Whether there’s a correlation or it’s just a coincidence, the number of protestors arrested each year since President Barack Obama took office has gone up.

 

In 2009, Obama’s first year in the White House, 665 people were arrested. The following year the total reached 1,290, and so far this year the number is 670, putting 2011 on pace to surpass 2010.

 

The figures have been collected by the newsletter The Nuclear Resister, although their list of arrests includes more than just those challenging nuclear weapons and nuclear power. It also covers people protesting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantánamo, strip mining, home foreclosures, immigration policies, police brutality, mistreatment of hotel workers, budget cutbacks, Blackwater, the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, and conservative efforts to roll back collective bargaining rights of public employees.

 

In May of this year, for example:

·       52 people associated with Catholic Worker houses were arrested while protesting the construction of a nuclear weapons facility in Kansas City, Missouri;

·       7 members of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action protesting nuclear weapons were arrested outside Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, twenty miles from Seattle;

·       5 people were taken into custody at the office of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels while objecting to immigration laws;

·       65 people protesting cutbacks in education funding were arrested in Sacramento, California.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Over 2,600 Protesters Arrested in the US Since January 2009 (by Bill Quigley, AlterNet)