"Walkerville" tents — required to be taken down — by 7 a.m. were still up at 7:02 a.m....

... as Meade and I drove around the square this morning. Video coming soon.

AND: Count the tents on East and West Mifflin Street and North and South Carroll Street, which are the 2 legs of the Capitol Square that meet at the westernmost corner of the Square with State Street. [See the update below to understand which tents are within the permit and which are not.]



ADDED: I don't know whether the tents were still up because the protesters were sleeping in and delaying until they are rousted, or if the protesters really do intend to flout the restrictions in the permit. Obviously, the protest is most valuable if it is seen, and the idea of a tent city is to create the impression that people are really living here out of dedication if not economic necessity. If a tent city is supposed to express dire poverty, this one fails amusingly, because these folks have awfully nice tents. Are these brand-new tents bought for this protest?

We didn't see the police this morning, but there were plenty of police last night. The question is: Will the police enforce the restrictions in the permit? This is a test, I believe, of the City of Madison Police, not the Capitol Police that we saw in action during the protests in the rotunda in February and March.

ALSO: Some details about the permit:

[Madison's Street Use Staff Commission] required that most sleeping tents be broken down and removed from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Friday and from 4:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday. However, sleeping tents at three sites — in front of Grace Episcopal Church on Carroll Street, in front of the former Anchor Bank on West Mifflin and in front of the Manchester office building on East Mifflin — will be allowed to stay up during the day....

So, some of the tents in the video above are in the range that is permitted during the day.

The committee gave the city's police and fire departments authority to close down the village at any time if they see fit.

The proposed camping area, across the street from the state Capitol, includes: North Carroll Street from State Street to West Washington Avenue; South Carroll between West Washington and Main Street; West Mifflin Street from State Street to Wisconsin Avenue; and East Mifflin Street from Wisconsin Avenue to North Pinckney Street. It also includes the "30 on the Square" cul-de-sac at 30 W. Mifflin St. and the Philosophers' Stones area between the Wisconsin Historical Museum and Myles Teddywedgers Cornish, 101 State St.

UPDATE: So, reading that report about the permit, I can see that some of the tents in the video are allowed to stay up after 7 a.m. and some are not. I think that the first tents you see, beginning at 0:15, are permitted. The next set of tents, beginning at 0:37, are on West Mifflin, in front of a luxury condo building. I honestly don't know if that counts as the former Anchor Bank (but there are different colors of chalk marks on the street distinguishing the different areas, so the campers themselves know).  Just after that, beginning at 0:53, is a tent-free area, in front of the Veterans Museum. At 1:19, we see a single tent in front of Atticus and J. Taylor's, which, based on the linked story, is not permitted. (In fact, the linked story quotes email from the shopkeeper John Taylor, who opposed the permit.) We see 2 more late tents before we get to Grace Church, which is tent-free. At 1:15, you see a group of 5 tents in a place where, according to the linked article, tents are not permitted after 7 a.m.