Occupying yards? Protesters camping in driveways won’t help

The right to peacefully assemble and protest is among the most sacrosanct liberties protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment. Some of this nation’s greatest achievements — and some of the world’s most significant recent political changes — were rooted in common citizens demonstrating against the powerful.

But all protest movements are not created equal. Some effectively harness a simmering public sentiment with a simple message and spontaneously grow. Others are a reach to start with, lacking in focus and realistic goals.

Include the Occupy Las Vegas movement among the latter. Camping on county land near McCarran International Airport hasn’t exactly spread the gospel against corporate greed. The local chapter of the all-hype, little-substance Occupy Wall Street crusade is barely treading water these days. So its leaders want to move the tents into neighborhoods to protest foreclosures and the banking industry.

Protesters told the Review-Journal’s Kristi Jourdan they want to collectively bargain with banks to achieve principal reductions for homeowners who aren’t paying their mortgages. They’re knocking on doors around the valley to identify neighborhoods in need of their help.

The Occupy Las Vegas set would be wise to remember that while the Constitution guards their right to assemble and protest, our founding document also protects property rights. A house’s front yard is not a public forum. And regardless of the group’s good intentions, camping out in a residential driveway — even one owned by a bank — is trespassing.

If protesters are willing to risk arrest, they could help themselves by doing a better job selecting the houses they intend to occupy. Sunday’s Review-Journal included a photograph of Occupy Las Vegas enthusiasts making signs and setting up tents in the driveway of the North Las Vegas home at 5031 Golden Fields Street. The house was clean and the front-yard desert landscaping was alive for a reason: Far from being foreclosed, as protesters clearly believed, county records show the house was purchased by a California man less than a month ago for $87,500. Somehow, we doubt he’s deserving of “occupation.”

A tip for protesters: Use your corporate-made, profit-creating smartphones to check public records on the Internet.

Las Vegas neighborhoods have enough blight to contend with in a bottomed-out housing market. Weeds, trash, broken windows and dead grass and plants sink property values. Having tents, blankets and scruffy strangers sprawled across driveways will only make things worse.

Organizing community cleanups would be more productive than sleeping in open sight. So would distributing information about state-mandated foreclosure mediation — a recent state Supreme Court decision bolstered the program by sanctioning lenders that act in bad faith. Protesters could even try to launch Neighborhood Watch programs to ward off vandals, thieves and squatters (like them) in distressed neighborhoods. Such efforts might serve as a valleywide call to action.

Crashing on concrete? Not so much.