Occupy L.A. Now Allowed to Camp on City Hall Lawn: Why Are Politicians Sucking Up to Protesters?

• Your a genius. I so agree. I'm camped on the south lawn in front of the media tent. Come by! Admiralllll

• ."..brushed off alternatives: for reasons that were never made clear, it had to be City Hall.":  Ah, yes, LA's financial district. There's a wonderful public area in the center of our financial district called Pershing Square, which is surrounded by buildings of banking institutions. Sounds perfect, doesn't it? Well, it isn't, because if it was, we would have occupied it. Pershing Square is a logistical nightmare. It's surrounded by walls and trees, which leads to several things: no visibility from the street, the city would easily be able to contain occupiers inside Pershing Square, no easy way to drop-off and receive supplies, no public bathrooms, and it's a public space so occupiers technically wouldn't be doing anything but exercising their right to hang out at public spaces. The only people who would have been able to see us are the bankers from their multi-story buildings, and it's not as if they'd give a rat's behind about a bunch of people staying at Pershing Square; the homeless do it everyday. "people's Committee on Police Brutality": Firstly, it's called the "End Police Brutality" committee (its existence was never voted on through general consensus so it's not an "official"/functional committee, it's an affinity committee). A lot of people had issues specifically with that name because there is no police brutality at OccupyLA and to say "end police brutality," when no brutality exists at the moment, sounds antagonistic. A lot of people were in support of what the committee is actually planning on doing, which is to teach people on the how to deal with the police, give lessons on the history of police brutality, and things of that nature. But the name itself was a big issue. Also, it wasn't an approved (by general consensus at a GA) group effort to spread around contact information about the people of the End Police Brutality committee; somebody (I have no idea who) did that out of their own free will. "Race": I don't really understand what you're getting at. Is race in the "script" for any of the other occupations? 99% consists of all races. We have an affinity group called the "Indigenous People committee," so all races are welcome to show their support and voice their opinions. "Nonviolent": That's your personal opinion. We have a plan for if/when we encounter police brutality, and just because we don't want to engage in violence ourselves doesn't mean we're being passive scaredy cats. There is no plan for bail because there are no funds to bail people out with. I believe there was a civil disobedience "class" last weekend, but we definitely need more. Livestream chat: I have no idea what goes on in the livestream chat because I don't need to watch a livestream of what I'm experiencing. I haven't been able to sit down for more than 1 hour of my personal time on the internet over a week."General Assembly": All committees need more volunteers. You see the same people day after day because there's nobody else volunteering to do it. There are stacks of volunteer lists, but for the love of Pete, instead of waiting for people (who are busy enough as it is) to contact you for help, just come by a committee meeting for any committee you're interested in, and ta-da, you're part of a committee. Also, I don't see what's wrong with "hard blocking"; rather than a "majority rules," it means that any one person's opinion matters enough to stop to proposal. Also, OccupyLA has only been going on for 13 days, I'm sorry that you expected perfection, but occupiers are just a group of people trying to facilitate a leader-full democratic process.Drugs and alcohol: I see no problem with not allowing drugs and alcohol. Also, the "security" committee has no authority over anything or any person; everybody, including the "security" committee know, accept, admit this readily. The "security" committee are only there to help keep peace among ourselves. Being well-supplied: If you consider bins of wet wipes, vitamins, feminine care products, hygienic products, hydrogen peroxide, gauze and bandages, and alcohol wipes  "fully-equipped", then indeed, the 1st Aid tent is "fully-equipped." I can personally confirm that all of the items we received at the 1st Aid tent were donated by tons of generous individuals. Everything you see at either donated or bought with money that was donated. I personally was surprised by how many people came to donate and show support for OccupyLA since Day 1. If police officers have been donating supplies, then that's their choice, and let's not fail to notice that police officers are also part of the 99%. The finance committee is fully for transparency, if you want to know about the finances, just ask and the finance committee will tell you all about it. It feels like you want to see the negative, which is causing you to assume the negative. If I missed anything, it's because I have to head off to OccupyLA right now to actually contribute something to a growing democratic movement instead of assuming the worst from the comforts of my own home.

• Occupying LaLa Land --where the illusion meets the road What happens when a bunch of mostly white 20-somethings and a union dude hook up in movietown to get solid with a New York protest? You get OccupyLA. This is an occupation by permission. Really. A couple hundred people camped out on the lawn of Los Angeles's City Hall after they got the permission of the Los Angeles police. It took the union dude about 24 hours to do it. In the better areas of LA, this counts as occupying something. In the rest of town, you actually have to claim some space in the name of the people and defy LAPD. But not for us. This is a LaLa Land occupation: an illusion wrapped up in a metaphor. A light image where something material and real is supposed to be. No, not <i>that</i> LAPD. Not the guys who swarmed MacArthur Park a few years ago on May Day in full SWAT gear (we know SWAT, it started here) to drive out the picnicking families. They knocked over some journalists on their way to shoot beanbags at the kids. Not the same LAPD that routinely confiscates cars from people who don't have documentation in a towing fees/overtime scam that the victims have no power to defy. Not the LAPD that beat Rodney King and got away with it. <i>This</i> movie-version LAPD gave the LA occupiers permission to pitch our tents on the lawn. Of course, the whole Occupy thing across the country is a metaphor that only sometimes touches reality, like in New York on the Brooklyn Bridge or now, as I write this, in Boston. Nowhere in the U.S. is this real like in, say, Tunisia or Bahrain. But the whole, entire message, the demands the media are demanding, are in the title: Occupy. We will take the discursive space back. Make this whole, screwed up system about natural people, not the Supreme Court created Frankenstein monster super people called corporations. Corporations eat people for lunch. Corporations also eat justice, and education, and futures—people's futures, not the Wall Street kind—for snacks. But in L.A., the metaphor reaches a whole other level of disconnect. How this came to be is as mysterious as the job of an key grip. From the earliest clusters of a couple hundred people imitating New York's General Assembly in the nighttime glow of Pershing Square, there was never an unscripted choice. People wanted to sleep in the Square. People wanted to occupy the Los Angeles Financial District (yes, we have one). But the self-determined leaders of this leaderless movement (the people who set the agenda before the others arrived and had the answers as soon as the questions were asked) brushed off alternatives: for reasons that were never made clear, it had to be City Hall. It bothered a few people that City Hall is, well, not really the focus of the Occupy movement. It bothered a few more people that City Hall is right across the street from LAPD headquarters. Massive reflecting windows in Parker Center frame a full-sized image of City Hall, and our local cops can lob tear gas on the campers without leaving home. Los Angeles City Hall is, no doubt, one of the most secure buildings in the world. Very few people at OccupyLA seem much concerned with privacy, though. They make us move our gear from one side of City Hall to another every few day. And LAPD can turn on the sprinkler system whenever they want a giggle. Tomorrow we'll go to City Council and ask them to bless the occupation. That makes us something more like house guests, but whatever. In the surreality of our making, we're clear about our affiliations and allies: no political parties, no advocacy groups, no unions. The only organized group we'll ally with is Los Angeles City Council. LA City Hall lawn is occupied by people who've been screwed by the system. For the most part we are young adults, under thirty, over twenty. We grew up with Reagan's philosophy of trickle, the twentieth-century permutation of noblesse oblige, the delusion that the wealthy will take care of the rest of us. We're waiting for our trickle down jobs while they were shipped overseas. Once we get those, we'll trickle back into houses. We got our trickling education and discovered we can't compete. We depended on the legal system for a trickle of justice and got state-sanctioned executions of untried citizens and innocents. We trusted our money to trickle down bailouts that stalled with bankers' bonuses. We're holding our breath for a trickle health care from the insurance companies. We wage trickling wars for no apparent reason, in what we've been promised is a world of endless, trickling wars. If we wait(/survive) long enough somebody will figure out how to save a trickle of a habitable environment. So here on the set in LA, we are camped on the City Hall lawn, and the scriptwriters tell us that if we're nice to the police, they'll be nice to us. When this started, we knew there would be affinity groups and splinter groups, variations on the theme, but we are, well, the 99%. What we weren't told was that a people's Committee on Police Brutality would be summarily shut down in the GA and their personal contact information spread around on a flyer and on the web. Nobody mentioned that the guy who spoke out against the police would be run off. He isn't part of the 1%, but for sure he's not part of the 99%, as we're told to call ourselves. He's not anywhere, really, not anyone. Race isn't in our script either. Not Black or Brown or Native American or white or Asian. We're all equal, and pay no attention to the inequalities we've lived through. We're the 99%. Not the bottom 40% or the middle 55% or the nearly-the-1% remainder. You had bad experiences with the cops, or your family did, or your school did, or your neighborhood did? Shhh... If we're not nice to the police... We are nonviolent. There's talk about signing some sort of nonviolent pledge (with the suggestion it would please the police). Nonviolence here means avoiding violence at all costs, to challenge nothing, to concede to everything. No confrontation, we will run from physical force with all our soul force. Expect no daisies in gun barrels here. No, there's no plan if the cops swarm. That wouldn't be nice. A plan for bail? Not cool. Definitely not. Civil disobedience training? So not happening here. Our Livestream chat is censored, people are banned, if the mod decides we aren't “nice” enough. The star of this streaming self-referential fantasy within our pomo illusion is some guy who'll happily tell you what a wonderful communicator he is, a skill he learned in the Marines or the Eagle Scouts, one or the other. Being pleasant is a rule for the high point of our day, the General Assembly, with a rotation of facilitators. Not leaders, just, well, the people who decide what will be decided. They say they're the ones who've been around from the beginning, or the ones who spent the most nights, or the ones who do things. But it doesn't matter much: if you're not a committee chair, you can talk in the last fifteen minutes before the cops make us move the tents onto the sidewalk. The rest of the time we're twinkling to decisions that are reported out of committees, or playing follow the leader and making pyramids over our heads when it's time to shut someone down. Wanna stop the whole operation? Bring half a dozen friends and cross your arms in front of your face to block whatever's being decided. If they can't convince you, you win. Honest. We have an absolute rule against drugs and alcohol. Our self-appointed security team, more concerned with protecting us from each other than from any outside threat, will bust you. You can trust security to stop you from getting too loud during a march, too. We're told all this is real democracy, and if you're sitting comfortably watching the screen, it looks for all the world like it is. The grand illusion is nearly perfect. But if you look close enough, its the props that don't quite work. How did the finance committee get a business checking account? How are they handing out not just blankets, but tents to everyone who asks? Where did the matching notebooks in the media tent come from, or the media tent, or the fully equipped medical tent? How, in just a week, is this occupation feeding everyone, not just occupiers, but everyone who comes by? One answer snuck out today: LAPD is sending in supplies, including food and sunscreen to protect the Occupiers from the California sun. Some people are refusing to eat the food. No lie. The storyline is that this is a horizontal structure, without leaders, left to us the people to control. To create the story, we are controlled, our set, who our characters are, what we do and what we say. We are free agents only within the script. We have busted out of lives determined by corporations, of corporations, and for corporations, and escaped into a made-for-TV illusion of freedom. Such is the start of the new world, the post-corporate people's democracy. How did that happen? Ask Mayor Bloomberg in New York, who just decided the OccupyWallStreet protesters could camp in the park until they get tired and go home.

• i think you put it best last week: "The occupation of the Bank of America lobby was the finale to a march that started at California Plaza and is ending -- as we speak -- with a retreat to the L.A. City Hall encampment, where they'll surely be welcomed with open arms by City Councilmembers, who've asked them to stay for "as long as they need."" And the simple answer: City Hall isn't the Wall Street of Los Angeles. LA politicians can be as accommodating as they want to the protestors because they aren't protesting anything the politicians have to be concerned about. When they do, they'll be arrested. A more pressing question is whether or not Occupy LA is willing to occupy wall street's presence in Los Angeles, including most things the CRA do or that loan we got from wall street that LA gave to developers and private education who very obviously don't give a shit about the communities and people of our city. Where's Occupy LA Live? Where's Occupy the Financial Distrcit? Hell, where's Occupy the Broad Museum Under Construction Across the Street?

• Could you possibly email me your contact information? I'd like to speak with you about this further. swilson@laweekly.com.

• At last night's General Assembly, a proposal to officially endorse a union picket line in Beverly Hills this Friday was finally rammed through by the actions committee after 3 consecutive days of denial by the General Assembly. Committee members stood up en masse on the steps crowding the mic as speakers voiced opinion for and against. Several people voiced concerns over union co-opting and support of entities that contribute to either of the two corrupt political parties dominating American politics. One person wishing to speak was forcibly removed by "security" and several others were out-shouted and their blocks ignored after several deliberations. The chief argument against from blockers being that OccupyLA was never meant to endorse groups but that groups were to come to the occupation grounds to endorse and march with OccupyLA. There was a feeling and unease in the air after the GA adjourned that Democratic Party forces were at work and it caused anger amongst people who strongly identified themselves as pro-worker yet reject the current system entirely.

• Yeah haha I wanted to make up for the "disorderly" public speaker shout-out! Love you and all that you do.

• Simone, Thanks so much for the mention. A media quote relating to my efforts has never made me happier! It's like BEDBUGS!!! A MILLIONS ZD's SWARMING CITY HALL!!! Plus, THIS quote of your says it all, in case anyone reading was confused: "The councilmembers themselves are completely tied up in "corporate greed." Yes, I said they're being sweet. But they're also being hypocrites." (You must have a lot of City Council experience!) - ZD

• The councilmembers themselves are completely tied up in "corporate greed." Yes, I said they're being sweet. But they're also being hypocrites.

• Its clear from this article let alone the title that you don't understand the origin, operation or intent of Occupy Wall Street in general and Occupy LA specifically. Organizers of OLA coordinated the occupation with the council and lapd before it started. So they weren't caught off guard. They knew why the protesters we there and will vote on a measure of solidarity with the occupation on the 28th. This is how it should go. There is no need for violence and division. Local state federal government isn't the "enemy." the occupiers aren't terrorisrs. They are citizens who have a grievance and a constitutionally guaranteed right to assemble to air those greivances. They are your friends and neighbors. Our law enforcement and governance is part of the 99% as well. OLA is a beacon of positive progress to other occupations where there has been much violence. Instead of investigating what OLA has done right, you insinuate cconspiracy theories. Can it not be possible that members of government legitamitely support the movement? Is it not possible that they too think corporate greed is killing our democracy? Is it not possible they have enough heart and morality to give someone food when they are hungry and a poncho when they are wet? I know politicians aren't usually portrayed in a positive light, but when they are standing with their citizens and helping to secure and promote their rights, they should be lauded for their serivice. After all they are doing job and serving their community.

• Lets not trivialize this so much. LA is more solidly democrat when it comes to elected officials. Unions in LA make the rules. When SEIU got involved it was a clear to the elected officials they had to play nice. Also, look at who is pandering to them... those running for re-election or those running for a new post. The Occupy WS started off as grass roots and was hijacked once the unions and moveon types got involved. The LA protests are all functioning because of unions and liberal activist groups. It's as plain as day that his movement is NOT a revolution.

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