Supporters Of Bernie Sanders Are Practicing Getting Arrested Ahead Of The Democratic Convention

Buzzfeed reports:

The big question this weekend in Chicago is how to turn the Bernie Sanders movement into a lasting element of Democratic politics. For some of the Sanders faithful on Saturday afternoon, the answer was locking arms on a civic center floor and struggling as “police officers” pulled them apart and “arrested” them.

The People’s Summit conference, sponsored by the National Nurses United — a progressive union that backed Sanders to the hilt during his run for president — is aimed at uniting all elements of progressivism into a single effort that exerts pressure on the Democratic Party and its presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. Mourning Sanders’ loss and imagining what might have been was one part of the conversation.

Thousands of Sanders supporters have already signed a Facebook petition promising to protest the Democratic convention. Many of those gathered at The People’s Summit expected those protests to include police stepping in. Rumors of police efforts to push protests back from the convention site or other efforts by the authorities to quiet the Sanders uprising abounded in the training session.

Last month backers of Sanders were granted permits for four demonstrations near the convention site. One of the events is expected to draw at least 30,000 participants. In order to stem the number of convention-related arrests, earlier this month the Philadelphia City Council approved a bill which will allow police to issue $100 civil fines for many “nuisance” crimes such as disorderly conduct, failing to disperse, or blocking a street.