Occupy Philly plans march, regular meetings

Members of Occupy Philadelphia regrouped and recommitted Friday to press on with protests and meetings following their eviction from the City Hall apron Wednesday morning.

Moving forward, the Occupiers said, they will continue to hold regular general assembly meetings at the nearby Friends Center at 7 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

The activists have scheduled a march for Saturday, setting out at 2 p.m. from City Hall headed to Independence Hall.

Additional marches and protests will follow, they said, in cooperation with other groups that share their concerns about unemployment, inequitable taxation, homelessness, and other issues.

Several protesters made a point of disassociating Occupy Philadelphia from the splinter group that calls itself Reasonable Solutions, whose members have obtained a permit to protest at Thomas Paine Plaza - with its familiar art array of giant board-game pieces - during the day.

Occupy activists said that it was absurd to apply for a city permit to protest during the day.

"We already have a permit: The First Amendment," said Shawn McMonigle.

Anne Gemmell, political director of Fight for Philly, a coalition of community and labor groups and faith-based organizations, announced that her group would provide free bus transportation to a demonstration in Washington this weekend.

The protest, "Take Back the Capitol," is organized around many Occupy themes and will be directed at members of Congress and lobbyists, she said.

"Unemployment benefits are slated to expire," Gemmell said. "There will be teach-ins and rallies."

While activists from Occupy Philadelphia announced their next moves Friday, the city held a news conference to outline the costs to the city of the encampment.

The Nutter administration estimated that the city spent $1,052,000 handling the eight-week demonstration, about 90 percent of it on police overtime - including $400,000 in the final week, when police mounted their overnight effort to remove the protesters from Dilworth Plaza.

"It's an unanticipated cost but it's manageable," said budget director Rebecca Rhynhart. "In any given year there are a lot of moving pieces to the budget." She cited other unpredictable costs, like snow removal - $12 million last year and $18 million the year before.

"This is part of the reason that we do a target budget process each year, where we ask the departments to spend less than what's in their budget, so that when things like this come up, we have some money to put to it," added Rob Dubow, the city finance director. "We also have problems with the economy slowing down, which is actually creating a much bigger problem for our budget than Occupy Philly."

Besides $958,000 in police overtime, the city's expenses included $30,000 in the Streets Department for sanitation and trash removal, $21,000 in the Public Property Department for custodial services, $16,000 in technology expenses to set up a police command unit, and $27,000 in fleet expenses for the vehicles used by the police and streets personnel.

Occupy Philly paid for its own portable toilets and agreed to pay for the electricity that powered its computer and sound systems. Nutter spokesman Mark McDonald said the administration has a phone number for the woman who signed the agreement to pay the electric bill.

Although the encampment is now gone from Dilworth Plaza on the west side of City Hall, Occupy activist Toorjo "TJ" Ghose said the movement has not lost momentum.

Ghose, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania with a doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, teaches in the School of Social Policy and Practice. He was arrested about 3 a.m. during the protest Wednesday and held until 7 p.m., he said.

During the occupation, Ghose took his class to Dilworth Plaza to witness "how direct democracy can work."

At Friday's Occupy Philadelphia news conference, he recalled extended encampments in Washington during the 1920s that inspired President Franklin D. Roosevelt to enact the New Deal.

"Our future is bright," he said. "With an election year coming up, there are a lot of places to occupy."

Some who were arrested in Wednesday's predawn protest that followed the eviction, or who witnessed it, suggested that lawsuits might be filed against police and vowed to continue the fight for social justice.

"We have a deep concern about the arbitrary and vindictive nature of the arrests," said Gwen Snyder, a member of the Occupy legal and labor working groups and one of a half-dozen speakers at the Friday morning news conference in the Friends Center.

Snyder said she was on the sidewalk talking on her cellphone during the protest, at 15th and Hamilton Streets, when a police captain grabbed her by a shoulder, pulling her into the street.

The police, she said, seemed to be targeting activists who had emerged as leaders of the Occupy movement. She surmised that police wanted to end the five-hour-long protest before it disrupted rush-hour traffic.

Snyder, along with several other protesters who were taken into custody, also complained that they were not permitted to make phone calls.

Vanessa Maria Graber, a member of Occupy and reporter for the Prometheus Radio Project, whose slogan is "Freeing the Airwaves From Corporate Control," was injured when a mounted officer and his horse suddenly slashed into a crowd of protesters, an action that Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said should not have happened.

Wearing a blue Velcro brace on her right foot, Graber said her lawyer had advised her not to share any medical details.

Contrary to eyewitness accounts from reporters covering the protest, Graber and several others said "many, many people" had been "brutalized" by police, "hit in the head, choked, and thrown to the ground."