Council Office Calls Security on APN Editor
- 8-18-2011
(APN) ATLANTA -- The City of Atlanta's City Council Office called security on Atlanta Progressive News's News Editor--the present writer--while the Monday, August 15, 2011, Full Council Meeting was going on, and only minutes before a court hearing in which APN defeated the City in court.
Officer W. Williams (BADGE #2999) was clearly called as part of an effort to intimidate, harass, and retaliate against Atlanta Progressive News for exposing the City's ongoing pattern of violating Georgia law.
The present writer has filed a preliminary complaint with the Atlanta Citizens' Review Board, which oversees Atlanta Police Department conduct.
Cris Beamud of the ACRB has acknowledged receipt of the complaint and requested that the present writer stop by the ACRB office to provide a signature on the complaint. The ACRB will log the complaint, but will likely be unable to begin an investigation unless a similar incident happens again and APN is able to establish a pattern of harassment.
Council President Ceasar Mitchell and Councilwoman Felicia Moore, Chairwoman of the Committee on Council which has oversight of Council operations, were copied on the initial CRB complaint.
As previously reported by APN, while APN's Editor has been in litigation with the City for Open Meetings violations for nearly two years, the Council has been particularly perturbed after APN published internal memos from the City's Law Department, showing that the City's lawyers had advised Council Members to change their meetings practices after APN first raised Open Meetings concerns.
The City had sought a permanent injunction to prevent APN from further publishing the memos, but failed in that bid; the City also sought to hold the present writer in contempt, and the Judge denied that motion as well.
The hearing regarding the injunction took place at 3pm Monday, while the Full Council meeting was going on.
Prior to the start of the hearing, APN's Editor stopped by the Council Office to make an inquiry regarding public comment with the staff of Council President Ceasar Mitchell.
Linda, a contractor with Mitchell's office, came out to respond to the present writer's question. She returned to the back to get an answer, but instead of returning, called "Linden" at the front desk, who stated that APN's request had to be posed to the Law Department.
Linden refused to provide the spelling of his first name, as well as his last name, to APN.
APN's Editor replied to Linden that the inquiry being made had nothing to do with pending litigation and that, as a citizen and taxpayer of the City of Atlanta, the present writer has a right to petition his elected representives in government. In addition, the present writer noted that the Law Department has historically not been responsive to any inquiries.
Upon request, Linden related that information back to Mitchell's office, which again responded that any inquiry had to be made to the Law Department.
The present writer then stated that a witness needed to be present to observe this interaction; left to find Brother Anthony Muhammad in Council Chambers; and returned two minutes later.
By that time, Linda was waiting in front of the Council Office, along with Officer Williams and City Attorney Eric Richardson.
APN asked Officer Williams why she was there, and she said she wasn't sure, but that she had been called over because of someone.
After returning into the Council Office, Linden told APN that security had been called because APN's Editor was "getting upset." This is ridiculous, seeing as how the present writer was neither shouting, making threats, nor doing anything to warrant security being called. It is not immediately clear whether the Council Office or Council President Mitchell's Office had called security.
The City of Atlanta's Gestapo-like tactics are the latest in their efforts to have a chilling effect on citizens in their exercise of their First Amendment rights under the US Constitution.
The City's multi-faceted attack on the First Amendment began when the City Council took a secret vote in February 2010 over whether to limit public comment at Council Committees.
It continued as Council Members held closed-door Committee Briefings, Committee Chairs' Briefings, and other ad hoc meetings to discuss substantive City policy in violation of the Open Meetings Act.
Both Georgia's Open Records and Open Meetings Acts are grounded in the First Amendment.
The City of Atlanta then attacked Freedom of the Press, by seeking to prevent publication of damning internal memos provided to APN by a whistleblower.
Now the City's message to citizens is clear: Expose us for violating the Law, and we'll have security and the Law Department follow you around City Hall, at the expense of taxpayer dollars.
Incidentally, Senior Assistant City Attorney Lemuel Ward raised his voice towards APN's Editor near the elevator of the Fulton County Superior Courthouse after court on Monday, behaving in a manner akin to a raging lunatic. If Mr. Ward does this again, APN's Editor will be sure to call security.
APN has also learned from numerous sources that the City of Atlanta has also been harassing, intimidating, and threatening City employees, including Council Members, as part of their inquisition into who was the whistleblower who released the memos to APN.
The Full Council went into Executive Session for about two hours Monday to discuss the present writer. It is not immediately clear whether the Executive Session was substantively appropriate nor whether laws regarding minimal public disclosure were followed.
Meanwhile, upon APN's review of the State Bar of Georgia's Rules of Professional Conduct, APN has determined it appears that several City Attorneys have violated rule 3.1, which states that a lawyer shall not "knowingly advance a claim or defense that is unwarranted under existing law." City Attorneys continue to defend practices in Court that they told their own clients were illegal.
Two Open Meetings lawsuits between the present writer and the City are still pending: the secret vote lawsuit of 2010 is now before the Georgia Supreme Court, which has granted review; and the closed-door Committee Briefings lawsuit is currently in discovery in Fulton County Superior.
The Georgia Attorney General's Office has drafted its own lawsuit against the City related to the closed-door Briefings. The City is running out of time to enter into a consent decree in order to prevent the AG's office from filing their own action.
The City also has about one week left to provide APN's Editor with answers to almost fifty interrogatories posed to all seven Council Chairs, in addition to significant requests for document production. Their Answers are likely to provide a window into even more shady internal City of Atlanta operations.
(END / 2011)
What makes you think you will get a substantive answer to any serious questions in discovery?
Without a doubt you will have to enlist the Court with motions for contempt for failure to comply with the law and rules of discovery.
That is my prediction as A Marxist who is here only stating the realities of these crooked bourgeois governments whose only purpose is to help capitalists extract surplus value out of the labor power of the working class, City employees (That does not include public officials of any sort) among them.
What those memos you published, and which publishing has frightened City government, reveal is that rather than advise the Council as to the Open Meetings and Open Records Acts, Kristin Denius, and perhaps others, have been trying to assist and guide Council in evading the laws. That is the meaning of all that hocus pocus about now there is a quorum and now there isn't, i.e., directing the prevention of a quorum from forming.
The Georgia Supreme Court long ago surpassed such a narrow reading of the law among which rulings was Jersawitz v. Fortson (Chair of the Atlanta Housing Authority) concerning a meeting where Jersawitz and his camera was thrown out, but which meeting had multiple attendees seeking with AHA to throw out poor tenants and destroy public housing, going way beyond issues of a quorum.
Denius is in violation of the BAR's Canons and Ethics and you ought to make a complaint to the BAR in that regard.
Denius, and others in the City Law Department are the product of City Government driving out long time attorneys who while not always on the law knew how to mind their P's & Q's and not get into public arguments with pro se opponents or especially the highly regarded supporters of such pro se's like the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.
If I had any regard for the operations and repute of a bourgeois government I would be embarrassed because of some of the things you have exposed, things that entirely rip away the curtain that shrouds from the working class public, and especially the City's union and non-union workers who ought to be pushing their union leadership to take up a fight for public disclosure of many things like internal discussions about the City pension and health plans and the financial operations thereto.
What you are doing is educating the City employees and the Atlanta working class in general that supporting in any shape or form the Democrats and Republicans that make up this supposedly non-partisan City government is only aiding and abetting their natural enemy in this class ridden and hence class war society.
They should all learn that the only way to start down the road to a government serving their own interests is through the founding of a labor union based Labor Party. This is, with the deepening economic crisis, becoming an urgent necessity so that workers can directly control their own party working in their own interests.
As far as open records one of the things that City employees ought to be looking at is just whom are the money market brokers involved in the investments of pension funds intended to ensure that their pensions will really exist come retirement.
Jack Jersawitz
404-892-1238
bigjackjj@yahoo.com
Fight on, Matthew C.!
You're very brave to do this. Well done.