The Louisville Metro Council is still in the process of finalizing a new permit for Occupy Louisville’s continued presence at their Founder’s Square stomping-grounds, but the Derby City’s own Occupy Wall St-alligned “99%-ers” are already moving on to the next matter of business. The group is organizing a special protest titled “Occupy Mitch McConnell”, to be held outside the Senate Majority Leader’s office at the Gene Snyder Federal Courthouse this Friday (February 3rd) at noon.
Senator McConnell has earned a personal day of protest as part of a nationwide ‘call to action’ against the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law this past December, which various legal experts fear will now allow for Americans to be indefinitely detained by the military without due process by order of the executive branch. Fellow Republican and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul voted “no” on NDAA, as did U.S. Representative John Yarmuth (a rare instance of those two being on the same page), but McConnell voted “yes”, and indeed, as a key Republican leader was at least tangentially involved in the bill’s construction. President Obama issued a signing statement with his signing of the controversial legislation assuring Americans that he would, “not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens,” but NDAA is nonetheless in the books and therefore open to ad-hoc re-interpretation by the Obama administration and future White House inhabitants as well.
Despite initial signs to the contrary it does now appear that the city is prepared to issue a 90-day extension to Occupy Louisville’s overnight-camping permit (demonstrators had filed suit against the city claiming a restriction of their First Amendment Rights), but the Metro Council still has a couple qualms to be settled, namely as to the total allowance of demonstrators permitted (Occupy says 400 but the city claims it’s an overestimate of the group’s man-power) and a notion that the organization should pay part of the electricity cost created by its encampment.
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Chris Ritter <<<< twitter.com/CT_Smash <<<< ctsmash@gmail.com
