{"id":820,"date":"2012-06-30T21:49:51","date_gmt":"2012-06-30T21:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/\/?p=820"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:08","slug":"occupy-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/occupy-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Occupy Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"
Monday, March 26th 2012 by\u00a0Margaret J. Pishko<\/strong><\/div>\n
\n 
\nBy now, the\u00a0Occupy<\/a>\u00a0Wall Street movement has become well known and widespread throughout in the United States. Claiming, \u201cWe Are the 99%<\/a>,\u201d this resistance movement seeks to \u201cempower real people to create\u00a0real change<\/a>\u201d in order to build a better society free of the \u201cgreed and corruption of the\u00a01%<\/a>.\u201d They have also expanded outside of New York to cities throughout the country.
\n\"\"
\nThe participants utilize\u00a0twitter<\/a>\u00a0as a free and broadly reaching outlet for discussion, announcement, and alerts. The movement\u2019s official\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0endorses the twitter handle\u00a0@OccupyWallSt<\/a>\u00a0to send out information. For instance, on Wednesday, March 21, 2012, @OccupyWallSt tweeted out a warning:\u00a0 \u201c#NYPD gathers around #UnionSq, lights-blazin.’\u201d
\nIn the wake of the arrests of hundreds of occupiers for lower level charges, such as disorderly conduct,prosecutors<\/a>\u00a0have begun to use occupiers\u2019 twitter handles against them.\u00a0 Prosecutors are using occupiers\u2019 tweets to establish \u201cintent to break the law<\/a>.\u201d This element has previously been an\u00a0issue<\/a>\u00a0for prosecutors to establish prior to the subpoenas because of the group nature of the arrests.
\nRecently,\u00a0Jeff Rae<\/a>\u00a0was arrested during a large march in New York City. After his arrest, Rae pledged to fight the charges of disorderly conduct believing he had a claim for entrapment. However, when prosecutors\u00a0subpoenaed<\/a>\u00a0his twitter account, they found a tweet from Rae during the march that said, \u201cI will tweet until I’m cuffed ;).<\/a>” Threatening to use this tweet to establish Rae\u2019s intent to break the law, prosecutors convinced Rae to accepted a plea bargain instead of fight the charges. Rae describing the experience as \u201cfighting the king . . . it seemed like a lot of power was in their hands<\/a>.\u201d The\u00a0plea bargain<\/a>allows the charge to be expunged as long as Rae does not cause problems over the next six months.
\nIn the case of\u00a0Malcolm Harris<\/a>, arrested on the same day as Jeff Rae, prosecutors claimed that Harris\u2019s tweets that day \u201cmade clear\u2026that he was well aware of the police instructions that day, and acted with the intent of obstructing traffic on the bridge<\/a>.\u201d He has not yet expected a plea bargain.<\/p>\n

“Threatening to use this tweet to establish Rae\u2019s intent to break the law, prosecutors convinced Rae to accepted a plea bargain instead of fight the charges.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Currently, the New York Police Department is investigating another tweet that stated \u201cWe wont make a different if we dont kill a cop or 2<\/a>.\u201d The tweet alleged came from a man in Florida watching an Occupy demonstration that ended in a clash between demonstrators and police in\u00a0Zuccotti Park<\/a>.\u00a0 For obvious reasons, this tweet caused an uproar in the New York Police Department, which immediately began a search for the author of the threat.\u00a0The alleged perpetrators\u00a0<\/a>says the tweet is unrelated to the protests and defended the statement claiming, \u201cIt’s not like I meant anything of it. Who takes anything like that seriously? I’m in Florida, what am I going to do?<\/a>”
\nAttorneys for the occupy protesters argue that the subpoenas are \u201cheavy-handed<\/a>\u201d and \u201coverkill<\/a>.\u201d Harris\u2019s attorney, Martin Solar, even described the prosecutor\u2019s attempts as \u201can attempt by the DA’s office to use a sledgehammer to squash a gnat<\/a>.\u201d He has motioned to have the Harris\u2019s subpoena removed in order to protect his client from this attack on his right of free speech.
\nOccupiers have described the subpoenas as \u201ca chilling effect on our free speech rights and the waste of taxpayer money to peruse individual’s public and private communications.<\/a>\u201d However, they claim the threats and subpoenas will not stop their efforts.\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, March 26th 2012 by\u00a0Margaret J. Pishko   By now, the\u00a0Occupy\u00a0Wall Street movement has become well known and widespread throughout in the United States. Claiming, \u201cWe Are the 99%,\u201d this resistance movement seeks to \u201cempower real people to create\u00a0real change\u201d in order to build a better society free of the \u201cgreed and corruption of the\u00a01%.\u201d …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7708,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions\/7708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}