Article by Erik Smith. Published on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 EST.

Activists Turn Up Heat – Rotunda Campout Thwarted



By Erik Smith

Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

OLYMPIA, Nov. 29.—Some 2,000 noisy activists offered a warm welcome to lawmakers Monday as the Washington Legislature returned to the Capitol for its second special session of the year.

            Not warm as in affection, but warm in terms of heat. Protesters filled the Capitol steps, marched and paraded around the rotunda, draped banners from galleries and balconies, and chanted about the indifference of the rich. There were all the things that make a good protest — tasings, arrests, even one report of a biting incident. And at day’s end, the most obstinate of the bunch stuck around to be carried out of the rotunda by the Washington State Patrol. The excuse for the “Occupy the Capitol” protest, scheduled to run all week, is the state’s $2 billion shortfall and the all-but-certain budget cuts that will help balance it.

            But you kind of got the idea that the message wasn’t the point. It was the spectacle, and the giddy feeling that all the marching and shouting was somehow making the world a better place. Nowhere was that more clear than in the day’s showcase hearing, before the House Ways and Means Committee, which held a marathon hearing on the governor’s proposed budget. Hundreds of rather more polite visitors had shown up to earnestly plead the case for education and social service programs.

            Before things could get started, though, the activists filled the aisles and began chanting, drowning out the official business. And if they were aiming to persuade lawmakers, they certainly had a funny way of doing it.

            One chant in the hearing room went like this:

            “I say f— the rich!

            “F— the politicians!

            “You’re all dead to me!

            “F— you!”

            Well, maybe it did convince lawmakers of something. They took a half-hour break while state patrolmen cleared the noisiest of them out of the room, ostensibly on orders from “the fire marshal.” It wasn’t a matter of deportment, explained Chairman Ross Hunter; it was that they were blocking the aisles and obstructing access to the exit doors.

            While the boisterous crowd paraded around the Cherberg Building, beating drums outside the meeting room, lawmakers regrouped.

            Said state Rep. Bill Hinkle, R-Cle Elum, “When people start chanting I turn my ears off. It does me absolutely no good. Zero. Worse yet, I am supporting all the issues they are chanting about. I’m trying to help them. Wake up, you morons.”

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