Dallas Gives Protest Campers A Deadline

DALLAS, TX (KERA) - The honeymoon is over for Occupy Dallas, which began its protest last week. A city permit says protesters may camp out at Pioneer Plaza downtown until 5pm on Friday. KERA's BJ Austin says more than three dozen campers will have to decide whether to risk arrest after that deadline.


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Cops Beat Veterans in Boston and City Hall Blackmails OccupyDallas

Occupy Wall Street first struck me as a joke. Here were all these twenty somethings in their Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters complaining about corporate greed in the middle of the work week while taking photos with their $1000 cameras and their $300 iPhones.Their gatherings pulled cops away from other areas and terrible things happened like a series of random attacks on women in the subway. It’s so very easy to admonish these people as privileged hipster kids and dislike them for how they inconvenience the cities they protest in.

But then the cops in New York started macing people. And as much as we might WANT to mace a hipster it’s still assault and unwarranted and not cool.

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City Grants Occupy Dallas a Special Permit

We began the day by discussing Occupy Dallas's missive to the mayor concerning their encampment at Pioneer Plaza, between Dallas City Hall and the Dallas Convention Center. We end it -- not counting our Rangers liveblog, which is now into extra innings -- with this: Following a sitdown with the group, the city has OK'd a special permit for the group through October 14. The permit, which was just dispatched, follows, but first this from Frank Librio, City Hall spokesman:

The Occupy Dallas group has obtained a special permit for the Pioneer Plaza area near the Convention Center. The City is balancing this group's first amendment rights with a focus on protecting the protestors and the public -- like many other cities across the country experiencing similar protests.

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When Dallas Decides It's Over Being Occupied, That's When Things Could Get Ugly

Start the countdown. How long will it be before Dallas City Hall decides to evict the Occupy protest campers from Pioneer Plaza? You know it's coming.
If the Occupy Dallas anti-corporate-greed protesters continue to camp out in a park just down the block from City Hall, political pressure will build to get rid of them. At some point that pressure will be felt by City Hall.
So far, the police department has taken a hands-off posture. It won't last. This is Dallas.
As the Occupy movement grows nationally in weeks ahead and becomes more of a factor, the encampment here will become more and more a cinder in the eye of local conservatives. They will want it expunged.


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Occupy Dallas Sends a Mayor Mike, City Officials a Note: They're Gonna Be Here a While

We went to the Mecum car auction Saturday after all, where a '68 Corvette sold for $565,000, and as we were driving away from the Dallas Convention Center we espied a small encampment of sorts set up next to Robert Summers's 49 bronze Longhorns in Pioneer Plaza. There was one dude sporting a Guy Fawkes mask at Griffin and Young, but the rest of the gathering looked rather, ya know, college-quad -- just a bunch of folks sitting on blankets, tossing around the Frisbee, hanging out.

Turns out, they ain't going anywhere: The Occupy Dallas folks, who took their first steps Thursday, have sent a letter to Mayor Mike Rawlings, the city council, City Manager Mary Suhm and the police and fire chiefs in which they explain their mission ("our grievances are as numerous and diverse as our supporters"), say they're going to be there who knows how long, explain how they're good for tourism and and invite 'em all to come down and hang for a bit:

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