Following up on the item from earlier today....
Some excerpts from Courthouse News (via Gawker):
The self-ordained Rev. Billy Talen was arrested on Easter Sunday after putting a "holy hex" on JPMorgan Chase bank, which he calls the nation's largest financier of coal-mining mountaintop removal. The former New York City mayoral candidate and his green-robed chorus put the hex on two bank branches, saying Morgan Chase has helped destroy more than 450 Appalachian mountains, deforested 800 square miles and polluted more than 1,200 miles of streams.
The police did not arrive until the choir reached a second branch, at Astor Place, where the choir left another "deposit" of West Virginia dirt.
As Talen concluded his sermon, NYPD Officer William Svenstrup ordered him to withdraw his deposit of dirt from the bank floor.
The Rev. Billy refused.
"Then you are coming with me," Svenstrop said, while another officer took out the cuffs, and used them, and the choir chanted, "Free speech! Free press! Free people! Repressed!" Then the choir sang the text of the First Amendment.
Choir member Gaylen Hamilton said in an interview that Talen's wife was two weeks overdue on her pregnancy and had started experiencing contractions that morning. Several other choir members were worried that Talen would miss the birth of his child.
But at the 9th Precinct, an officer said that Talen had been released shortly after his arrest. Arresting Officer William Svenstrup, spotted at the precinct, would not reveal the charges, if any, against the Rev. Billy.
