CHRISTMAS COME EARLY

Temecula, CA – Today’s title refers to the amount of bullshit being described as the reasons and costs of ending Occupy LA. Villaraigosa initially supported the movement, handing out plastic ponchos one rainy day. As the population swelled in October, he said the city would remain "accommodating". The main reason for the reversal of fortune for Occupy LA and indeed the dismissal of the movement in the ‘press’ is a lack of a concrete demand. But that is bogus because everyone in the camp had an issue. However, put together they could be lumped under the banner ‘greed and corruption’. The price tag for ‘repairing’ LA’s City Hall park illustrates this ‘let’s get paid’ greed PR mindset when costs are compiled.

But first the Occupy LA cause must be discredited to the masses, that way the cost is justified in the PR campaign. The following was printed in the Huffington Post 12/24:

“Over time critics said the encampment turned the once-lush City Hall lawns into something more closely resembling a homeless encampment with overflowing trash bins and the stench of urine and body odor hanging in the air. The tent city destroyed the grass and damaged trees. Graffiti appeared on statues and some City Hall walls.

Thefts, shoplifting and assaults spiked in the neighborhood, and film productions avoided the landmark site*. Local restaurants** grumbled about lost business, and weeks of media coverage of demonstrators camped on the City Hall lawn did little to help downtown's scruffy image.”

Such complaints contributed to the decision by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to evict hundreds of protesters from the park in a late-night raid at the end of November, resulting in nearly 300 largely peaceful arrests in a show of force with at least 1400 unformed and suited up battoned police officers.

A preliminary report released Friday by the city administrative officer estimates the nearly two-month Occupy LA encampment at City Hall cost the budget-strapped city at least $2.3 million, but officials said the sum is expected to grow by the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Los Angeles report requested by the City Council includes an estimate of more than $1.6 million in overtime for police, the Department of General Services and the Office of Public Safety.

But the report notes that the estimate does not include the cost of restoring City Hall park. A rough early estimate of restoring the park to its original condition was $400,000.

At the City Attorney's Office, Chief Deputy William Carter told the AP earlier this week that the agency has spent over $500,000 so far on legal and consulting work, and handling cases involving hundreds of people arrested would likely drive costs over $1 million.’

“For reasons of fear -- plus identity politics driven by ideology, income and demographics -- the 99 percent championed by the Occupy movement is a mythical cohort. That does not mean growing income inequality and shrinking social mobility don't matter -- they do, and deeply. But the weakness of the entire Occupy movement and meme is the effort to label the majority without fully exploring our nation's fault lines and how to bridge them.” - Farai Chideya

Sorry, Farai, the media delivered the message they were supposed to or edited to. It was never the movement’s aim to do anything but show you what was wrong and how you could right them by our signage or by merely coming into camp and meeting with us. The movement wasn’t meant to drive home the point being non-violent and non-confrontational, like Orlando’s Food Not Bombs chapter’s feed the poor in the public park. It was expected that the Man/the System would kick back however. A Senegal saying goes, ‘what is dying always kicks just before’.

At no time while I was in the Occupy LA camp did I witness an assault [I did see pushing and shoving], a slovenly homeless encampment, see overflowing trash bins or foul porta-potties [thanks – NATIONAL, as in fences], as a volunteer security ran a tight ship, both in security and medical assistance. Wherever the official report released as reported above came from, it didn’t come from the fine police officers who routinely strolled through the park, on the pavement and off. They will tell you that the smell in the air had more in common with a Dead show parking lot than walking through Skid row, cough Mary Jane.

As you can see also in the following photo essay, Signs of the Times, any ‘graffiti’ was of the Bart Simpson blackboard type, easily washed down with a laborer and a power washer. The people who occupied were not hippies, though they chose that lifestyle to make a point in the American version of sweeping global conscious for those who have eyes to see. But don’t take my word for it, witness for yourself. Also at no time, even when Fat Mike was at his most anarchistic did the Occupy encampment ever merit the amount of police over-reaction or overtime it received. This wasn’t an encampment of fundamentalists, Nazis, skinhead motorcyclists, meth heads, or tea baggers. Occupy LA was more like summer theatre meets Kamp Krusty without the gruel or the bull. Clearly the LAPD can say as was said in Wedding Crashers, “Christmas come early”. About a month early by my calendar (stories).

(* - true, but ample space for rent [filming] was available within four blocks of city hall [advertised]; ** - local restaurants with the possible exception of the underground mall were not penalized as no others were located within 3 walking city blocks. If anything, a few dollars in into the local economy from the food sales generated in food sales from those that fed the multitudes or periodically slipped out from the front lines to taste the city lights, like me.)