Police arrest 20 at midnight occupation

       In a clear show of force, Atlanta police arrested 20 protestors late last Saturday for the second time in about as many weeks .

        Dressed in riot gear, riding atop motorcycles and mounted on horseback, police removed protestors from Peachtree Street and other areas around Woodruff Park after the park closed at 11 p.m. and protestors moved into the streets.

        The rally briefly turned violent when one protestor attacked an officer as he rode through the crowd on his motorcycle and police struggled to hold protestors back, according to police.

      They charged one man, Bran- don Wojcik Tremblay, with aggravated assault and obstruction after they say he assaulted a motorcycle officer who was attempting to patrol the area.

      However, protestors tell a different story. "I thought I was going to die," said David , one of the protestors that claims he was ran over by the officer. "He ran right over my leg and tried to keep going. That's when he got knocked over."

       "He knew what he was doing," David continued. "It was intentional."

Sarah Amis, editor of the Occupy Atlanta website, said that the motorcycle officer "charged the crowd" and that "other people surrounded the motorcycle in order to stop it and tipped it over."

      Following the incident, protestors chanted "Shame! Shame! Shame!" and when riot police followed they shouted, "you're sexy, you're cute, take off that riot suit!"

Police officials said protestors received ample warning over loud- speaker in both English and Spanish to clear the park and the streets before anyone was arrested.

     "Mayor Reed was clear earlier this week in his public statements that the city of Atlanta would arrest any persons who violated the law," Police Chief George Turner said. "Our officers professionally and efficiently made arrests as authorized by state laws and city ordinances. "

      Nineteen of the protestors arrested were charged with various misdemeanors, including 17 for "pedestrian obstruction of traffic." Two others were charged with violating the park's curfew ordinances.

      Several of the protestors arrested were Georgia State students and professors, including recent graduate Chris Seidl, Signal photography editor Judy Kim and an English department professor. Seidl was one of two protestors sent to the hospital before going to jail.

       Police arrested 52 people on Oct. 26 after protestors similarly refused to leave Woodruff Park after its scheduled 11 p.m. closing date. Prior to then, Occupy Atlanta had been granted a special exemption to city park ordinances through an executive order signed by Mayor Kasim Reed.

      The mayor said he revoked the executive order in response to various safety concerns, among which included an impromptu hip-hop concert and reported protestors with guns.

      The mayor's office said last Thursday it has spent more than $451,000 dealing with the Occupy Atlanta protests, most of it in police overtime expenses, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

      Despite the arrests, the group has maintained that they are non- violent. Before they decided to stay past the city's 11 p.m. deadline, organizers held a non-violence seminar earlier in the day inside their Pine and Peachtree streets head- quarters, which they share with a homeless shelter.

      The group has filed suit against the city "to redress the deprivation of constitutionally protected rights under the First Amendment," according to the court papers filed last Friday.

Listed among the plaintiffs was state Senator Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta), Rainbow/PUSH Coalition regional director and civil rights icon Joe Beasley and Georgia State student Liliana Bakhtiara.

       "Our constitutional rights should override basic city ordinances," Bakhtiara said. "We're going to continue to build awareness, continue to peacefully assemble, continue to show that our rights are being impeded upon so that they can't deny that it's happening."

       Bakhtiara was one of the two protestors arrested Saturday for violating the park's curfew ordinances, which she said was intended to symbolize the organization's continued occupation of the park.

      "We decided that only two people were going to stay in the park, and the rest were going to stand in solidarity,"           Bakhtiara said. "Obviously that got changed a bit, but the police move to shut the park just showed that Kasim Reed was wasting all this money just to arrest two people who were there peacefully."