When I heard the Capitol was supposed to close down I rushed over to see if I could get in. I was actually prepared to get arrested when they were slated to clear the place.

As it turns out, that couldn’t happen, because… well.. too many other people had the same idea.

So I hung out in the cold instead for a while and got some pictures and video for you, the home viewer.

(Crowd gathered to cheer on the people from inside who were being removed)

As it turns out, eventually the police relented and people who were already inside and really wanted to stay got to stay for the night:

“Cooler heads prevailed,” said Jim Palmer, the executive director of the 11,000-member Wisconsin Professional Police Association. “They had said they were going to clear the place out, and then they thought the better of it. Now it’s clear that law enforcement professionals are running the show.”

Tragically, however, this victory was a short one as Walker has announced a slew of new restrictions this morning to block most entry to the Capitol, a practice which is illegal under the Wisconsin Constitution.

Not that our riot-planning Governor cares much for the law.

Looks like I may get the chance to be arrested after all. I don’t know if the ZRC will make it downtown today; I’m still very, very sick, caught something nasty out in the cold yesterday. But I’ll definitely be there tomorrow.

Tags: Madison Protests

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, February 28th, 2011 at 11:57 am and is filed under ZRC News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.