a press conference in the office of Democratic state Rep. Brett Hulsey, to announce that they would non-violently refuse to leave — opening themselves up to the possibility of being escorted out or even arrested. The protesters included students, unionists and members of the clergy.
They made clear that they would not be belligerent with police officers — who, they noted, had cooperated with protest leaders on issues of crowd locations and sanitation for the past week and a half. Instead, they blamed the decision to close the Capitol on the Republican-controlled state government.
When 4 p.m. came, hardly anybody left, and the chanting continued. At about 4:15 p.m., a protest organizer announced on the ground floor that everyone present had to make a choice: To leave, or to stay and move to the first upper floor. Some people did indeed leave, but many others filed up the stairs, expanding the already large presence on the first upper floor.
In a further sign that hardly anything has changed, the chants are still being led from the same place they have been the whole time: The center of the ground floor, which is visible from the balconies of the upper floors. A few protesters have remained on the ground floor, continuing to lead the chants in plain sight of the police.
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