BELLINGHAM — Occupy Bellingham protesters camping at Maritime Heritage Park were given 24 hours to vacate the park Tuesday morning, Dec. 27, and police will be on hand Wednesday morning to make sure they comply.
A letter delivered to protesters and signed by Mayor Dan Pike and Bellingham Parks and Recreation Director James King gave the campers until 9 a.m. Wednesday to move out and remove their property, tents and trash.
The campers have been staying in the park since the end of October, and the city at first took a hands-off approach to the encampment, despite the fact that it violated park rules. In the vacate notice, Pike cited complaints from nearby businesses and other park users and damage done to the grass by tents and signs. The letter from the city lists several municipal codes that the campers are violating, including those against overnight camping, destruction of park property and encroaching on park property.
“I think we’ve been very tolerant,” Pike said. “At the end of the day, we can’t say we’re only going to enforce laws when they affect people who don’t agree with us. We’re going to enforce them all the time. … If you continue to flout the law, eventually we have to take action.”
Pike said that the decision was not an easy one to make because he agrees with some points that the protesters are trying to make, but he thinks it’s time for them to try to spread their message in a different way that doesn’t damage the parks or cost taxpayers money.
“They’re using city property to try to gain attention to an issue that’s a much bigger issue, and it’s coming at the expense of the city,” he said.
While no exact figures were available Tuesday, the city has spent overtime on police to monitor the protests and encampment, and parks employees have had to check Maritime Heritage Park.
The campers and other protesters were angry about the vacate notice. They conducted two long meetings Tuesday with their legal advisor inside tents at the camp to discuss options.
“Occupy is a protest, a first-amendment-protected activity,” said Karen Weill, a legal assistant helping Occupy Bellingham. “Just because they’re in tents doesn’t mean it’s not a protest. (The city is) encroaching on their first-amendment rights.”
The protesters refused to let a Bellingham Herald reporter in the meetings and tried to keep the reporter out of the area, claiming they were private meetings even though they were being held in a public park.
They were still meeting late Tuesday evening. Among the ideas discussed were moving the protest to City Hall or staying at the park to see what happens Wednesday morning.
The campers and protesters seemed blindsided by the vacate notice.
“We’re not feeling good at all,” Occupy member Jim Robitaille said. “We believe this encampment is an embodiment of who we are as citizens of Bellingham. There’s been cooperation between the city and us in the past. We believed they would continue to extend that to us and therefore not close us down as other cities have.”
But Pike said that the city made it clear that the encampment couldn’t go on forever. Those who don’t leave the park by 9 a.m. risk getting arrested, and he didn’t see moving to another area of the park as a way to avoid that.
“I think at this point the city is feeling like those folks have had their chance to do what they’re doing and that now it’s time to do something else,” he said. “I don’t think moving to another location and doing the same thing would qualify as doing something else.”
