Beltway Area Indymedia

On the morning of September 18th, as many as 100 fed-up DC residents occupied the City Council chambers and shouted down the council, demanding the revocation of about 40 emergency bills passed in the summer to sell public land to developers.

Schools and libraries are being turned into condominiums over the objections of almost all city residents other than the developers themselves. All summer Jack Evans and Mayor Fenty conspired to speed this up even further and exclude the public, setting mandatory hearings for such dates as July 5th.

Now DC residents are FED UP! Organized by the People's Property Campaign( a coalition of many neighborhood groups from all wards of the city), residents chanted and shouted down the council at their first meeting since July.

As cops demanded that one person after another leave the room, others piped up. Soon, the council gave up and asked the cops to clear the entire room, at which point every one poured into the hallways and kept chanting "public property's not for sale" all the way down to the street!

I guess the Council hopes that with the public(their BOSSES under Democratic theory) excluded, they can get back to pleasing their real bosses, developers like James Abdo(schools to condos specialist) and Douglas Jemal(nearly imprisoned for bribery).

Well, it's not going to work that way-DC Council, you haven't seen ANYTHING yet from the People's Property campaign, and this isn't even the beginning. One way or another, the sale of public lands to greedy developers is going to stop-it's just a question of the easy way or the hard way!

In the audio, the action coverage is run first, then samples of two speeches(from the rally before) afterwards.

Audio 5 min 39 sec