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Under a new policy unveiled late this week by the Walker administration, protesters who apply for permits to protest outside government buildings in Wisconsin may be charged for clean-up costs and the presence of police officers. “Gov. Scott Walker now wants to charge protesters for the time that the police that will monitor them and presumably pepper spray them,” Current TV’s Keith Olbermann observed last night. Watch it:
Marquette University Law School prof. Edward Fallone told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that he’s “skeptical about charging people to express their First Amendment opinion. … You can’t really put a price tag on the First Amendment.”
Recently, the city of Nashville billed Occupy Nashville $1,045 for security the day before it decided to evict the entire encampment. The Republican governor of that state, Bill Haslam, is also in the process of formulating a new policy to restrict the ability of protesters to occupy state grounds.
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