{"id":46203,"date":"2013-06-28T20:00:40","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T19:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/facing-13-years-in-prison-for-denouncing-the-bank-bailouts-using-kids-chalk-2\/46203\/"},"modified":"2013-06-28T20:00:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T19:00:40","slug":"facing-13-years-in-prison-for-denouncing-the-bank-bailouts-using-kids-chalk-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/facing-13-years-in-prison-for-denouncing-the-bank-bailouts-using-kids-chalk-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Facing 13 Years in Prison for Denouncing the Bank Bailouts\u2013Using Kids' Chalk?"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 27, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
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Using kids’ sidewalk chalk, Jeff Olson scrawled his frustration with the Wall Street bailout of big banks outside three Bank of America buildings in his home town of San Diego last year. Bank of America received $45 billion in interest-free loans from the US government in 2008 and 2009\u2013one of many conglamorate megabanks in the U.S. to receive massive government handouts. <\/p>\n

Even though the chalk Olson used was water soluble and could easily be washed away, the 40-year-old Calif. resident is now standing trial for 13 counts of vandalism\u2013meaning a potential 13-year jail sentence and $13,000 in fines. <\/p>\n

During the first day of the trial on June 25,\u00a0Superior Court Judge Howard M. Shore ruled out<\/a>\u00a0Olson\u2019s First Amendment rights\u2013even though they are fundementally protected under the U.S. Constitution. <\/p>\n

The judge prohibited Olson’s attorney from even talking about the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech throughout the trial, citing the fact that the state\u2019s Vandalism Statute does not explicitly mention First Amendment rights. <\/p>\n

Outside of the courtroom, Olson\u2019s attorney Tom Tosdal said to The San Diego Reader<\/em>, \u00a0“I’ve never heard that before, that a court can prohibit an argument of first amendment rights.” <\/p>\n

Similar to the Occupy Wall Street and Bank Transfer Day<\/a>\u00a0movements, Olsen and his partner have actively encouraged people to move their money from big corporate banks to local nonprofit, community credit unions since 2011, reported The Reader, which\u00a0\u00a0first broke new<\/a>s of the case on June 23. <\/p>\n

Darrell Freeman\u2013B of A\u2019s Global Corporate Security vice president\u2013accused Olson and his partner of \u201crunning a business\u201d outside of Bank of America\u00a0when they held a protest in support of a Nov. 5, 2012 worldwide Bank Transfer Day\u00a0effort. Freeman pressured San Diego city attorneys to bring charges against Olson until they announced plans to do so in April, The <\/em>Reader<\/em> reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When she received a prosecution referral from the city\u2019s gang crimes unit\u2013of all units\u2013Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard called Olson to inform him of the charges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Olson\u00a0told KGTV<\/a>\u00a0that one of the Bank of America branches claimes it cost them $6,000 to clean up the water-soluble chalk messages. <\/p>\n

San Diego\u2019s mayor, Bob Filner, called the trial \u201ca misuse and waste of taxpayer money\u201d in a June 20 memo<\/a> to City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. <\/p>\n

He wrote: \u201cIt could also be characterized as an abuse of power that infringes on First Amendment, particularly when it is arbitrarily applied to some, but not all, similar speech.” <\/p>\n

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April M. Short is a Bay Area journalist focusing on social justice reporting. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Republished with permission from:: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 27, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Using kids’ sidewalk chalk, Jeff Olson scrawled his frustration with the Wall Street bailout of big banks outside three Bank of America buildings in his home town of San Diego last year. Bank of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-46203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}