VoB SELECTS:  INVESTIGATIVE NEWS FROM AROUND THE WEB
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Hand-lettered ‘Occupy Baltimore’ signs at Light St., Inner Harbor, looking south from Pratt St. mark scene of 3-week-old anti-greed protest at McKeldin Square. (VoB File Photo/Bill Hughes)

NOT MORE THAN TWO DEMONSTRATORS
MAY CAMP OUT  IN  THE INNER HARBOR
OVERNIGHT (BETWEEN 12 AND 6 A.M.)

UPDATE:  Sunday Oct. 30th @ 5 p.m.
PHOTOJOURNALIST BILL HUGHES
CHRONICLES LATEST  ‘OCCUPY’
PROTEST  AT INNER HARBOR
(click here to watch video)

Demonstrators march from Charles Cen- ter to McKeldin Square in the Inner Harbor — many wearing Halloween costumes — to join “Occupy Baltimore” protesters who have continued to camp out despite City Hall order issued Wed.

UPDATE:  Sunday October 30th
NASHVILLE ‘OCCUPIERS’
DEFY AUTHORITIES
FOR 3rd NIGHT
AP reports the latest  (click here)
and for updated report  (click here)

UPDATE:  Saturday October 29th
AUTHORITIES  CRACK  DOWN
IN SAN DIEGO, NASHVILLE
Read the latest on the anti-greed
protests as reported by the
Associated Press  (click here)

Just over a week after Occupy Together protesters were arrested in Chicago, and following previous arrests of large numbers for obstructing traffic at the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, police cleared public plazas of demonstrators early Wednesday in Oakland Calif. and Atlanta Ga.

In Baltimore, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings- Blake told the Associated Press and Washington D.C.’s WTOP-103.5-FM Radio she has what the station and AP described as “no interest in a violent exchange with protesters in her city….

“She says their rights don’t trump the public’s right to enjoy the space,” the station said the Associated Press reported earlier today.

As the live-in protest at the Inner Harbor entered its fourth week, demonstrators were served notice late Tuesday that no more than 25 persons may occupy McKeldin Square at any given time, where protesters have been living since Oct. 4, and that only two may remain overnight (between 12 and 6 a.m.), in one tent, for security purposes.

Even at campgrounds in most national and state parks, campers are not permitted to remain at the same location beyond 30 days. The Baltimore “occupation” is in its 23rd day. Occupations in other cities have lasted longer.

At the Inner Harbor, protesters told reporters they considered it their “duty” to occupy the public square and to confront police if ordered to leave. This, despite their refusal to choose a leader to negotiate with the city or to identify a specific goal for the protest.

Demonstrators in other cities have evinced the same amorphous approach and loosely organized group structure, drawing criticism from such prominent observers as former President Bill Clinton, who told David Letterman on an appearance on his “Late Show” Oct. 12 that while he believed the protests were “on balance… a positive thing,” the demonstrations “need to be for something specific, and not just against something.”

The protests began in mid-September in Manhattan as an anti-Wall Street, anti-corporate greed movement and quickly spread nationwide.

Baltimore photojournalist Bill Hughes interviewed protester Joe Bert at McKeldin Square Wednesday  (click here),  who told Hughes, “We don’t have any plans of going anywhere”; the city’s edict “doesn’t scare us…. If we’re gonna get… locked up, so be it.

Bert then told Hughes, the notice from the city “is a warning; they physically haven’t been here but they have sent emails and memorandum warning us.”

On Sunday Oct. 30, Hughes chronicled Baltimore’s latest protest, as marchers paraded from Charles Center to join other demonstrators in the Inner Harbor  (click here for video).  Many wore Halloween costumes for the march.

— VoB Staff report

READ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ACCOUNTS OF THE FORCIBLE EVICTION OF DEMONSTRATORS IN OAKLAND AND ATLANTA:  (click here)  and  (here).

THEN CHECK OUT BILL HUGHES’ INTERVIEW WITH PROTESTER JOE BERT  (click here)  and  read earlier coverage of the Occupy Together movement by Voice of Baltimore:  (click here)  and  (here).