Mayor Kasim Reed plans to address the Occupy Atlanta protest Monday afternoon at City Hall.
Earlier Monday, protesters marched to the Federal 11th Circuit Circuit Court of Appeals, "a significant symbol of our judicial system," the group said in a statement.
The march was intended to "confront the inequalities in race and class in a judicial system that seems to protect the richest 1 percent and corporations at the expense of everyone else, especially communities of color," the statement said. "It is not by accident people of color are disproportionally represented in our jails or on death row as a result of our broken court system. It is by design. We will no longer tolerate this system."
The court is located on Forsyth Street, just a few blocks from Woodruff Park, where the protesters are camped.
The protesters plan a rally after the march.
The protesters remained encamped at Woodruff Park Monday despite fears that they would be ousted.
Late Saturday evening, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s office denied an Occupy Atlanta leader’s assertion that protesters who have been camped at Woodruff Park had to leave Saturday or face arrest.
“There has been no such order,” Reed spokeswoman Sonji Dade told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “That is not true.”
Occupy Atlanta leader Tim Franzen emerged from a meeting with the mayor several hours earlier Saturday and said a livid Reed had demanded that protesters who have occupied the park for several weeks clear out.
“He was very angry, very upset,” said Franzen, who added that the mayor began “yelling right away” after they entered the mobile unit.
Franzen said Occupy Atlanta was given no specific time to clear the park. “He’s not being specific.” He said the mayor warned that protesters remaining will “get their wish” to be arrested.
Dade, however, said no deadline was given because none existed. The mayor, she said reiterated Sunday, issued an executive order which will remain in effect until Nov. 7 -- the date of the next City Council meeting.
“Nothing has changed,” Dade said Saturday several hours after the meeting between Reed and Franzen.
Sunday morning, Atlanta police remained on the perimeter of the park as some occupiers stirred and still more slept inside the patchwork of tents dotting the park. Officers have working 12-hour shifts to patrol the area, Channel 2 reported.
Dade on Saturday said the purpose of the meeting with Franzen and promoters of a hip hop concert that was being held in the park was to break up the event because promoters didn’t have a city permit.
The mayor's office said promoters failed to pay the $2,500 permit fee for the concert and failed to submit a security plan. It also said a generator, which could pose a fire hazard, was being used in violation of city fire codes.
Seemingly in defiance of the order not to hold the concert, a stage was erected and hip hop artists were performing anyway in front of a crowd of about 150 people. But the music ended shortly after the meeting between the mayor and Occupy Atlanta leader.
Earlier in the week, Reed told Channel 2 Action News the protesters, who have occupied the park since Oct. 7, have cost the city at least $30,000 in police, portable toilet and other expenditures.
Dade insisted the mayor’s executive order allows the protesters to remain in the park until Nov. 7. The order also suspends a code that would have prevented the group from being in the park between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Dade also said no arrest order was issued for Saturday.
“Mayor Reed has not issued any command to arrest the folks in Occupy Atlanta, although he can make that determination at any time,” the spokeswoman said.
Occupy Atlanta has joined a national protest against what supporters call corporate greed and a lack of job creation. The group had hoped to expand its support base, starting with the hip hop concert.
“We are here until the civic problems that brought us here are changed,” Franzen vowed Saturday. “I wish he [Reed] would be more angry about the civic reasons why we are here.”
Possibly adding to tensions Saturday evening, marchers in the Downtown area protesting against alleged police brutality, made their way toward Woodruff Park and the area near Occupy Atlanta protesters and the police mobile unit near Auburn Avenue and Park Place.
The protesters with the “October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation” had been in the downtown area nearly all day but had not been connected with the Occupy Atlanta event.
Atlanta police officers and firefighters watched nearby as the 80 to 100 protesters blocked Auburn Avenue, chanting, “No Justice! No peace!” and “Whose park? Our park!”
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