The feds in OKC protect their sidewalk from the scary peace activists

So this is what I posted at nlgok.org:

Activists protesting FBI raids forced off ‘federal property’ in OKC

From stop_fbi_raids

In OKC today we held a protest of the FBI raids and harassment. We got a permit from the city to do it on one of the corners where the federal building is, which happens to be diagonally across from the Murrah bombing memorial and museum.

But security guards from the federal building, and the cops they called, forced us, on threat of arrest on federal charges, to go to another corner. We went to the Murrah corner, primarily because street construction in that whole area limited the choices and it had the most room so that we didn’t block other pedestrian traffic. Anyway, in very short order, we were asked by a museum representative to leave that corner, and since technically our permit said the NW corner, and because it’s the Murrah memorial and they have some legitimate grounds for paranoia, we moved to our third and final corner. Our NLG attorney is investigating the feds’ right to prevent us protesting on ‘their’ sidewalk outside the security barricades, so stay tuned.

We had 12 come out on pretty short notice — actually not bad for OKC. But we plan to do another on 10/5 with speakers and hopefully press coverage (though that is very hard to get here).

The attached pictures show one of us, a man holding a “Veteran for Peace” sign (John Walters), being the last hold out on the original corner, as law enforcement gave him the final notice to leave before arresting him. He at that point complied and joined us on corner 3.

stop_fbi_raids

(click image for more photos)