Photo gallery: Occupy Los Angeles day of action
Since late September I've been hanging around the tent city now surrounding L.A. City Hall that is Occupy Los Angeles, in various modes of commitment and involvement.
Early on I was outraged both by my growing inability to cope financially despite working full-time and galvanized by images coming from Occupy Wall Street. After decades of passivity, finally it seemed a serious organic social justice movement was evolving in the United States.
To me it seems many participants early on were middle class whites propelled by a level of economic injustice
Bethania Palma
and hardship that was new to them. A Wall Street boom and crash a la 1929 and alarming numbers of home foreclosures, unemployment, growing poverty levels and waves of people about to run out of unemployment insurance have led some to compare the Occupy movement to the tent cities of the Great Depression.While the plight of the middle class may have garnered the now-omnipresent media attention, minorities and the poor who have historically borne the brunt of economic injustice have gotten on board the Occupy train in hopes of finally equalizing the badly unbalanced status quo. There is now a crowd of roughly 500 very diverse people from all walks of life living at the L.A. encampment. The lawn is full to capacity. You can't take a
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step without trouncing someone's personal affects or tent tarp.Occupy L.A. is now figuratively the last man standing, as far as Occupy encampments. While authorities around the country have swept Occupiers out systematically, the city of L.A. has taken a largely hands-off approach.
That is, until last Thursday.
That's when the LAPD, decked out in full SWAT regalia, descended en masse on Occupy L.A. marchers joined by union members as they made their way up Broadway north of Fourth Street at about noon, across from Grand Central Market downtown. Police quickly closed Broadway, fencing off the street and sidewalk, ensuring that pedestrians wouldn't be able to see as they made what one witness later called a violent arrest.
I'd been around Occupy L.A. for weeks and it was a surreal moment. For weeks I'd been seeing video footage of protesters in other cities get tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets and generally beat down by the police. But in L.A. the stand-offish stance taken by the police seems to have lulled people into a false sense of security.
So it was a shock to see the LAPD march in parade-style, with squad cars stacked as far as the eye could see down Fourth Street, even though it really shouldn't have been based on what's been happening nationwide.
"What have they done wrong?" one onlooker asked an older police officer who was manning the LAPD's fence as fellow cops laid waste to the march. "Don't you think it's weird that those people are getting arrested?"
The officer smiled and responded wryly, "Ask me when I'm retired."
Later that afternoon I found myself at the Bank of America plaza downtown, pressed from a crowd behind me pretty much right up into the personal space of an unhappy LAPD officer in full riot gear, who kept telling me to move back as the people behind me were pushing me forward. I was watching my friends get handcuffed and an officer with a rubber bullet gun pace on a planter ledge in front of me. The cops outnumbered us by some ridiculous proportion. Someone told me because of city budget cuts, they weren't being paid overtime. Another person warned us that they were loading up the tear gas. The dispersal order was given. One line of cops said we had 5 minutes to leave. On the other side of the plaza they said we had 15.
Some protesters cut through the palpable tension in the air with humor. A group sang the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme song. A petite young woman apparently liked the looks of one officer and asked loudly if he was married. Others were more pointed in their humor.
"Oh good, they're here to evict Bank of America because of all the money they stole from us and all the houses they illegally foreclosed," protester Richard Florence said sarcastically as LAPD officers swarmed in on all sides.
But the skyscraping BofA building was safe. It wasn't the bank that the cops were there for.
My Occupy L.A. friends were pitching tents to "occupy" the Bank of America plaza. It was a gesture to confront the mega-bank responsible for millions of home foreclosures throughout the country with raw humanity. The juxtaposition of the newly-formed Occupy L.A. tent city at the foot of the behemoth Bank of America tower was somehow heart wrenching. It was like seeing David challenging Goliath and thinking David couldn't possibly have a chance. Before long their little tents were picked up and thrown aside by armored police as demonstrators were carried off in handcuffs. Somehow it all seemed the perfect analogy for what Bank of America and other institutions have been doing to homeowners by the millions in this country since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis.
And I didn't know there were so many cops in L.A. I guess if I ever want the LAPD's help I'll bring a tent to Bank of America, because that is clearly the way to get them out in force.
In all, 72 Occupy L.A. activists were arrested Thursday, including two young men who simply crossed a police line at an early-morning union march. It reminded me of a caption I'd seen on a photo of NYPD officers manhandling a woman at Occupy Wall Street.
"If only they enforced bank regulations like they do park rules, we wouldn't be in this mess."
Indeed.
While Occupy L.A. has seen less than its fair share of police enforcement, I have a suspicion it's coming soon. While the L.A. City Council rolled out the red carpet early on, even distributing ponchos at one point, they now seem to be itching to get the tents and all the messy chaos that comes along with an indefinite encampment off their stoop. They've even gone as far as apparently negotiating an "exit strategy" with a small group of occupiers they've maintained clandestine contact with.
But protests don't work like that. And in the tradition of the Occupy movement, we'll peacefully hold our ground at City Hall as long as physically possible, and come back stronger, bigger and better after the inevitable police raid goes down.
And even if they raid us and kick us out, we're already building a response. In response to a wave of attacks on Occupy sites and a lack of response to the needs of working people nationwide, plans are underway by Occupy L.A.'s newly-formed General Strike Committee to coordinate with Los Angeles and Long Beach port workers, Occupy Oakland and Occupy Long Beach to shut down all West Coast ports on Dec. 12. This will be followed by a build-up to a widespread general strike on May 1.
But until Thursday, Occupy L.A. hadn't had a lot of police contact. It's probably because, as others have noted, Occupy L.A. hasn't had a lot of action. Many of the protesters within the encampment and those participating outside it have noticed too and are frustrated. While protesters in New York were shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge, those in Oakland were shutting down a port, and those at UC Davis were forcing campus police and a chancellor to walk off in shame, Occupy L.A.'s weekend events have largely consisted of music festivals, lectures and most recently, a health fair. Not that these are bad things. They're good. But people are waiting for strategic action. And it's coming.
I'm not saying I want to get a police baton over the head or have my skull fractured by a flash bang grenade like Iraq war veteran and protester Scott Olsen did when police raided the Oakland encampment last month. But I didn't get involved to hang out at L.A. City Hall and listen to music. As the Beatles said, "we all want to change the world." Well we do. And right now the world seems to need some changing.
This may be because the initial tone at Occupy L.A., or OLA, as it's now being called, was set by people who at the early planning stages wanted to cooperate with the city so much that they got permission from the Police Department to set up their encampment. These same people also have functioned as "city liaisons," reporting to and meeting with city officials and police without letting the rest of us know what's going on in those meetings. I'm pretty certain this type of activity would be shunned by other Occupy movement sites.
Despite the frustrations, I see potential and haven't been able to walk away, like some have unfortunately done. There are wonderful, intelligent people who want to create a better world, and who seem to be waiting for the chance. And what better place than Los Angeles, California, maybe one of the most diverse metropolitan areas in the world? Now that the NYPD has raided and swept the encampment at Zucotti Park in New York City and many other locations, my understanding is that Occupy L.A. is the biggest and most tenable Occupy site remaining. So maybe my frustration will pay off in that Occupy L.A. has been left standing long enough to act as a beacon to Occupiers all over the country who have been displaced and want to enjoy a warm winter a la Los Angeles. I have heard they're already on their way from New York and Boston, and I've seen lots of people at Occupy L.A. from Oakland, Orange County, Riverside, San Bernardino, Long Beach and Pasadena joining in.
And while people may have their differences, 500 or so from the homeless to the Ivy League-educated, are camping at City Hall. There is no predominant race or class representation that I can see. It's a pretty well-blended mix of people who all share a common concern: The economic system is broken and doesn't work for most people, they want a better one and the U.S. political system isn't offering any realistic solutions.
On Sunday, L.A.-based band Aztlan Underground played and indigenous dancers performed in traditional costume on the south lawn of City Hall. The band's lead singer said Occupy L.A. was an autonomous community, much like the ones that governed indigenous people that lived on that very spot before they were wiped out by colonization. With the ghostly Native American-themed music accompanying feathered headdresses swishing and the smell of incense heavy in the air, all in the shadow of LAPD Headquarters towering in the background, it could have been a disjointed dream. But there was little doubt in my mind that Occupy L.A. and its sister sites all over the country and world are indeed autonomous from the system that replaced the Gabrielino Indians that used to live where we're pitching our tents now.
Bethania Palma Markus is a former reporter for this news group.