[Peace-discuss] Champaign Council tonight

[Belden Fields]

Dear All,

I am encouraging you to attend the meeting of the Champaign City  
Council tonight at 7.  It will be a relatively short formal meeting,  
and then a session when the community can speak.

I am going to speak about the intimidation that the Tent Community  
has been subjected to by the Champaign police.  It is not something  
that can be tolerated by the community.  I got a call at around 10 pm  
on Sunday that there was a huge police presence in the neighbor's  
yard that was intimidating to both the Tent City and the Catholic  
Workers House.  When Jane and I arrived there were at least 4 (soon  
to become 5) police cars parked very near and in clear view of the  
Safe Haven Tent City.  As punishment for my showing up and being seen  
with the Tent and Catholic Workers people, I got a ticket for having  
a portion of my tires on the "side walk."  This is very narrow, more  
of an alley than a street, there is no curb, and it was night and  
difficult to see the dividing line between what is the "street," and  
the "sidewalk" which no one uses as a sidewalk.  This was clear  
retaliation and punishment for my being there.  Officer Bloom, who is  
the officer that had charged Jesse of the Tent City with assault  
against an officer when Jesse tossed his cell phone to a friend to  
photograph himself being ticketed by the police, approached Jane and  
me to discuss what was go ing up that night.  We had quite a lengthy  
discussion that was nonantagonistic, although I did point out that  
there was a similar intimidating and reprisal aspect to his charging  
Jesse with assault and my ticket for parking on the "sidewalk."   
Also, just before Officer Bloom began his conversation with Jane and  
me and when Jesse came near us, Officer Bloom went out of his way to  
tell Jesse that he had looked him up on Facebook and learned a lot of  
things about him.  After 20 or 25 minutes of discussing the situation  
in a very civil manner, Officer Bloom out of the blue accused me of  
being a "Fascist."  Needless to say, both because of his previous  
civil demeanor and because of his choice of words, both Jane and I  
were very taken aback.  I asked him why he used such a charged word  
to characterize me and what he meant by it.  At that point, he  
accused me of belittling him, or treating him like a schoolboy who  
needed to explain what he meant by a word.  He said that he could not  
continue the conversation and went back to the group of officers who  
had been watching us chat from a distance.

A lot of city money went into police intimidation that night.  I  
think that the city council needs to be aware of how that money was  
spent, and how much better it would be to put it into housing the  
homeless.

I hope to see you tonight at the meeting.

Belden