So, I happened to be at a regional general assembly being put together by an incredible group of folks organizing regional actions under the area code-referenced name of Occupy 805. We had broken up into working groups and I was currently engaged in a discussion about the West Coast Port Blockades on 12/12 and what that meant for our local Occupy Movements, and specifically as it related to proposed action at Port Hueneme.
Jen, an impressive activist who was facilitating the meeting, announced that it looked like OccupyLA was indeed getting raided tonight. Immediately discussion broke out about potentially going down there from Oxnard to show support, only another hour's ride south. As for us, the Occupy Santa Barbara crew of three, we started talking about it and immediately came to consensus (which is, not surprisingly, a fair sight easier with only three people). The regional meeting was very lively with people literally not wanting to leave the cafe that had been used for the meeting. I started to feel an excitement in the pit of my stomach in the spot that usually lets me know there are interesting happenings ahead. In a blink we were cruising down the 101 and on the way to L.A.
We talked about what we might, (or might not) find on the way down. We had to acknowledge that we were horribly ill-prepared for the journey, having only one functional smartphone, one laptop, and no charging options, (my own smartphone dying a fast death at the regional while in a flurry of happy organizational bliss). I internally self-administered a kick in the pants, reiterating with my inner voice why media devices are so crucial to protection and documentation. Justin, a bit more practical than I am, bemoaned not having his gas mask. Alex, from his information-guru perspective, also lamented our lack of media armaments. Point is that we were sort of a case study in how not to be prepared for the exact type of event we were heading for, but onward we went.
We probably all had butterflies in our stomachs, but they were damned determined butterflies.
It also became painfully clear that this was a totally new scenario for the three of us. We are 30-somethings, lucky enough to be working class in Santa Barbara, where we haven't had to deal with anywhere near the level of police presence in our local movement as the larger cities have experienced. Granted, one of the three of us had been arrested in Santa Barbara during an act of civil disobedience in October, but the SBPD uses kid's gloves to say the least. Here we were going into the heart of LA, which employs 9,600 police officers and another 8,400 county sheriffs. We were fairly sure that LA officials would respond with a ton of resources, but mentally preparing yourself for such a thing made it no less pants-wettingly shocking to experience.
Just after we passed the Hollywood Bowl we saw the first signs of official activities: five helicopters, all in a very concentrated area. We were excited and exited a bit too early off the freeway only to later figure out that this was a good thing, as LAPD had blocked some of the off-ramps, seemingly to stifle more supporters from attending, (or it could have been the seemingly-busy construction night on a large scale for CALTrans, but I doubt it).
We ended up parking on Alisos St near West 1st St Rd. Surprisingly, there were parking spots available just a couple blocks away from the OLA location. I did not take this as a good sign regarding the amount of people who were currently out in support. It was just past midnight. We had glimpsed people and police on our way to find parking, but we couldn't see anything from where we ended up. We grabbed what we needed from the car, careful to lock up anything important or fragile. As we started around the corner onto 1st, we reviewed our meet-up location and plans in the case of a separation or emergency. We had an impromptu version of a "Ready, break!" in a manner usually reserved for three guys getting ready to play some 3-on-3 b-ball that they're taking far too seriously.
As we started down the road towards the corner of Broadway and W. 1st St I became fascinated, (and a little disgusted) by the whirlybirds that were overhead. In the sky there appeared to be five LAPD helicopters, four of them hovering perfectly still not even engaging their spotlights with the fifth fluttering about over City Hall with it's spotlight occasionally swooping back and forth. They became an eerie part of the atmosphere for me and basically continued with the same routine the entire time we were there.
One obvious observation as we were walking closer: We were late! This observation was based on the amount of people who seemingly wanted to get back to the City Hall Park but were being held up at various intersections about one or two blocks away from the camp.
As we approached we made sure to keep close to one another, and that each of us were in sight of the other two, in a coordinated manner that is hard to believe considering we have only known each other the last two turbulent months.
We found a couple hundred protesters gathered across 1st St. at the Broadway intersection. There they faced fairly thick rows of a couple dozen riot gear-clad officers who held their line while people talked, yelled, chanted, sincerely attempted communication, and questioned them. To say there was an air of tension is about as much of an understatement as saying, "I think that there might have been some fishy behavior by banks a couple years ago..."
I watched various LAPD officers eyes flit back and forth, faint expressions briefly affecting their appearances before being smuggled away to some secret place by their training. Some looked genuinely engaged, some seemed to be sizing up specific occupiers. Understandably, nearly all of them showed signs of nervousness in their body language. Other officers (especially younger ones) were just generally looking around and taking it in. I had to remind myself many times during the night that allot of these happenings were also surreal to these folks, regardless the uniform and interests they were working for.
Occasionally an occupier would wander, retreat, or run out of whatever was left of the park, sometimes haphazardly carrying what supplies or gear they could. Our view of the actual camp was totally obscured from this perspective by the nature of the hillside and the distance that we were being kept back. I felt a strong sense of loss or regret at not having made it there sooner. I was really disappointed that I couldn't even see what was happening to the camp that I had been meaning to visit for going on two months now. We briefly chatted and planned to manuvuer around the blockades to the other side of City Hall. What we didn't realize at the time, but should have considering the large groups of police that were still being deployed to various choke points, was that we were actually at one of the closet-in spots left in the vicinity.
We walked back up W. 1st St Rd to Temple and headed around the North side of City Hall. Justin made a mention of keeping our eyes peeled for a cut-through via various building grounds in case we needed to use them later. I, in my naivete, nervously giggled at his suggestion...
Temple ended up being blocked off between Spring and Main. This meant another block north to Aliso and continuing to work our way around the shut down public areas. It started to dawn on me that the expanding police perimeter was, well, expanding. As we got onto Main and began heading back towards City Hall we noticed another checkpoint with a couple dozen or so protesters gathered on the sidewalk at the corner of Main and Temple. As we walked over to join them a bus pulled up on Temple that looked far too packed.
Having lived in the San Fernando Valley for only six months, I would never claim to be a local in LA, but even living there that short amount of time I know that a completely full city bus in downtown around 12:45AM is a bit more than just rare. It's a pink elephant sitting on a blue moon, rare. Sure enough off of bus 997 (which, oddly, is not listed on the LA Metro site) stepped 40 LAPD officers outfitted in riot gear that looked so new that I'm sure it had to have whatever version of "new car smell" ® that new riot gear has. Needless to say we made good time across the street away from the disembarking platoon to join our fellow occupying citizens.
The occupiers on the corner across the street from the newly bused in police arrivals started counting them as they were exiting the bus. The corner we found ourselves on was an interesting location, mostly because we were able to see past a line of about a dozen police who were spread out across Main, down to the City Hall park grounds, (or at least a corner of it). There, two blocks away and not very visible, was the remainder of a slice of the camp, along with a small brave group of occupiers, some still holding signs above their heads in defiance of the hundreds of police assembled around them.
We found ourselves among a cacophony of voices. A couple of people were belligerent to the officers, alluding to police abuses in taunting fashions, but the majority were basically bearing witness to the events down the street often with intense looks of concentration hinting at thoughts burning with intensity. Another couple of folks seemed to be genuinely trying to engage in some sort of intelligent discourse with the local LAPD contingent, usually rewarded with blank stares and tight lips.
Even when in uniform I felt like I could get a feeling for the police officers. One middle-aged officer with an extra sharp look to him kept sizing us all up and repeatedly would draw his baton out of its holster and stare at me in the eyes. I smiled and casually waved to him. He quit trying to mad dog me. Another younger officer had eyes that said he was listening intently to everything. I later got him to nod in a protocol-breaching act of agreement.
The officer in charge of this group, Sgt. Franco, was standing just behind their loose line. He is a short stocky mustached officer who was doing a great job of acting like this was business as usual. While one person was discussing the merits of the First Amendment with him another person walked up and loudly asked, "Who is the commanding officer here?!" It was slightly humorous to watch several officers turn their heads to indicate their Sargent in a weird synchronized fashion. The man immediately approached Franco and said, "I spoke to the Chief and he assured me that protesters could exit on this street...". The man was obviously very impassioned but carried an air of authority and complexity about him. Franco assured him that protesters were being allowed to leave the area via this location, which other protesters immediately affirmed. The man seemed to grudgingly accept this and started chatting with others and watching the drama in the distance.
That's when we all first spotted what I later personally termed the LAPD Lunar Squad.
There was a ton of police near the corner of the park that we could view with more coming in all the time. It was very difficult to count as the distance and lighting conditions made observation tough, to say the least, (on a side note, I was secretly thankful that, even though I'm at about 60% hearing in my right ear, at least my eyes are superstars). Out of another street there materialized a new group in view who formed up into ranks near City Hall's corner that was observable to us. They all were wearing white, making them much easier to spot than the very dark LAPD uniforms.
Upon closer examination these folks appeared to be a group of police in hazmat-like suits. Besides the surreal affect of these distant human-sized versions looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy or Stay-puff Marshmallow Men, one of the oddest things about their uniform was that they were wearing fairly standard police utility belts with tazers and sidearms. Watching LA's police forces form, reform, and then re-reform their ranks at the edge of the park while a handful of people were sign-holding and standing together had a deep effect on me. Those people were damn courageous, even though certain people in our society will try to paint them as fools.
At that point a news van from one of the local affiliates started driving from the corner of the park up Main and through the police line we were at. We had heard from other protesters that the media had been ordered to leave. The crowd immediately burst into a chant at the van, "You're going the wrong way!". I heard mixed reports on this point as another person claimed that CBS was still broadcasting from the Park, though we were unable to confirm that. The first emotional direct responses we elicited from this group of officers was when we asked things like, "Want to point out to you gentlefolk that the LAPD just asked the media to leave the area, which is in direct violation to the United States Constitution, which you all took an oath to uphold and protect." (this was the part that elicited the nod from the aforementioned younger officer).
We continued to engage the police with communication. I was close to Franco trying to get in on the discourse with him when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a streak. Suddenly the streak turned into a man and a bicycle who, at the point of the police line, had become disconnected from each other leaving the man on the losing end of a downhill cement-ending free fall. He landed and rolled, but his helmet-less head took a very hard smack on the cement and he appeared to immediately occupy unconsciousness.
Four officers were upon him like the proverbial white on (white) rice. He was turned over face down in the street where he landed and his wrists were zip tied behind his back, his limbs and head still loose in that specific way that people get when they're knocked out. The good news was that no obvious lacerations had occurred from the fall and there did not appear to be blood. The line of officers visibly tensed. Looks of concern were tossed at our growing corner contingent that seemed to wonder if we were part of some larger collaboration with the bike charger. Paranoia of your fellow humans can be weird like that.
The two officers who ended up handling their new charge dragged his unconscious person to the sidewalk. This provoked even more response from our crowd since where they had dragged him was behind an electrical box and a tree, so people recording had their views obscured. They then begin to drag him back into the street and hog tie him. He was moved serveral times and put into several positions that made me very nervous for his health. I started engaging the officers broadly saying, "Can we please get this man medical attention and stop dragging him around the ground?! The EMTs are only a block away or so...". I mean, for Pete's sake, the guy could have neck, head, or vertebrae damage from the fall! Just because he made a (in my opinion) horrible decision to try to reach the Park at full speed on a bike going downhill through the most determined deployment of LAPD that the city has seen for years doesn't discount his humanity. At some point he must have come back to consciousness because he started horribly screaming.
The ambulance, a fire truck, and another one or two vehicles arrived on the police side of the police line. Immediately the EMTs had the police remove this mans ankle restraints.
It was somewhere at this point that a tall man, roughly my age, started chanting, "Solidarity with Occupy LA!" to which people responded with shouts of "Solidarity!". The chant leader meandered with purpose into the crosswalk of Main. Prior to this we had been told repeatedly that we were disallowed to be in the street, even in the crosswalk. Franco was claiming that the street was a safety risk even though the street was solidly blocked off with police who had actually setup units behind and across from us, effectively blocking off the street heading back north on Main as well as the cross over on Temple going west. We were surrounded on three sides, but somewhere between watching the lunar landing at the park corner and blurry biker getting dragged around, our little local contingent seemed to have had enough and started making their way into the intersection with the solidarity chanter, chanting along with him, (not enough of us and not boldly enough, but we were there so that's something).
Immediately some of the officers in the line started reacting to our chant leader. Officers stepped forward, slowly unsheathing their billys. Our guy stayed very calm, addressing the officers with respect. Franco sent the officers back to the line as he approached our buddy. We stood with him, though I am embarrassed to say not as closely as I should have, treating the street like it was a swimming pool in a game of Marco Polo, (or was that Sharks in the Water...always got those mixed up). The exchange that I could pick up between Franco and Solidarity, enhanced by Justin's account later, seemed to go something like,
"So you know you're breaking the rules by being in the intersection."
"Yeah, but you already have it blocked off and there is no safety risk."
"Okay, just keep it calm and there won't be an issue."
[that was totally paraphrased based on the snippets I heard as well as what Justin later told me, but the end result is that this young man did occupy the public crosswalk against direct police order to voice his support for his local occupy movement]
Another conversation with someone who was there an hour or so earlier related how quickly the police were in the park via city halls steps.
Meanwhile one of our more, um, aggressively agitating persons (who was shouted down a couple of times by other fellow protesters) was hollering things at one of the officers near the sidewalk that I won't repeat because they were disrespectful on a human level. I watched as this late 30s, (or maybe early 40-something year old) officer tensed like the dickens. There really was a visceral reaction on his part that, if left unchecked, would have ended poorly for the person who was hollering at him. Very subtly and quietly one of the officer's compatriots, (an older fellow who was at least in his late 40s) walked near, tapped the annoyed policeman on the shoulder, whispered in his ear, and took his spot on the line.
The officer, who was obviously pissed off, (and probably really wanting to enforce some strict insulting-officers-of-the-law stuff on the verbally abusive protester) moved over to the other side of the street and took up where his buddy had came from, as far away as he could be positioned from the person who had berated him. I found this to be a really effective tactic which diffused the possibility of letting this particular street corner get violent. This is one of several testaments I witnessed that night to the effect of more than two decades of national attention to police abuses in a city, and what change that can bring about in how a police department treats citizens. Then again, supposedly they did use pepper spray in the park at some point to break an arm-linked group (though I can't seem to find that on the tube-age, so counting that as unconfirmed for the moment)...
Three choppers were on the move now and two stationary. Light started bouncing around the corner of the park that was visible to us, making the albino armed smurf contingent even more weird looking.
One of a few protesters who made their way out of the protest site to our corner came out and immediately handed out two page packets to us saying, "You should read this to them." It was a statement about the horrendous National Defense Re-authorization Bill. This bill would effectively allow the military to police our domestic shores and detain citizens indefinitely without charges, which flies in the face of more than two centuries of legal (not to mention founding) precedent. The Los Angeles Police listened, even though they didn't like what they were hearing when it was read, which I hope is the case for all of us. A fundamental truth that I was raised with is that our legal system is not so delicate as to warrant illegal detentions.
Then Alex communicated to the police force. Having known him for a couple months I can say that he is extremely smart, not necessarily all that into with being publicly outspoken, understands how to work the Internets Machines like nobodies business, and was the most hesitant of us to come out that night. Having said that, what he expressed to the police should be put into print and probably a plaque somewhere. I won't try to quote him as it came out in such a complete stream that, to break up his statement, would be an injustice in itself. I watched his words rain down on the PD and felt their affect on a non-visible level.
We did a bit of recon and decided to head back to our original position as it seemed to be the closest in proximity to the park. Bidding farewells to our fellow occupiers, (whom had grown a bit to nearly 30 folks) and, with some parting words of outreach to the officers, we were off. Walking away I felt oddly familiar with the demeanor of the peoples that we had just interacted with on both sides considering the short time we were around them.
We were given the no-go to pass through on Temple and then again at newly-blocked Adios so we had to walk across the bridge and back. What's another few blocks when you get to witness history?
While walking we passed unmarked television broadcast vans and Homeland Security Vehicles. While I professedly do not wear a tin foil hat on a regular basis this sort of thing makes me cringe as a someone who bought into the whole freedom-loving American concept at a young age. Unmarked TV vans so conspicuously absent of logos or license plates as to make them conspicuous? Its just weird.
As we returned, eventually, to the corner of Broadway and W. 1st St there was definitely allot more activity than when we left. From what I could gather even more folks who had been evicted were there.
The police presence had grown significantly. There were now roughly 200-300 officers at or near the intersection with more coming up from the east. A young man with red tape across his chest and shoulders came out of the park carrying bags of supplies. It was one of the camp's medics. I paused a moment thinking of our own red cross-clad medic in Occupy Santa Barbara/Isla Vista who has been one of the most personally inspirational people in our local movement. The care that someone can show through being functionally supportive is a thing of great beauty.
Another protester, shirtless and trotting towards our ranks, lit a small tea-sized candle as he went and left it in the middle of the intersection. It was a small organic light in the forest of flashlights and pillars of helicopter spotlights. Symbolically, (to me at least) a large officer walked over to the candle and kicked it a couple feet to put it out. He could have blown it out, stepped on it, or just turned it over.
A film crew was in our ranks. The media with this crew were all wearing neon yellow vests that clearly stated they were media. The camera man looked like he was literally trying to take in everything, resulting in him swiveling back and forth like a buoy in rough seas. A younger clearly pissed off protester who was in the street walked up and asked them, in a not-so-polite manner, if they would be telling the truth about what happened here. He became even more disgusted with the events at hand even as he was addressing them and didn't wait for an answer, which didn't seem to be forthcoming anyway.
Justin, Alex, and I convened a brief conference. With the approaching numbers of police easily above 200 we could feel that there was going to be something happening. With a minimum amount of speech we decided to stay put on the corner, but to be ready to fall back up 1st. We were there to support the movement, which we could probably continue to do much more effectively by not getting arrested that night in LA. For the moment being on the sidewalk seemed safe.
A weird white SUV-ish pickup truck-ish vehicle with four bullhorns installed along the top of its roof made its way forward toward middle of the intersection. A nasily buercratic voice emerged from the PA devices, "Attention....the park has been closed....you have been declared an unlawful assembly..."
It was very difficult to hear what was being broadcast, especially after the "unlawful assembly" bit, as the crowd understandably roared disapproval for declaring citizens gathering on public sidewalks and streets to be unlawful.
"It's going down." Justin said near me, maybe to no one in particular. As a man walked around in the middle of the street hoisting a painted portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. others began sitting in the middle of the street in a peaceful sign of resistance. The police bunched at this point. They were obviously preparing for an action, as groups gathered on the north and south sides of the intersection, as well as in the middle. I noticed officers who were armed with shotguns, (possibly for beanbag ammo) which I hadn't seen when we were at this location before.
The LAPD formed what I can best describe as a wedge formation. Then, at nearer to 2AM than 1AM, they charged. This was one of the most annoying and awkward moments of the evening for me. As a group of 20 plus officers charged the middle of 1st they practically fell over each other and the sitting protesters. The falling itself was ridiculous as there were implications of attempting to restrain the people who were peacefully sitting as the police themselves were falling on them. The end result was something more akin to a rugby or football play than it was an effective law enforcement maneuver.
As the wedge broke through the protester ranks the police spread out behind the groups of us, both in the street and on the sidewalks. It dawned on me that we were kettled by LAPD right around the point when I saw part of the wedge force tackle a guy about 10 feet behind me into the construction chain link fence that ran along our sidewalk for the LA Law Library's construction project. With two brief knowing glances, the three of us approached the newly formed police line behind us. At our side of the public sidewalk were two young cops and an older late career beat cop. People were understandably questioning them as to why we couldn't pass. Having only just been told to disperse this really made zero sense.
The older beat cop said, "Hold on a second, hold on a second!" He was calling for calm until he could get confirmation on how to proceed. It's interesting that this wasn't part of the briefing. Was the plan really just to charge, create a new line behind the protesters, and then do...something? Oh to be a fly on the wall of the briefings...
A Sgt walked up, middle aged with an impecable uniform and an impecable scowl to match, "Your five minutes is up, you're all under arrest.". The five minute time limit and why we were even being arrested were mysteries to me, besides the fact that some odd disembodied voice had told us that we were an unlawful gathering. I never heard the time limit.
Me: "Sir, we are trying to exit the protest site, per the orders given by your other officers."
Him: "That's not possible now. Now you are under arrest."
Me: "I understand your position, but we were unable to even hear whatever warnings were being said from the vehicle only a couple of minutes ago."
Him: "Too bad. You're still going to be arrested."
Alex, Justin, and I stayed close and communicated while observing our situation. There were essentially two groups of us stranded protesters on either sidewalk who were trapped in by the police presence with another line of protesters who had fallen back just 15-20 feet into the middle of 1st to form the next line. Justin presciently indicated the construction fence and Law Library grounds as a means of escape...
Let me just pause to say that I wouldn't usually disobey any direct orders from law officers. This circumstance, however, flew in the face of everything I stand for. A group of protesters thrown out of public space because their form of protest is inconvenient to the powers that be. Illegally suppressing media and telling Americans that they can't gather, even on a public sidewalk! Just, no.
A young guy with a bandanna around his face jumped the construction fence. Our first instinct was to follow him, but we held off since we couldn't see into the construction area and didn't know how the police line, (who was only about 6-10 feet away) would react. Tense seconds passed that stretched in a more elastic way than flubber. Another couple of folks started hopping the fence and charging west parallel to 1st, while we could see the pioneering hopper hopping back out of the fence line about 50 feet away and into the street safely on the other side of the rear guard police line. I directly looked into the CO's and younger officers' eyes. I indicated through eyes and head movements that I was going over the fence. The three officers who were paying attention, including the "you're arrested" Sargent, all made some sort of expressions that might as well have been them whistling and looking the other way. We went.
Justin went first, I followed, and Alex was right behind us. We ducked so as to not be visible to the street, due to the green mesh interwoven in the chain link. The audio during these moments felt intense. Between the helicopters buzzing, crowds chanting/yelling/cheering/booing/shaming, the police commanding, it was a full soundscape.
We ran about the same distance as the others we had seen go before us. There was a lower part of the fence to our left and we started hopping back into the street about 12 feet from the backside of the police containment we had just escaped. This was in full sight of a group of Sheriffs who seemed to be mostly providing perimeter support. Their non-reaction as well as the LAPD's behavior all said one thing to me: They didn't want to arrest us just because they (cough unlawfully cough) could.
Another man and woman made it to the fence behind me. He was carrying a guitar and she was fairly short in stature. After assisting both of them over the fence, we left in the direction of the car. Walking we kept checking over our shoulders, a sense that we escaped something we weren't supposed to kept creeping into my thoughts. These were mixed with feelings of shame for having left. Should I have stayed and been arrested? Would that have been more effective or just more personally satisfying, or would it have been neither? Could we have even called to bring those sidewalk groups together in a last desperate display of impassioned civil resistance? These questions will likely remain unanswered for me during the rest of my life.
We grasped hands as we walked in an outburst of resistance-fueled victory at our escape. It was a feeling of communal brotherhood the likes of which I have pretty much never experienced.
After getting back to the car we found a parking lot that allowed us to view the exact spot where we had been, but from an elevated position. There were even more police descending on our prior location. Yelling, chanting, hollering...sounds drifted up in a confusing train wreck of input. We stayed wary, worried that we might also be approached in the lot. A force of bicycle police were riding along our south side. We kept an eye on them wary of retaliation. Our fears were unfounded as they had just been apparently maneuvering to speak to other parked units just off one side of the parking lot. Alex had busted out his laptop and began to attempt tweeting out the happenings. Justin braced himself on the edge of the parking lot's fence and stared into the distance with intensity.
After another 15 minutes we left. What we left behind I can't rightly tell, but what I saw there that night will stay with me for a long time. I know that, like all Occupation sites, Occupy LA had its own personality. The eccentricities of Los Angeles cannot be discounted as having created a local movement that was less regimented than groups in places like Occupy DC, but the message was no less obvious. I'm writing about a local movement that had the gall to walk into a Bank of America branch with a giant check made out to the California People for hundreds of millions of dollars. This group of people did great work raising social consciousness in their locale as to the enormous and unprecedented abuses going on through our government and mega-corporations.
I believe that Occupy LA will be around for a long time to come in one form or another. Was I amazed that they didn't take the 10,000 sq ft office space and farmland deal? Sort of. It would have been really nice to have said space and I wish they would have turned the farmland over to indigenous peoples locally, but I also understand that setting any precedent for a peoples' movement to be essentially bought off is problematic.
At the end of the day (or night) what I really saw in downtown LA was a huge grouping of law enforcement deployed (who looked paramilitary to me) to handle a handful of determined peaceful protesters. We have a history of occupation protests in this country. They have never successfully been squashed or squelched by kicking them out.
One of my personally favorite chants erupted last night at some point: "We are unstoppable! Another world is possible"
~ MG