Occupy LA 292 Case to be heard
November 7th at Stanley Mosk Courthouse
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| Melissa Balin sues the City of Los Angeles in Case #LAM-13M00544 |
Monday,
November 4, 2013—LOS
ANGELES, CA—After three
continuances granted the City of Los Angeles over and against the Plaintiff,
Melissa Balin’s objections; the Occupy related case may finally be heard this
Thursday, November 7, 2013 at 9:00AM in Department One of the Stanley Mosk
Courthouse in Los Angeles, California.
Melissa Balin is an
internationally recognized filmmaker, who was one of the 292 people arrested
the morning of November 30, 2011, to come to be known as the #OLA292. It would be the second of three false
arrests and imprisonments Balin was subjected to over a thirty-day period,
which resulted in the miscarriage of her first pregnancy. It is worth noting that Melissa Balin
had never been arrested prior to her known association with Occupy LA, often
worked directly with government officials, and had even been a repeat producer
for the Police Officer of the Year Award Show for Court TV. Balin became the Official Media Liaison
for the Sovereign Nation of Freedom & Peace, when she publicly announced
the repatriation of the land surrounding City Hall at the Occupy LA General
Assembly on October 10, 2011, in the name of usufruct by “We The People”, and
discovery by the Tongva People in 9,000 B.C.
Although publicly
mocked, Balin officially changed her address to the lawn of City Hall in a
speech on public record to Los Angeles City Council on October 12, 2011, after
which, City Council voted unanimously to “support” Occupy LA through Resolution
33. From that point on, Occupy LA
and the Sovereign Nation of Freedom & Peace became a California Tenants’
Rights precedent, with up to 700 tents living in domicile under the complicit
consent of the landlord (the City of Los Angeles) for more than thirty
days. On November 29, 2011,
without any proper eviction notice to those living in domicile in exercise of
their First Amendment Rights for well over thirty days; the LAPD staged a
military action with over 1400 officers to remove the residents of the Occupy
LA tent communities. On November
30 & December 1, 2011, civilian property and cultural & religious
artifacts were wantonly destroyed and hauled off to the LA City Dump, without
any preservation of evidence, other than LA Times photos.
According to
California Tenant Rights and Skid Row case law, the LAPD and Sanitation
Services, has no right to destroy civilian property considered to be a
domicile, such as a tent or cardboard structure, but it is widely known to be a
continuing unconstitutional practice of the LAPD to throw away personal
belongings of the indigent, under the guise of “cleaning up the streets”, with
little or no recourse or injunctive relief in sight. It didn’t seem like there was much Melissa Balin could do
about the issue either, while she was in the midst of fighting falsified
Contempt of Court charges against her from the City Attorneys’ Office from November
16, 2011 until February 25, 2013; and a falsified Involuntary Commitment by the
Mental Health Court and the District Attorneys’ Office from December 5, 2011
until January 30, 2011 for her known association with Occupy Los Angeles. With limited resources and the clock
ticking on the statute of limitations, Balin filed her case with Small Claims
of the Los Angeles Superior Court on January 16, 2013.
Balin explains her
thought process in filing with Small Claims, “Mostly it was an attempt at a
‘David & Goliath’ move to level the playing field, because one of the few
rules of Small Claims Court is “no lawyers” and I was experiencing so much
bullying by the fist of outrageous prosecutorial misconduct in the handling of
my Occupy bogus criminal charges, which still hadn’t been dropped at the time. Unfortunately, that part didn’t really
work, because they have allowed at least NINE City and County attorneys to file
frivolous motions against me accusing ME of harassment for suing the City for
$9,887.82?! and the case still remains to be heard even though the City has
never contested ANY of the uncontroverted statement of facts in our claims
since the case was filed at the beginning of the year. They don’t dispute that we had the
consent of the landlord. They
don’t dispute that we did NOT pay rent.
They don’t dispute that we were in domicile for more than thirty
days. They don’t dispute that they
threw away our property. Yet they
refuse to settle and refuse to go to court.”
The destroyed
property named in the suit for $9,887.82 includes a Coleman Six-Man tent, the
laptop used to record Occupy depositions for the Law Offices of Bruce Margolin,
and original art and priceless signed memorabilia being curated for the
Sovereign Nation of Freedom & Peace, including missives by civil rights
activists Richard Eastman & Dennis Peron, photographs by Annie Appel,
prints by Shepard Fairey, and three of the infamous American Flag shield
functional art pieces by SABER.
ABOUT Case #LAM-13M00544 - Melissa
Balin v. City of Los Angeles, is scheduled to be heard at 9:00 AM (PDT) in
Department 1 of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse at 111 North Hill Street, Los
Angeles, CA, 90012. The case was
filed on January 16, 2013 and taken under submission on April 30, 2013.
To find out more
about Melissa Balin and her known association with Occupy LA and the Sovereign
Nation of Freedom & Peace, please visit http://www.change.org/petitions/miscarriage-of-justice
and to review all of her pro per and pro se filings with the Los Angeles
Superior Court please go to http://www.scribd.com/StayOccupied
To schedule an
interview with Melissa Balin or other members of the #OLA292, please e-mail stayoccupied@gmail.com or contact her
directly at 323.839.0149.
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