In a repeat of events of one year ago to the date, antiwar protestors affiliated with Veterans for Peace and others from We Are Change were arrested Monday by New York City police for remaining at the city’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial past a 10 PM public park curfew. The veterans had gathered at the Memorial on the anniversary of the commencement of U.S. military action in Afghanistan to read aloud the names of New Yorkers killed in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The protestors had filed for a special use permit to stay through the night to continue reading the names, but the permit was rejected. The group chose to honor the fallen anyway.
Police began arriving shortly before 9 PM to enforce the curfew, passed last year as a weapon against Occupy Wall Street protesters. Over the next hour the police warned protestors three times to disperse by 10 PM. Then, minutes after the curfew took effect, police moved in, cuffed and arrested the peaceably gathered protestors on charges of violation of the curfew.
On October 7, 2012, 25 similarly peaceful protestors were arrested at the same Memorial on the same charges. They were convicted but subsequently cleared of all charges by a Manhattan Criminal Court judge, perhaps in recollection of our dwindling freedom of speech and assembly, who decided that “in these unique circumstances, this is the rare case where justice is served by dismissing the case.”
Once again, though, sadly, shamefully, combat veterans who cared to remember their brothers and sisters who paid the ultimate price in the name of freedom have been denied the same.