The Trap

I've recently grown fond of saying--in response to the inevitable "What do you do?" inquiry--the following:

I used to be a Professional Paranoid.  Now, I do it for free.

When I represented corporations and various city and county governments (or their liability carriers), I was always asked one question-- regardless of topic and in so many words:

Can we avoid paying a dime in lawsuits?

I would have looked into it--like I just did--and told them roughly* the following:

The Supreme Court of the United States has already held, very specifically, that a government may ban camping in its parks, so long as the ban has the purpose of preserving/protecting a public space for public use. However, the Supreme Court also stressed that the ban at one park--in the heart  Washington, DC--was permitted at least in part because the National Park Service allows camping elsewhere in the system.

As you know, the City of Eugene does not permit camping in any of its parks.  Thus, to avoid liability for violating the rights of free speech,  free assembly and of that to petition the government for redress of grievances, we recommend that the City permit camping in a designated area.  As can already be seen elsewhere in the country, camping protesters will eventually run afoul of safety and/or sanitation regulations, if not drug, property, and other criminal laws.


The City may then remove the protesters without significant exposure to liability, assuming, of course, the police don't misbehave.

While the City (and the local MSM) go on and on about how cooperative and supportive they are (at least as of 2 weeks ago), everything they've done up to this point is congruent with the above. 


The city is just as likely to be waiting us out, for a legal and politically advantageous way to shut the camp down, as they are to be actually supporting Occupy Eugene

Peace.

* "Roughly" 'cause there are other arguments the protesters could make to prove civil rights liability against the city, and I'm not tipping my hand--just stating the obvious.