NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee is close to evicting Occupy Nashville; Camping bill could put violators in jail for a year.

Tennessee lawmakers moved toward removing the Occupy Nashvilleencampment from the state Capitol with a pair of votes Tuesday in which they also amped up the threat of jail time.

Committees in the state Senate and House of Representatives each approved a ban on unauthorized camping on public grounds, setting up the possibility that the measure could clear the Tennessee legislature sometime next week.

The nearly identical measures would give Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration clearance to try again to remove the Occupy Nashville camp, though it is unclear whether it would act immediately. The bill also faces potential legal hurdles.

The votes by the House and Senate judiciary committees nonetheless sent a clear signal that lawmakers from both parties were ready to see the Occupy Nashville tents removed from War Memorial Plaza. The bill’s sponsors argued in both committee hearings that the protesters have been a source of fights, drug use and lewd behavior, including instances of public sex and urination.

Representatives for Occupy Nashville responded that they have asked police to arrest lawbreakers but have instead seen the presence of law enforcement diminished. They said their camp of about 50 tents is a form of free speech similar to marches, sit-ins and rallies.

“The Supreme Court said money is free speech,” protester Michael Custer said at a hearing. “If money is free speech, then surely a 24-hour vigil … must also count as free speech.” (Click Here For Full Story)

(Story by Chas Sisk — The Tennessean / Tennessean.com)

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – Members of Occupy Memphis have evicted six people living at their encampment due to drinking and drug use.

Marquella Scott said Tuesday that about 15 members voted to remove three tents from their camp in front of Memphis City Hall because their residents were breaking the group’s rules against drinking, drug use and sexual harassment.

Public safety officers working for a company employed by the Downtown Memphis City Center Commission helped with the evictions.

Scott said the six people are not Occupy members. She said they were “using the name of Occupy Memphis to do their nefarious deeds.”

The eviction leaves about 15 members in about 10 tents at the site.

Memphis police have said they do not plan to evict the group, as long as it follows city laws.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Occupy Wall Street protester vows to fight subpoena over Twitter account. Malcolm Harris’s lawyer says order from prosecutors which demands release of three months’ worth of tweets is improper.

A writer and Occupy Wall Street activist whose tweets have become the subject of a subpoena by a New York prosecutor is seeking to quash the order in court.

A lawyer for Malcolm Harris, 23, who was arrested along with 700 protesters on the Brooklyn bridge last October, filed a motion on Monday against the subpoena, which demanded the release of all of his tweets over a three-month period.

Harris – a writer whose Twitter bio reads “Real stories, callous revolutionary fervor, trickery” – is known in the Occupy movement as the trickster behind false claim that Radiohead were going to hold a concert at Zuccotti Park in New York.

Martin Stolar, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, said the use of a subpoena over a Twitter account was unprecedented, improper and an abuse of process.

“There is simply no justification for seeking such a broad swath of electronic data as part of prosecuting a minor charge related to one event on a discreet date,” Stolar said. “This is yet another example of the City of New York overstepping the boundaries of the law in order to chill the legitimate political expression of critics of government policies.”

Stolar said he was seeking to quash the subpoena on several grounds. He claims it did not comply with federal laws governing requests for information from electronic communication devices and had also failed to comply with procedures related to delivering a subpoena outside New York State. (Click Here For Full Story)

(Story by Karen McVeigh — Guardian.co.uk)

New Report Suggests Police Overstated Costs of Occupy Protest; Attorney David A. Black Questions Possibility of $160,000 in Unaccounted Expenses.

Police departments around the country have accused the Occupy Wall Street protests of costing American taxpayers millions of dollars in officer overtime, but a former city prosecutor is beginning to question the validity of those claims. After breaking down the costs of the Occupy Phoenix protest in a new article on his website, Phoenix criminal lawyer David A. Black has found $160,000 worth of unaccounted expenses in the Phoenix police department’s official estimate.

“Occupy Phoenix’s attendance dwindled from 1,000 to 50 in less than a day,” says Black, who is representing one of the arrested protesters pro bono. “The protesters caused no property damage, required no crowd control and the only crime anyone committed was staying in a park after hours. But the Phoenix police are claiming that they needed hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime to respond to it. That’s almost three times more per arrest than any other Occupy movement in the country. It just doesn’t make sense.”

According to the city police, the first three days of Occupy Phoenix necessitated $180,000 in overtime. After factoring in all the costs of the SWAT-led raid on the first night of the demonstration, Black figures that the estimate leaves $160,000 of overtime remaining. The police have yet to disclose what that money went toward, but if it were distributed among the 20 officers who supervised the protest, each would receive 133 hours – or $8,000 – in overtime compensation for 72 hours worth of police work. That’s an especially handsome bonus considering that only 40 people attended the second and third days of Occupy Phoenix. (Click Here For Full Release)

(Press Release by Mark Moran — PRWeb.com)

Occupy evictions include Pittsburgh, Miami and Portland, Maine; Occupy evictions have been occurring with some frequency over the past few months. A camp in Portland, Maine is one of the most recent among Occupy evictions.

A tent city that’s among the longest-lived Occupy protest encampments is coming down as part of a new wave of eviction orders against demonstrators aligned with the movement in communities including Miami, Washington and Pittsburgh.

Occupy Maine demonstrators removed several large tents over the weekend, and the city on Monday gave them additional time to remove the rest.

Demonstrators who established the encampment just two weeks after the Occupy Wall Street encampment set up shop in New York City vowed to continue their work to call attention to corporate excess and economic inequality.

“Just because the occupation is changing form doesn’t mean it’s going away,” Heather Curtis, one of the campers, said Monday before she started hauling away her belongings from snow-covered Lincoln Park.

The encampments that were the heart of the movement are becoming scarcer. On Monday, a judge issued what appeared to be the final notice for Occupy Pittsburgh to leave. Over the past week, police began removing demonstrators in Miami; Austin, Texas; and Washington, D.C.

The voices are still making themselves heard, though. (Click Here For Full Story)

(Story By David Sharp, Associated Press / Cristian Science Monitor — CSMonitor.com)