RC Blog

City drops Nickelsville charges

posted by Cydney Gillis on Wednesday, May 27 at 4:14pm

The 23 people who got arrested last October at Nickelsville, the tent city named for Seattle’s mayor, marked a victory Friday when the city attorney announced he was dropping the criminal trespassing charges against them.

In a press statement, City Attorney Tom Carr said he was making the move not for lack of evidence, but to spare the city a multi-defendant trial that would cost it time and resources that are needed elsewhere. “We are dismissing these cases purely because the cost does not justify the expense of going forward,” he said.

If only Mayor Nickels had thought of that earlier, he could have saved the cost of the two dozen police officers who forced 150 Nickelodeons off the public city land just off a park and ride lot in South Seattle where they pitched tents in the early morning hours of September 22. Not going to trial, however, means that the attorneys at Davis Wright Tremaine won’t get their shot at making the legal argument they had planned to use to defend the 23—that everyone has a basic legal “right to exist.”

Since the October eviction and arrests, the tent city has moved to Discovery Park and three churches, including its current site just south of Seattle at Bryn Mawr United Methodist Church.

From there, another clandestine move is planned June 5 to a new and undisclosed location—this time called a “permanent site” by the Nickelsville organizing committee, whose members say that, in the wake of media coverage that the tent city has gotten, the eyes and ears of the world will be on this move.

“Nickelsville is so well known,” says committee member Beatrice Friberg, “that whatever [the city does] is going to be a public relations nightmare.”

To help with the move—the Nickelodeons need trucks and trailers, in particular—e-mail scott@nickelsville.org. If you can’t help with the move, just show up when the media announces the new location. The Nickelodeons say the more Seattleites who stand with them, the better.

UPDATE: Real Change freelancer Ray Murphy attended the hearing Friday at which the charges were formally dismissed—without prejudice, he says. That means the same charges cannot be brought again. Warrants were also washed away, he says, for those Nickelodeons who had failed to appear at court dates. 

Comments

This is a great victory for the homeless and for poor people, but the fight is far from over. If your are keeping score(which I am ) I believe it is Nickelsville 8 Mayor Nickels/City of Seattle 0, go team!!!

Aaron Colyer | submitted on 05/29/2009, 7:07pm