Being arrested isn't an issue, being convicted presents potential issues.

I have never been arrested at a protest but normally protesters are arrested without being charged or are charged with misdemeanors such as "disorderly conduct" or "obstructing a police officer." If the prosecutors are vindictive thought they could go the Dan Choi route and charge you with a felony. Most people I know that have been arrested and convicted get off with a small fine and it has not prevented them from getting a job, most employers only screen for felonies, fraud or violent crimes.

8 of the protesters arrested last night have been charged with "obstructing a police officer" which is a gross misdemeanor can carry a sentence of 1 year in jail and a $5K fine.

They are now being represented by an attorney that has a good track record of getting these types of charges dismissed or not-guilty verdicts. Personally, I am always more concerned about getting swept up in a riot and maced, tear gassed, or hit with batons.

http://publicola.com/2011/10/06/occupy-seattle-attorney-says-arrests-violate-first-amendment/

Yes.

No.

I was arrested by military police at a protest over a decade ago. I was basically told to fuck off and not come back ever again unless I wanted to serve time in a federal prison. That arrest hasn't affected my life in any way (as far as I know).

I think there's another aspect to this that a lot of the respondants are overlooking.

Not to sound paranoid, but when checking out a potential new employees record, I'm not obligated to tell them what I find, how I weigh it or what I conclude. All they know is whether or not I offer them the job, and/or if I ask them for more information before deciding.

What's to keep me from deciding that I really don't want someone who protested when they were young...or were arrested, but feel that they "got away with it". How would you ever know if a potential employer got wind of your protest record and decided to look at other candidates instead?

You can't know the mind of every employer or supervisor that you'll ever work for, but the whole idea is to make yourself as attractive as possible, and with as few drawbacks as possible.

*(Then again, maybe a prospective employer might be turned on by a fellow protester, or admire your protest record. I'm assuming that it might be a negative in the future, as you are too...)

I can share my husband's experience. He was arrested in a sit-in at the Federal Building in in Euguene, OR in the mid-1980's, as part of an anti-Apartheid protest. They were charged with criminal trespass, as well as making a false statement to a police officer (every protester told the police his name was Stephen Biko, which did not go over well when the cops learned that Biko was a South African activist who had been beaten to death in police custody). After a couple of days in the country jail, they all pleaded guilty and forfeited their bail and went back to their lives.

My husband is forty-something now and he says his record hasn't ever gotten in the way of his being hired by a few medium-sized manufacturing and tech companies in Washington and Oregon. His roommate, who has the same record, went to a very good law school (in the southern U.S.) a couple of years later, and is presently working for the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, prosecuting former Yugoslav war criminals. It didn't seem to hinder him much, either!

A lot depends on what happens after the arrest. In 1965 I was arrested in a demonstration trying to racially integrate a theater in Haskell, Texas. Six of us were "arrested" at the theater and taken to the county jail. (Haskell is the county seat of the county in which Rick Perry was born.) We were fingerprinted, but not photographed, and we were released and told we would be notified of "further proceedings". None of us heard anything more.

A few years later I tried to see if the was any record of my "arrest", so I requested a records search from the WSP. There was none.