“Let them in! Let them in! Let them in!”

The chant by Occupy Sacramento protestors on March 5 in the Capitol rotunda was directed towards the California Highway Patrol after their decision at 1 p.m. to block people from entering the space.

Seven hours later, the protest would end with 66 demonstrators – the vast majority cooperating with police – being arrested for trespassing on public property after normal business hours. No De Anza students are believed to have been involved.

More than 300 Occupy Sacramento protesters, many of them students who had participated in the March in March, gathered in the rotunda and adjacent halls to hold a “general assembly” to collectively come up with demands and decide what course the protest would take. State student associations from the University of California, California State and California Community College systems were involved in the preceding march, but did not endorse the occupation.

The assembly ended up passing a list of demands that included democratizing the UC board of regents,  levying a tax increase on millionaires, cancelling all student debt and amending Proposition 13, a 1978 voter approved law that limits property taxes.

Reasons given by CHP officers for the closure included lack of a permit for a protest, disruption of business and creation of a fire hazard. Protesters were allowed to leave the rotunda but not to return, effectively cutting off access to bathrooms for those who wished to demonstrate.

UCSD student and Occupy facilitator Shelby Cohantz was frustrated by the closure.

“I’m upset we didn’t get more people in faster,” Cohantz said. “We should have known that once we got in we needed to rush it.”

Over the next couple of hours, protesters voted to make between one and five demands, proposed specific demands to be made, and periodically broke into chants, at one point dancing in a circle around the statue Columbus’ Last Appeal to Queen Isabella, which sits in the middle of the rotunda.

At 3:40 p.m., Lt. Gov. and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom sat down unassumingly next to a rotunda entrance and began speaking with a protester. Members of the media soon swarmed around him.

According to Newsom’s communication director Francisco Castillo, Newsom was responding to a CHP request that he come and speak with protesters. But instead of calming Newsom’s presence seemed to raise tensions, with some protestors chanting “Newsom, go home” and “Gavin Newsom, let us pee.”

While Newsom was present, UC Berkeley grad student and UAW 2865 member Melissa F., who refused to give her last name, yelled “mic check” several times, a common Occupy phrase to center attention to a speaker. She said the media turned Newsom’s presence into a “big circus” and she was trying to “turn the focus back on what we are doing as we the people.”

As Newsom left at 3:53 p.m., a man who identified himself as Jeff Hunt from Sacramento City College climbed on top of the statue, staying on top for less than 15 seconds. He said he did so to draw attention away from Newsom.

“I thought it was stupid that Gavin Newsom came in and everybody came in and focused on that when we’re supposed to be focusing on education,” he said.

Shortly afterwards, attention was drawn to a ruckus occurring on the second floor, which overlooks the rotunda. According to CHP public information officer Sean Kennedy, two men were arrested for unlawfully trying to hang a banner and resisting arrest.

While for a few minutes the atmosphere was tense, within minutes the protest calmed down and the general assembly resumed. Newsom briefly returned at 4 p.m., and shortly after some protestors were allowed to leave use the bathroom and return.

Occupy protestors gather outside

After the March in March permit expired at 1 p.m., Occupy protestors began gathering outside the Capitol steps. A large contingent of CHP, police in riot and officers on horseback formed a barrier between the crowd and the building itself.

Protestors became agitated when they received word that access to the rotunda inside the Capitol had been cut off and told by police their gathering outside the steps was illegal because it lacked a permit.

Chants of “Tell me what a police state looks like!” and “Who’s Capitol?” were directed by the crowd towards the police officers.

Arrests

The rotunda’s marble floor and open ceiling conspired to create acoustics which hampered communication within the rotunda and to the adjacent halls. Four hours passed between the vote at 1:30 p.m. on how many demands to adopt and the actual approval of the final five demands at 5:30 p.m.

By the 6 p.m. closing time of the Capitol, the number of protestors in the rotunda and the north hallway had dwindled to around 60, with those in the rotunda sitting down in a circle. David Solnit, an active member of Occupy SF, educated protestors on the consequences of getting arrested and several simulations of arrests were carried out.

The first dispersal order was given at 6:20 p.m., informing protestors they would be arrested for trespassing. Over the next hour, four more dispersal orders were given. Protestors repeatedly anticipating arrest broke out into chants during and after the orders before going quiet.

At one point Officer Sean Kennedy came up to protestors in the rotunda to suggest that before getting arrested, they give their personal belongings to friends or one of the many ACLU legal observers present. Protestors did so and exchanged jokes with Kennedy.

Arrests began in the rotunda at 7:30 p.m. Of the 18 people arrested, only UC Santa Cruz student Anneliese Harlander offered resistance by going limp.

Arrests in the north hall began at 7:50 p.m. The 47 people arrested there were more vocal than those in the rotunda. Chants of “we’re doing this for your kids” and at one point “Namaste” could be heard as protestors were arrested one by one. As in the rotunda, only one person had to be carried off by officers.

According to Officer Kennedy, 66 people were arrested in the rotunda and north hallway for trespassing in a public building outside of regular business hours. They were cited and released within a matter of hours.