Occupy Honolulu: Meeting with Mayor Didn’t Go Well
Occupy Honolulu protesters left an afternoon meeting with Mayor Peter Carlisle unhappy, feeling no better about their prospects for staying at Thomas Square long-term.
The Tuesday meeting at Honolulu Hale was the first between the mayor and members of the movement, who requested the face-to-face.
“They had some questions and the mayor went around the table and listened to them,” Executive Assistant Jim Fulton told Civil Beat shortly after the meeting.
Minutes earlier, about a half-dozen protesters came filing out of the managing director’s office on the third floor of Honolulu Hale.
One Occupy Honolulu member sitting outside the office, who said he wasn’t in on the meeting, told Civil Beat that his compatriots reported that the meeting didn’t go well.
The protester said those who were in the meeting left feeling that the city will use the new law banning personal belongings from public spaces to evict the encampment from the sidewalk next to Thomas Square Park at the corner of Beretania Street and Ward Avenue downtown. As the group quickly moved to the elevator, he said the administration has been lying in the media when it’s said it has no plans to move in on Occupy protesters.
Fulton declined to comment on the contents of what he said the city promised would be a “private meeting.”
Asked specifically about the implications the Occupy encampment in light of Bill 54 (now Ordinance 11-29), Fulton said, “We respect Occupy Honolulu’s right to express their freedom of speech and First Amendment rights as long as they’re abiding by the law, just like anybody else.”
But the new law makes Occupy Honolulu illegal. Fulton wouldn’t comment on whether the city planned to evict them.
Carlisle spokeswoman Louise Kim McCoy said the city is still evaluating the situation and assessing park boundaries to determine if the Occupy camp is indeed abiding by the law.
Under the law, which Carlisle signed Friday after it passed the Honolulu City Council two days earlier, the city must post notice before confiscating personal items — a term defined to include things like tents.
The bill drew criticism for its perceived insensitivity to the city’s homeless. As it made its way through the Council, protesters realized it might be applied to them as well.
The bill was introduced Sept. 28, about five weeks before the Occupy Honolulu encampment took hold in early November.
