Los Angeles City Hall where for seven weeks now, a bunch of imported professional agitators set up shop on the 1.5 acre South lawn park in downtown LA. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2011)Occupy LA Hits The Snooze Button
All citizens of Los Angeles want to do is wake up, go to work, have fun, and live their lives with definition ... the definition they choose to have for their lives. For seven weeks now, a bunch of imported professional agitators set up shop on the 1.5 acre South lawn park at City Hall, in the name of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. All they have been able to accomplish is attract a bunch of homeless, out of work students, and some media attention to the fact that .... and is the only consistent point ... they are there to "Occupy". All other potential political points to be made are subservient to the concept To Occupy.
Civilized cities call what these people have been doing in terms of "Occupy" is to trespass.
Today, this morning, we citizens of Los Angeles have been treated to wall-to-wall television coverage of the Los Angeles Police attempting to restore some order to this trespassing hoard. The Occupy crowd was prepared for a confrontation of eviction because, after seven weeks, the Mayor decided that trespassing will finally not be tolerated on the South lawn park area of the Los Angeles City Hall. With a 72 hour notice that the laws would be enforced at 12:01am PT Monday morning, all the people the Occupy Movement could muster, what with the imported protesters from San Diego, Oakland, and other cities was an estimated 700 to 1,200 people on the South Lawn.
The crowd, wanting to create more tension, spilled on to the street surrounding City Hall, and for about six hours, the Los Angeles Police Department packed the area with personnel dressed in "tactical response gear" (the Occupy Movement wanted the media gathered to report "riot gear"). The LAPD, after broadcasting via bullhorn that the streets will be cleared at 5:00am PT, started to move people off of the streets. Some shouting ensued, objects were thrown (a couple of bamboo poles/spears and bottles), and about five people were arrested and removed from the scene.
One of the news reporters stated that this Occupy LA encampment represented the largest gathering of Occupy protesters in the nation. So wrapped up was this reporter at romancing this event, she stated erroneously that this started seven weeks ago and had grown into this major protest. If this were the Tea Party, and folks were given 72 hours to gather at a specific park, there would be far more than an estimated 700 to 1,200 people standing around. In fact with a seven week notice from Glenn Beck, the Tea Party folks were able to amass over 750,000 people on the Mall in Washington D.C. prior to the 2010 elections.
The television coverage, after about an hour of dedicated Occupy coverage, with helicopter shots and on the street interviews, has resumed to its normal morning news coffee talk. The weather here is Santa Ana wind beautiful and the temperature is expected to hit the low 80's.
As for the LAPD, they seem to have employed a strategy of "show up and wait" with intent of wearing out the cell phone batteries of the Occupy LA protester's iPhones and boring them to death with the intensity of presence.
Time to hit the snooze button.
<article first appeared as Occupy LA Hits The Snooze Button at Technorati>
