January 7, 2012

Occupy LA lives on in lively meetings and frequent actions

The Occupy Los Angeles encampment in front of City Hall was broken up by police more than a month ago. Initially sanctioned by the city, with the further backing of a council resolution supporting the protest, the camp was one of the biggest in the country at the time and likely would have grown even larger because of Southern California’s mild winters.

But after a change of heart by the mayor, followed by the arrest of some 300 activists on Novembmer 30 when the camp was dispersed, there is now a chain link fence keeping Occupiers – and everyone else, for that matter – off of the tree-festooned park surrounding City Hall with many a sign warning that trespassers will be “subject to arrest.”

But the movement here lives on in well-attended general assembly meetings six nights a week on the steps of City Hall, as well as direct actions on an almost daily basis.

Last week, activists occupied a foreclosed home before sheriffs dispersed them with guns drawn. Earlier in the week, they occupied the famous Rose Parade with an octopus float and various displays of street theater.

And on Monday, they will march to the Anthem Blue Cross building in downtown LA to call attention to the health care crisis in America and to advocate for a bill that would create a single-payer health care system in California. The march will be modeled after a New Orleans-style jazz funeral procession, said Lisa Patrick-Mudd, a health care advocate who protests with Occupy LA, at which musicians play sad music while walking only to break out into happier tunes at the end of the procession.

“We’re mourning the loss of those who have died as a result of insurance company greed,” she said, “and celebrating the possibility of change in the medical profession.”

Occupy Los Angeles activists listen to an update at its general assembly meeting Friday night.

Occupy LA heard a brief preview of Monday’s march at its general assembly meeting Friday night.

There were about 60 people there, and activists told me this was a fairly sparsely attended session, noting Friday night is a popular work night for the 99 percent in Los Angeles. But just because the meeting was relatively modest in size doesn’t mean there was any deficit in activity.

Activists broke out into the popular chant “We are the 99 percent” at the end of the meeting and during it they cheered when someone brought up the idea of a city-wide general strike and protest on May 1, saying, “We need millions of people in the streets of Los Angeles on May fucking first.”

Planning proposals weren’t the only thing causing commotion at the general assembly.

One area seemed more like a party than a protest. A woman, to whom I was introduced as a reporter, asked me if I self-medicated. She wanted to know if I was interested in smoking pot with her and her friends.

I asked a fellow who described himself as a marijuana legalization advocate, as he passed a pipe packed with hash around a group of about six people, if he worried about the two police officers at the top of the City Hall steps either seeing or smelling the session.

“If you don’t try to hide it,” he said, “they assume you have your card.”

He was referring to a state-issued medical marijuana card that allows holders to not only possess pot, but also to smoke it wherever cigarette smoking is allowed.

Besides, he said, “they’ve got better things to worry about.”

An older man, that several people told me suffered from mental illness, continuously rode through the meeting on a bicycle and yelled humorous, sometimes off-color  comments. A few younger activists, dressed in typical anarchist garb, wrestled and snapped each other with t-shirts. And a man who appeared both drunk and homeless yelled pot shots at the activists throughout the three hour meeting.

— Bob Plain