Henry, a regularly contributing author, protesting economic disparity

As you know, my students wrote appellate briefs about a fictional Occupy situation.  They are now in the practice rounds of moot court (and doing really well, if I do say so myself).  Here is one of our regular contributors, Henry, practicing the opening to his oral argument and delving into a general protest about this country's economic disparity:

As you can tell, Ella the Dog (the primary author of this blog) tries to calm Henry down when he begins getting too dramatic -- let's use our case law not our emotions.  

the Occupy movement

So my students are busy addressing constitutional issues that arose from a fictional Occupy scenario.  In our scenario, the protagonist was arrested at a protest and suffered medical injuries.  Well, in real life, the Occupy movement goes on.  Just this weekend, the NYPD broke into Zuccotti Park and began arresting protesters.  Specifically, the police "formed a human ring" around the park, and they brought in a transit bus to remove the protesters.  Of course, there were some protesters who refused to go, and they were arrested.  One woman suffered medical issues, and she was taken away in an ambulance to be treated (way to protect yourself from a potential 1983 claim, NYPD!  obviously, more importantly, way to treat someone's real medical need.).  The tenor of the movement is changing, though, as spring sets in.  The money supporting the protesters is diminishing, which will test its longevity (it seems like a throwback to the days of yore when the rich would just outlast the poor based on resources), and they are now warning of a somewhat Arab Spring-like event.  We shall see if the Occupy movement actually does "grow flowers" or if it just gets trampled into springtime mud.

See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/18/occupy-6-month-anniversary-zucotti-arrests_n_1356111.html

Occupy Nashville . . .

The Tennessee legislature has now passed a bill that seeks to block the Occupy Nashville protestors' rights to protest at Capitol Hill.  The bill is headed to the Governor's desk.  At this point, as far as I know, any protestors arrested and put into jail have had the charges dropped against them.  We shall see how this turns out.

See http://www.wkrn.com/story/17030641/occupy-nashville-bill-headed-to-governor