"During the park closure, a First Amendment area will remain open on the Spring Street City Hall steps." --[Los Angeles mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa--Neon Tommy (via Twitter)
Dear Media: When the police tell you to leave IS WHEN YOU STAY. You're supposed to be a check on this kind of power!--Wil Wheaton (via Twitter)
Notable unlawful assemblies: Second Constitutional Congress, Southern lunch counter sit-ins.--Devin Faraci (via Twitter)
For Context for non-LA ppl, #occupyLA is about 3 blocks from a permanent tent city for the homeless, never shut down for health reasons.--Nick Robinson (via Twitter)
RT @KPCCLive: As far as we can tell, LAPD did not ever employ non-lethal enforcement like bean bags, tear gas.--Kevin Roderick (LA OBSERVED) via Twitter.
3:14 AM Just now on OccupyFreedomLA Ustream, a witness says she is looking at about 20 undercover police officers fist bumping with uniformed officers. They apparently looked just like all the occupiers clad in 99% t-shirts--via laist.com
http://laist.com/2011/11/30/occupy_la_raid_the_morning_after.php
#OccupyLA peaceful protestors held on $5,000 bail for "unlawful assembly" To date, Wall Street Banksters go uncharged & are free. #OWS~OA--Official Occup L.A. tweet
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/media-choreography-and-the-occupy-la-raid/249277/
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/30/occupy_wall_street_camps_in_los
Ruth Fowler of Occupy L.A. on what happened outside the LAPD-allowed "media pool":
http://www.occupylosangeles.org/?q=node%2F2445
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
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
.
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
.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Remember the Bonus Army of 1932 in wake of Occupy crackdowns.
Below is a history lesson that, ideally, should be read by people like NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and L.A. OBSERVED business columnist Mark Lacter (both of which fulminated on the Occupy movement last week, throwing out the usual "dirty, intellectually incoherent, unrealistic hippies" stereotypes).
Wikipedia entry on the Bonus Army of World War One veterans who occupied Washington D.C. in 1932:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
From the Wikipedia article:
Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at the start of the Roosevelt Administration was defused with promises instead of military action. In 1936, Congress overrode President Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto to pay the veterans their bonus years early.
Wikipedia entry on the Bonus Army of World War One veterans who occupied Washington D.C. in 1932:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
From the Wikipedia article:
Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at the start of the Roosevelt Administration was defused with promises instead of military action. In 1936, Congress overrode President Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto to pay the veterans their bonus years early.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
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).
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).
Saturday, November 19, 2011
New developments in Natalie Wood death investigation--apparently a welcome distraction for L.A. Sheriff's Dept.
Two commenters on this story in the LOS ANGELES TIMES:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-11-19-natalie-wood-20111119,0,29805.story
Sea Angel at 11:34 AM November 19, 2011
Falling hook, line, and sinker, for Wood's death investigation? Boat's capt. is hawking his book while the ACLU is calling for a full criminal and civil rights investigation by Sheriff Leroy Baca's deputies and accusing him of malfeasance and misfeasance in office because of all of the events they say took place in the jails that Baca should have known about. Not only was Baca covering up violence and beatings against prisoners at the jail, he also covers up that MTA bus operators abuse elderly and disabled public transportation riders. Baca's investigators suddenly have plenty of resources to waste on this actress's death which happened 30 years ago but haven't even began to investigate that on the morning of September 7, 2011, a MTA bus operator became hostile when requested to accommodate an elderly passenger requiring the bus's ramp to get off the bus - he began cursing and insulting her; he shut the old woman's arm in the bus's door and dragged her along the ground with the moving bus. Suddenly he stopped the bus and opened the door. Next he jumped out of the bus and began beating the old crippled woman with his fists and threw her to the sidewalk. Then he drove away and left her injured. The woman's name is Smith and it is now public record.
Bundling at 11:28 AM November 19, 2011
No possibility the Sheriff's Department is seeking some p.r. to distract people from its own problems?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-11-19-natalie-wood-20111119,0,29805.story
Sea Angel at 11:34 AM November 19, 2011
Falling hook, line, and sinker, for Wood's death investigation? Boat's capt. is hawking his book while the ACLU is calling for a full criminal and civil rights investigation by Sheriff Leroy Baca's deputies and accusing him of malfeasance and misfeasance in office because of all of the events they say took place in the jails that Baca should have known about. Not only was Baca covering up violence and beatings against prisoners at the jail, he also covers up that MTA bus operators abuse elderly and disabled public transportation riders. Baca's investigators suddenly have plenty of resources to waste on this actress's death which happened 30 years ago but haven't even began to investigate that on the morning of September 7, 2011, a MTA bus operator became hostile when requested to accommodate an elderly passenger requiring the bus's ramp to get off the bus - he began cursing and insulting her; he shut the old woman's arm in the bus's door and dragged her along the ground with the moving bus. Suddenly he stopped the bus and opened the door. Next he jumped out of the bus and began beating the old crippled woman with his fists and threw her to the sidewalk. Then he drove away and left her injured. The woman's name is Smith and it is now public record.
Bundling at 11:28 AM November 19, 2011
No possibility the Sheriff's Department is seeking some p.r. to distract people from its own problems?
Thursday, November 17, 2011
What I keep forgetting about the notion of "friends" on Facebook.
Earlier this afternoon, I unfriended someone who I had known since the early days I participated in L.A. poetry. We got along fairly well and I even gave him rides to and from readings. I knew he had a less-than-positive opinion of the poems I wrote at the time, but I (sometimes with swallowed discomfort) accepted it and was happy to have at least an acquaintanceship with him.
Recently, the poet (now living in another state) took to Facebook to complain on a topic I could empathize with--feeling marginalized and perhaps pushed out by a dominant faction in his poetry community.
I read his post and the comments from his friends in the other state wishing him well and hoping he'd continue his poetry/publishing activities.
Backchannel, I wrote him a letter (duplicating the well-wishes described above) and got a terse response of, essentially, "it's nothing, just problems with someone in City X."
I wished him well nonetheless--and later, I noticed he posted another (apparently related to the earlier post) complaint about "incest" in poetry (presumingly about cliques of poets who have a narrow who's in/who's out policy--also something I have awareness of).
And there were supportive comments from his recent friends.
This made me realize that he thought of me (who knew him over a two-year period) as someone not worth talking to even on a superficial level about what was bothering him. Perhaps he wanted to hear from the "right" people in his city/state.
So, I unfriended him. This likely made me a bad Facebook "friend" or perhaps "petty" to some people's thinking.
But it was a reminder of the lesson that one should think very hard about the people you are tempted to friend--and that this social network contract be based on something a little more substantive than cursorily knowing someone for a few years, months or days
Recently, the poet (now living in another state) took to Facebook to complain on a topic I could empathize with--feeling marginalized and perhaps pushed out by a dominant faction in his poetry community.
I read his post and the comments from his friends in the other state wishing him well and hoping he'd continue his poetry/publishing activities.
Backchannel, I wrote him a letter (duplicating the well-wishes described above) and got a terse response of, essentially, "it's nothing, just problems with someone in City X."
I wished him well nonetheless--and later, I noticed he posted another (apparently related to the earlier post) complaint about "incest" in poetry (presumingly about cliques of poets who have a narrow who's in/who's out policy--also something I have awareness of).
And there were supportive comments from his recent friends.
This made me realize that he thought of me (who knew him over a two-year period) as someone not worth talking to even on a superficial level about what was bothering him. Perhaps he wanted to hear from the "right" people in his city/state.
So, I unfriended him. This likely made me a bad Facebook "friend" or perhaps "petty" to some people's thinking.
But it was a reminder of the lesson that one should think very hard about the people you are tempted to friend--and that this social network contract be based on something a little more substantive than cursorily knowing someone for a few years, months or days
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