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Protesters plan to create chaos on Capitol Hill

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
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During an evening meeting at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., protesters discussed plans to storm Capitol Hill Tuesday and create chaos inside and outside House and Senate office buildings.

“We will have people going in over time into all the different doors of all the different buildings,” said one of the organizers of the “Stop the Machine” movement to roughly 100 assembled protesters.

“Stop the Machine” was organized in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the American invasion of Afghanistan and is distinct from the Occupy D.C. movement currently occupying McPherson Square.

At an appointed time and in a particular office building — both of which will be named at a meeting in Freedom Plaza Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. — the protesters plan to create a ruckus which they hope will shut down work on Capitol Hill.

“We will have all variety of creative actions including packing the elevators and pushing all the buttons and not getting out and stopping the hallways that connect the building to the other buildings and the banner drops and the song singing and don’t let them in the bathrooms and all the rest of it,” the aforementioned organizer said.

“And we will have an outside component which will involve gathering at a location near the buildings that we will named tomorrow morning and making our ways to the outside of the doors of that particular building.” (RELATED: ‘Occupy DC’ to join with AFL-CIO for Capitol protest on Tuesday)

He went on to say that if Capitol Police figure out their plan and shut down the yet to be named building, that would also be a victory.

“And you know what, if they find out what we are up to and they shut down that building, hooray! That’s what we wanted. And we move on to the building next to it and shut that one down,” he said.

He went on to tell the assembled protesters that their message Tuesday will be anti-war and in favor of higher taxes for the rich.

“The message, of course, is tax the rich and end the wars,” he said. “Stop funding the wars and fund this, fund what you want funded.”

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