11/6/11, "Occupy Richmond's special treatment weakens democracy," Richmond Times-Dispatch, John Pride, commentary
"On Friday, Oct. 28, Corky Mann, treasurer of the Richmond Tea Party, hand-delivered an invoice to the City of Richmond for the total costs incurred from three separate April 15 events at Richmond's downtown Kanawha Plaza.
The annual Richmond Tea Party Tax Day Rally, a major venue through which we both alert and educate Virginians on fiscal and other policy issues, has been a mainstay event for the organization each year since the 2009 inaugural rally.
The $8,500 invoice represents dollars budgeted for the Richmond Tea Party's three Tax Day rallies. When combined with the many hundreds of volunteer hours utilized for these events alone, the overall investment represents a good portion of the organization's available resources.
For each event at Kanawha Plaza we filed timely applications for governmental review and paid all required permit fees. We arranged for toilets, first-aid care, staging, lights and sound, off-duty police officers for security, event insurance and volunteers trained to support an orderly day of protest.
- We always left the property as clean as — or cleaner than — we found it.
The Occupy Richmond group met none of these benchmarks while camped out in the same Kanawha Plaza between Oct. 15th and Oct. 31 (the morning they were finally evicted). So in the spirit of our founding principle
- of equal application of the law,
- the Richmond Tea Party is requesting a full refund
from the City of Richmond for city-imposed costs related to these three rallies.
Occupy Richmond participants, as well as their political supporters, appeared to be using the immediate urgency of their concerns as an excuse for bypassing required procedures and costs. Yet, despite knowing the urgency of our fiscal and overall national plight three years ago, Tea Partiers never expected free services, never destroyed the public areas entrusted to us, never demanded access beyond that allowed by our permit, never failed to make proper payment of fees and insurance, and never strained police and emergency services systems to the detriment of those in need of those protections and services.
Such irresponsible actions and expectations never, to be blunt, crossed our minds. Though we weren't remotely assured that our concerns had been addressed as the sun set those three April days, we disbanded and continued our citizen activism through other efforts.
The Occupy Richmond group, however, as well as many other Occupy groups across America, are not only demanding to be exempted from the rigorous requirements met by any other group before them, they are being given that exemption in city after city — by
- politicians either too weak or agenda-focused
- to do their jobs for all their citizenry.
Richmond City Councilman E. Martin Jewell even wanted a resolution that would make the Occupiers' illegal actions legal — and surely would have done so except for the inconvenient requirement that he actually act within the rules.
Democratic commentator Bob Beckel recently compared the disparity between the Tea Party's treatment by local governments and the Occupiers' to one person getting a better deal on a car than another. Imagine an America where basic equalities and a God-given right to public self-expression are reduced to clearance-sale status,
- depending on the agenda and whims of the "bosses" on duty at a given time.
In addition to our concerns regarding equal application of the law, our reaction to these unequal requirements is aimed at the public safety, exposure to liability and budgetary realities of fellow citizens who host legitimate political demonstrations. Of course, we will always welcome the opportunity to respond to opposing ideologies and are confident that, given actual arguments regarding policy and consequence, we will continue to offer our principled perspective with good results.
This matter clearly reflects the consequences of forcing banks to provide mortgage loans to unqualified applicants, of highly placed leaders encouraging a departure from the requirements of societal law and order, and of the demonizing of any entity acting within the parameters of the norm.
The actions of Occupiers everywhere, combined with hateful speech and unsubstantiated claims, reflect ever-escalating misinformation from agenda-driven leaders,
- forced to double-down on deceit, distraction and misplaced blame.
In some parts of the country, the consequences of these tactics include destroying property, attacking law enforcement officers and straining the budgets and patience of citizens across the nation. For this, the Richmond Tea Party holds responsible those in power who are selectively applying the law based on their political preferences, and we will gladly invest the refunded dollars from the city of Richmond in
- our efforts to bring lawful, organized activism to the citizens of Virginia."
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via Instapundit
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