Five thousand dollars or one year in jail. That's the punishment for interfering with traffic and disobeying a police officer, and that's the charge levied, for the first time, against one of the arrestees at the June 8-9 encampment protest outside City Hall.
Rev. Rich Lang received notice Monday that he was being charged with the two infractions. He's ordered to appear in court Aug. 12.
Lang, who writes the "Faith, Culture, Politics" column for Real Change, was one of 15 people arrested at the corner of Fifth Ave. and Cherry St. for blocking traffic to protest the city's ongoing clearance of homeless people's encampments and the disposal of their belongings. The 15 were released from West Precinct headquarters a half-hour after their arrest.
Lang has been in the city's gunsights before -- and he's come out okay. His church, Trinity United Methodist, was fined $75 a day by the Department of Planning and Development for hosting Tent City 3 in 2001. In an attempt at intimidation, land-use inspectors inquired into the legality of the church's leasing office space to local non-profits. After public attention to the church's fine, the city negotiated an agreement that allowed Tent City to continue and faith groups to exercise their right to shelter the poor. Neither Trinity nor El Centro de La Raza, which hosted Tent City for half of its first year, ever paid the fines.