by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
Jan. 23, 2012
Image by LianaAn via Flickr
I spent Friday morning sitting on a wooden bench in a fourth-floor courtroom in the New York Criminal Court in Manhattan. I was waiting to be sentenced for “disturbing the peace” and “refusing to obey a lawful order” during an Occupy demonstration in front of Goldman Sachs in November.
Those sentenced before me constituted the usual fare of the court. They were poor people of color accused of mostly petty crimes—drug possession, thefts, shoplifting, trespassing because they were homeless and needed a place to sleep, inappropriate touching, grand larceny and violation of probation. They were escorted out of a backroom by a police officer, stood meekly before the judge with their hands cuffed behind them, were hastily defended by a lawyer clutching a few folders, and were sentenced. Ten days in jail. Sixty days in jail.
Six months in jail. A steady stream of convictions. My sentence, by comparison, was slight. I was given an ACD, or “adjournment in contemplation of dismissal,” which means that if I am not arrested in the next six months my case is dismissed. If I am arrested during this period of informal probation the old charge will be added to the new one before I am sentenced.
[…]
via Truthdig
Copyright © 2012 Truthdig
Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.
see
Chris Hedges: Occupy the Courts + Citizens Unite for a Constitutional Amendment By Dennis Kucinich
Moyers & Company: Crony Capitalism
Moyers & Company: On Winner-Take-All Politics
Ron Paul Moves To Repeal Indefinite Detention Of American Citizens Without Trial!
Dandelion Salad 
Pingback: Transformation: Effectuating Democracy by a Voters’ Rights Amendment by William John Cox « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Ralph Nader: How is Your Civic Life? « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: RevolutionTruth Panels – Occupy 2012: Battle for our Freedoms « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address + transcript (1.24.12) « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Chris Hedges: Challenging the legality of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Democracia Real Ya: Spain’s “Indignados” and the Globalization of Dissent « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: An Archaic Postmodern View of Occupy Wall Street by Joseph Natoli « Dandelion Salad