Protestors held incommunicado in LA jails. Nice work, Herr Villaraigosa. No lawyers, no rights. Does anyone in the mainstream media give a (expletive deleted)? If this were happening in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, etc., you’d hear a great hue and cry from our esteemed journalists in the USA. This is from Answer, but it’s confirmed by an LA Times blog:
National Lawyers Guild chapter in Los Angeles said, “New York City was successfully sued in 2004 when they tried the same tactic against individuals involved in protesting at the Republican National Convention." Wow. Do they really think they won't be sued and that they'll lose? I really think that those in authority think that the Occupy movement is no big deal. The Occupy movement is not going to go away. Doing something so blatantly illegal is only going to add fuel to the fire.
I think there's a connection between this action and the civilian detention clause in the Defense Authorization Bill. Our government really does plan on routinely violating our Constitutional rights in order to stifle dissent. They're just testing us to see if we'll let them get away with it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the DHS didn't dream this tactic up.