Iowa City City Council Votes to Permit Arctic Tent Usage by Occupy Iowa City

There were miscommunications and hurt feelings, mea culpas and jazz hands, a Representative Democratic body negotiating with an intentionally leaderless Direct Democratic body, spontaneous applause, structure liability discussions, and a man named Ant waving a copy of the Bill of Rights.

And after all that, the members of Occupy Iowa City get to use their arctic tent.

The Iowa City City Council on Tuesday night voted 6-0 (with Terry Dickens absent) to amend the four-month permit issued by the city to Occupy Iowa Cit to allow the Occupy protesters in College Green Park to utilize heated, 10-person capacity arctic tents to help them survive the cold, winter months ahead.

At issue was a sequence of events that occurred after the Occupy Protesters first occupied the park .

The city staff members, feeling they needed a way to allow the protesters a way around the city code that would require them to leave the park every night, offered a four-month permit allowing them to stay. The protesters, after a discussion with City Manager Tom Markus and Parks and Recreation Director Mike Moran, agreed to sign the permit.

Then, controversy arose after some of the Occupy members began to build a temporay wooden structure that would be used to shield them from a cold; and the city, due to liability concerns, restricted the protesters from using large structures, such as the temporary building and a large arctic tent that was donated to the cause. 

This led to Tuesday night's public hearing, where 15 members of the Occupy movement aired their grievances with the council for over an hour with several more protest members in the audience, many of them waving their hands in disapproval or approval in the same fashion that is done at the movement's general assemblies.

Alison Clark, an Occupy member, said that she and many others were thrilled when the group originally got the permit from the city, only to feel betrayed by the additional restrictions. This sentiment was echoed by many who spoke to the council.

Furthermore, Clark said that issuing a permit to allow protestors to stay while prohibiting them from utilizing methods to stay warm and safe was impractical. 

"It's a passive aggressive way to tell us to go home, and I resent that a little bit," Clark said.

Ant Hyde, of Occupy, expressed another popular opinion of the evening -- that the protestors shouldn't need a permit at all.

"Our permit is the first amendment," Hyde said, holding a copy of the Bill of Rights up at the council. "We don't want to be restricted, we want to be safe."

Another Occupy member, Mauro Heck, said that despite the frustrations, the Occupy members on the whole wanted to work with the city.

"We know that you're not against us, and we are not against you, so why are we having a quote on quote fight?" Heck said. "We want the city to work with us."

City Manager Tom Markus apologized for the miscommunication between the city and Occupy movement, saying that the city had a change of heart when considering the potential legal ramifications of what could happen if someone was injured in a structure allowed to exist on the city's watch.

"Our positions had to change due to liability issues," Markus said.

Markus said many of the agreements weren't properly thought out, but that was because city was making an effort to take a different approach toward the protests, unlike cities in other parts of the country where things have gone awry and clashes with police have been the story.

"You have to understand from our standpoint, that most of our reaction was fairly spontaneous," Markus told the council. 

However, as the meeting progressed, Markus said that he thought use of the arctic tent could be permissable, provided that there were no other electronics present, there were not electronic devices such as appliances allowed inside, and the method of heating was cleared for safety by the fire department.

The councilors for the most part agreed.

"The tent being used as a warming house is probably a pretty reasonable idea," said council member Mike Wright.

Some, like Mayor Matt Hayek said while they were fine with the arctic tents, they were against shelters like the temporary building.

Before the vote, City Attorney Eleanor Dilkes cautioned the council members that changing the permit to read in this way could set a precedent for future groups, even those they strongly disagreed with.

Although this caused the council slight pause, they moved ahead with the affirmative vote. In response, the Occupy members in attendance gave them a smattering of applause.