L.A., Philly cops evict camps as organizers now eye convention protests

BY JUSTIN ROCKET SILVERMAN

The nation’s largest remaining Occupy Wall Street protest was disbanded by Los Angeles police in the early hours yesterday, as 1,400 officers evicted the occupiers in what was a largely peaceful and orderly raid.

Nevertheless, nearly 300 protesters were arrested for refusing to disperse.

“I was in the park when the police came,” blogged Ruth Fowler on the Occupy L.A. protest’s website. “They were not violent. Neither were we.”

The LAPD allowed only a select few media outlets to observe the eviction from a predesignated “First Amendment area” and asked those reporters not to tweet about it until after the action was concluded.

Things were slightly more chaotic in Philadelphia, where police also raided the Occupy encampment early yesterday. More than 50 people were arrested.

“We followed them around Center City all night long and finally arrested some of them,” said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey.

Despite the arrests, which organizers say bring the nationwide total to more than 5,000 in the past 10 weeks since the movement began, both the L.A. and Philly raids stood in stark contrast to the surprise and sudden dispersal of the original Occupy Wall Street camp at New York City’s Zuccotti Park on Nov. 15. Protesters dispersed in yesterday’s raids were given days of advance warning that their time of city-sanctioned occupation had come to an end.

Arrests also continued yesterday in Phoenix, where Occupy protesters converged on the American Legislative Exchange Summit between lobbyists and lawmakers.

In San Francisco, protesters voted to reject an offer from the city that would have moved their camp from downtown to a vacant lot — complete with bathrooms — in another part of the city.

“Whether or not we have this space, our work in the city is nowhere near done,” Occupy Philadelphia protester Bri Barton, 22, told the Associated Press, echoing a sentiment heard from displaced protesters across the nation.

New York protesters, for instance, are still meeting at Zuccotti Park every night for their “general assembly,” in which broad decisions are made about future plans, including how to spend the $500,000 in donations the group has in the bank.

But with the end of round-the-clock occupation, events at Zuccotti have been replaced with numerous smaller meetings.

“All kinds of organizer energy was going into maintaining that one physical space,” said Beka Economopolous, a spokeswoman for the leaderless movement. “Now that energy is being refocused into movement-building.”

One event is a planned nationwide action on Dec. 6 called “Occupy Our Homes,” in which protesters will attempt to forcibly return families to their foreclosed houses.

Other groups are beginning to plan “occupations” at the Republican and Democratic national conventions next year, as well as the May G-8 summit in Chicago.

(Source: www.thedaily.com )