Three protestors from Occupy Miami and Occupy West Palm Beach were arrested Monday evening in Boca Raton after laying in the Camino Real Bridge roadway, blocking traffic at rush hour in protest of nearby hedge fund industry conference.
Don Carter, 24, of Longwood, Ana Rodriguez, 30, and Kevin Young, 27, of Miami, were taken into custody and charged with resisting arrest without violence, obstructing a highway, and a municipal ordinance violation. The trio linked themselves together with 'lockdown devices' scrawled with anti-greed slogans and lay down on the bridge, snarling traffic from roughly 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. before police were able to unlink and remove them.
The protest was "an attempt to disrupt the cocktail hour and to bring public attention to the list of 'corporate criminals' gathered in Boca" at the 2012 GAIM conference, Occupy Palm Beach said in a statement. GAIM, held at the Waldorf Astoria-owned Boca Resort on Camino Real, bills itself as one of the most important conferences of the hedge fund industry, with "over 75 percent of attendees...at the managing director level and above" and "investors who have discretion over $215 billion and over $8 trillion under advisement" -- in other words, a lot of people squarely in the one percent.
Don Carter, 24, of Longwood, Ana Rodriguez, 30, and Kevin Young, 27, of Miami, were taken into custody and charged with resisting arrest without violence, obstructing a highway, and a municipal ordinance violation. The trio linked themselves together with 'lockdown devices' scrawled with anti-greed slogans and lay down on the bridge, snarling traffic from roughly 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. before police were able to unlink and remove them.
The protest was "an attempt to disrupt the cocktail hour and to bring public attention to the list of 'corporate criminals' gathered in Boca" at the 2012 GAIM conference, Occupy Palm Beach said in a statement. GAIM, held at the Waldorf Astoria-owned Boca Resort on Camino Real, bills itself as one of the most important conferences of the hedge fund industry, with "over 75 percent of attendees...at the managing director level and above" and "investors who have discretion over $215 billion and over $8 trillion under advisement" -- in other words, a lot of people squarely in the one percent.