Earth First! and Occupy protesters blockade bridge in front of GAIM conference

24th Jan­u­ary 2012

24th Jan­u­ary 2012

More arrests underway as conference is disrupted by activists inside the resort as well

Palm Beach Coun­ty, Flori­da—Pro­test­ers from the Occu­py move­ment and Ever­glades Earth First! block­ad­ed a Boca Raton bridge yes­ter­day, snarling rush hour traf­fic dur­ing a cock­tail par­ty of cor­po­rate investors at the GAIM USA 2012 con­fer­ence. Among them was Ana Rodriguez, an edi­tor of the Earth First! Jour­nal, which is also pub­lished in Palm Beach Coun­ty. 

Using col­or­ful lock­box­es, three activists, laid on the bridge effec­tive­ly stop­ping rush hour traf­fic from 5–6:30.  Spe­cial oper­a­tions police teams were called to the site to remove the lock­down devices that were link­ing the pro­test­ers togeth­er. The block­aders were cit­ed with three charges, includ­ing: resist­ing with­out vio­lence; obstruct­ing a high­way and vio­la­tion of a munic­i­pal ordi­nance ban­ning what the Boca police called “sleep­ing drag­ons.”

Two of the three arrest­ed, Kevin Young and Don Carter from Occu­py Mia­mi, were released on their own recog­ni­zance. Ana Rodriguez was released today on a $1,500 bond, with the state attor­ney alleg­ing that she was a flight risk to Venezuela, her coun­try of ori­gin.

“Every day we see cor­po­rate pow­er destroy­ing our com­mu­ni­ties.  From envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters to pri­vate pris­ons, cor­po­ra­tions are oper­at­ing with impuni­ty,” said Ana Rodriguez before being arrest­ed. “While the bank lead­ers drink cock­tails and toast to increased prof­its, peo­ple across the globe are being hurt by cor­po­rate greed.”

Anoth­er pro­test­er scaled a tree along­side the bridge and hung a large ban­ner that read: “What Would Robin Hood Do?” The ban­ner was tak­en down by a fire truck and con­fis­cat­ed by Boca police.

The protests against GAIM began on Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 22, with 100 peo­ple march­ing in front of the Boca Resort and a flotil­la of boats and canoes along the resort’s water­front.

More pro­test­ers returned this after­noon for day three of the GAIM con­fer­ence, announced as a nation­al day of action against pri­vate pris­ons and deten­tion cen­ters. At the time of this news post, there are reports of more arrests for immi­grant sol­i­dar­i­ty activists dis­rupt­ing the con­fer­ence from the inside.