Re those arrested during Tuesday night's de-occupation of L.A. City Hall

http://www.scpr.org/news/2011/12/02/30170/prosecutors-file-criminal-charges-against-46-occup/

Key passage from the article (highlighting by me):
Most of those released qualified for a pre-filing diversion program, which allows nonviolent offenders without a criminal record to choose to complete a 90-day educational program to avoid prosecution for a $375 or $400 fee, [Earl]Thomas [chief of the criminal division for the City Attorney's office] said. He said they will receive information on the program in the mail.




The City Attorney’s Office can still file charges for a year according to the statue of limitations, Thomas said.



“If they complete the program and stay out of trouble for that year, while the statue is running, they have an opportunity to keep their record clear,” Thomas said.



The curriculum includes information about being a good citizen, the government, constitutional rights and the consequences of an arrest, among other issues. The course can be completed from home and fee payment can be made in installments, Thomas said. He said officials are looking at bringing in constitutional experts on the First Amendment including retired Supreme Court Justices to talk to participants.




The City Attorney’s Office made a request Thursday to include a condition within the release that would prevent people from returning to the City Hall lawn, but the court apparently denied that request, Thomas said. He said the Office has not had a chance to review cases processed Friday.

New poem HERDING OCCUPY L.A. OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND BLUES

(for poet Scott Wannberg and his Canine of Truth Sparky)




get along little protesters



get out of the street



get onto the sidewalk



fold your banners



and pack up your tents



because you're making



THE LOS ANGELES TIMES



and television journalists mad as Heck



now the hounds are baying for Charlie Beck



to tear off his peaceful-interaction



make-them-disappear-by-attrition mask



and emerge as the Incredible Two-Headed Hybrid



of Darryl Gates and Ed Davis



crying havoc



and unleashing the tasers and batons



get along little protesters



business must do whatever it wants



we're not going to listen to you Occupy people



since our city is not a city of "the people"



but a city of, by and for



the Very Important People



of AEG



WE NEED A NEW FOOTBALL STADIUM!



get along little protesters



go play with the other weird fuzzy-haired,



fuzzy-brained hippie kids



in Occupy Orange County



or Occupy Long Beach



or wherever you can be more easily ignored



by the state, nation and world



go away little protesters



go home and eat low-fat granola



drink your soy lattes



watch your Noam Chomsky videos



and let us govern,



while the silent majority occupies sidewalks



outside theaters and big-box stores



we love the silent majority



they know to SHUT UP AND CONSUME



and take what they're given



no matter how bad it is now



or how much worse it will be



we'll be glad when



everyone forgets all about



this trouble-stirring business-unfriendly



nonsense of Occupying public space



that we'll always find reasons



to throw you out of



once we're tired of your madness



.

Observations for this Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving originally was a holiday celebrating diverse cultures being able to sit together and share a meal, marinating in good will towards people other than themselves.  In 2011, Thanksgiving is a holiday where employees of megastores get to curtail their family time to go to work very late/very early to service
consumers on what is now known as "Black Friday."

"Black Friday" was once an inside-business term for the Friday-after-Thanksgiving sales.  In recent years, the store-opening times were switched to ungodly hours like 5:00 a.m.  This year, because megastores expect the economy to improve enough to strip $20 billion from consumer wallets, Black Friday has turned into Black Thursday-and-Friday.

In 2011, families will sacrifice their family togetherness/good will to stand in front of megastores most of Thanksgiving Day to enter stores as early as 10:00 p.m to buy high-tech items at low low prices.  Or, if they're interested in shopping at Best Buy, they're already sleeping outside or in tents--a method of occupying public space that's more acceptable to government/corporate cultures than the Occupy movement that's being beaten/pepper-sprayed in a city near you.

Speaking of Occupy Los Angeles as it celebrates Thanksgiving before its inevitable forced retreat from L.A.'s City Hall: it's rather pitiful that the city of Los Angeles is unwilling to heed the economic inequity message of the movement instead of making half-assed offers of dollar-a-year store space in the L.A. Mall underneath the Fletcher Bowron Plaza.

[Sidebar: I'm imagining how quickly Occupy Los Angeles would have been crushed by the LAPD/L.A. City Council if the tents/protestors had appeared in, say, Beverly Hills or Century City rather than around City Hall--a part of Downtown that hasn't yet become completely gentrified.]

And, closing this post, here's a Hall of Shame re naysayers towards the Occupy movement:
1. CHUCK HENRY--everybody's favorite blowdried ex-travel host (EYE ON L.A.) turned inexplicably long-running KNBC-TV anchorman made a sort of yucky smiley-face the other night when introducing a story about Occupy L.A.; it was the most contemptuous "they're a bunch of dirty hippies" grin/grimace worthy of the next person on this list.
2. MICHAEL BLOOMBERG--curious if anyone caught MSNBC Tuesday morning to see the grotesque farce of the New York City mayor defending his recent misbehavior to Andrea Mitchell; Ms. Mitchell is married to one-time economic majordomo Alan Greenspan, who helped create the masters-and-serfs feudalism that's the United States in 2011.
3. BERNARD PARKS/THE LOS ANGELES TIMES--the ex-LAPD chief trotted out a whopper of an unlikely scenario--that "neo-Nazis" could one day occupy the space around City Hall ; the city's Newspaper of Record thought Parks' overstatement was so nice, it repeated it twice (both in a "news" article and an editorial).