Camped out in the Capitol

It wasn’t entirely clear to me from earlier coverage whether the protesters are occupying the Wisconsin capitol building at night as well as during the day. They are. This from today’s New York Times:

The marble-filled Capitol here has taken on a new look over so many days of protests: homemade signs hang in the famous rotunda, as well as on many walls and windows; protesters have set up a makeshift “information center” in one hallway, a sleeping area (quiet time begins at 11 most nights) with neatly folded blankets in another; and clusters of police officers, some from other parts of Wisconsin, stand watch.

Why is this being allowed?

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Sage McLaughlin writes:

You ask why the protestors’ complete takeover of the capital building is being allowed. The answer, as near as I can tell, is two-fold: 1) The police are unionized, and will permit the protestors to do absolutely anything that falls short of physically assaulting a public official, and 2) Even if law enforcement wasn’t in the tank for the protestors, there have been so many bused in from all over the country that the level of force required to disperse them—and the melodramatic treatment this would receive in the media—might shift the politics decisively against the Governor.

This is a very bad situation. None of us knows how it will work out in the end, but as usual, I’m not terribly optimistic.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 21, 2011 09:21 AM | Send