Occupy Sacramento's Day of the Living Dead

Occupy Sacramento's Day of the Living Dead

by Dan Bacher

Shouting, "What Do We Want? Brains!," "Where do we want them? City Council!," over 200 "zombies" from Occupy Sacramento marched from Cesar Chavez Park through the streets of downtown Sacramento on the afternoon of Saturday, October 29.

Christina Kay and other Occupy Sacramento organizers also led the "zombies" in chants such as "Zombies, united, will never be divided!" as they protested "the Nightmare on Wall Street."

The Zombie Walk, headed by several "zombie banksters," stopped at Wells Fargo and other banks after proceeding through the downtown mall.

At Wells Fargo, one "zombie" man held up a skeleton puppet proclaiming, "Zombies were the 99%." A "zombie" woman also held up a sign saying, "Fatal Error - Capitalism Has Crashed - Install New System."

The afternoon walk was followed by another "Zombie Walk" at 8 pm. The walks took place on Day 23 of Occupy Sacramento, one of hundreds of occupations that have taken throughout the U.S., Europe and Mexico starting with Occupy Wall Street in New York City to protest Wall Street bailouts and the corruption of the political system by corporate money.

As a fan of zombie movies including Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Revenge of the Living Dead, I applaud the creativity of the Occupy Sacramento organizers in embracing the "Zombie Walks" to draw attention to their protest against Wall Street.

More than 30 Occupy Sacramento protestors went to court for the first time last week – 79 arrests have been made since Oct. 6 when the occupation of Cesar Chavez Park began. Those defendants were given Nov. 3 dates to make a plea on misdemeanor charges (6 months in jail, $1,000 fine), according to Cres Vellucci, spokesman for Occupy Sacramento.

All were either defended by more than a dozen volunteer lawyers or the Public Defender office. More of those arrested will be arraigned next week.

All of those who appeared in court last week were arrested for "unlawful assembly" (409 pc), although the County District Attorney, Jan Scully, announced on Monday, October 24 she was not going to prosecute it, saying no crime was committed by demonstrators. Yet the City Attorney’s office is still planning on prosecuting the charges of violating city code.

"The unlawful assembly charge is a police or city-created crime," said civil rights attorney Jeff Kravitz. "It cannot prevail in court."

On October 24, Kravitz attended a news conference with defense attorney Josh Kaizuka and Mark Merin, who announced he had sent a warning letter to the city of Sacramento, threatening to sue for violating the civil rights of Occupy Sacramento protesters.

"Good folks in Cincinnati have filed a lawsuit alleging that actions which that city has taken, similar to what Sacramento has done in closing the public park where the occupiers are demonstrating, constitute a prior restraint on free speech and are therefore unconstitutional," the letter stated. "We are prepared to file a similar action here to enjoin and declare unconstitutional the closure of the Park after stated hours, as well as to enjoin the continued arrests of persons claiming their constitutional right to assemble. We believe the chilling effect of these arrests is significant. Obviously, the use of scarce city resources for the arrest and booking of these peaceful demonstrators is senseless."

Meanwhile, the Occupy Oakland General Assembly on October 26 passed a resolution calling for a general strike on Wednesday, November 2. "We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school," the resolution stated. "Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city." For more information, go to: http://www.occupyoakland.org.

For more information about Occupy Sacramento, call Cres Vellucci, 916-996-9170, or contact: http://www.facebook.com/OccupySacramento, http://www.occupysac.com, Twitter@OccupySacto

See OccupySacramento LIVE now at: http://www.livestream.com/occupysacto or http://www.ustream.tv/channel/dummey