Los Angeles: Occupy offered alternative location
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These city fathers are nothing if not inventive. Los Angeles is offering the Occupiers an opportunity to continue their protest except not in its present location.
Sooner or later the police will be called upon to remove the protesters, and while one can hope there will be no repeat of the shameful UC Davis pepper spraying incident, the possibility of blood in the streets looms large.
One can only hope that Occupy’s leader, if they have one, will see the rationale behind the offer extended by the City of Angels and take them up on it. Here’s the latest:
Perhaps aiming to catch more flies with honey than pepper spray, officials in Los Angeles are offering Occupy LA protesters incentives to dismantle their City Hall camp. The city has offered a 10,000-square-foot office space near City Hall for $1 per year, plus farmland elsewhere and housing for homeless people in the camp, Occupiers who have been involved in negotiations tell the Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles officials have been largely cooperative with protesters, and do not want to see the encampment end violently. Some protesters, however, may not agree to the deal. “I don’t appreciate people appointing themselves to represent me, to represent us,” said one after the incentives were announced. “Who was in those meetings?” But according to a lawyer advocating for the protesters, police “have said that the day is growing near when they will not allow the occupation in its present form to continue.”
Do you think the Occupy organization should accept LA’s generous offer or should they continue to camp out on city property, disrupting the normal flow of business and creating a health hazard?
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I have gone on FB about this and have reviewed the situation. We got some people shouting “stand your ground” and “don’t sell out.” One of the more stupid comments involves those who think the offer is to get OLA out of the way. There another one: don’t trust the LAPD and the City Council because they are “for sale.”
Then, there was a person who thought OLA should have the 32 floors in City Hall.
They are forgetting that OLA has been, by far, the most peaceful in the nation. City government is doing everything they can.
I absolutely do not understand these objections. First, OLA protestors will have a 10,000 sq ft office building located one block from City Hall and the LAPD HQ. The cost to OLA is $1/year. Rip off? I think not.
The space offered will include a space for gardening and for the homeless. The response from one person, “We won’t accept this offer until the South Central LA garden is restored.” Talk about missing the point. Wait, I think this protest is about equitable distribution of wealth.
Another plus is that the office space will provide a mobilization point for OLA. Potentially, this space could become a center for Southern California.
The LA Times reports a preliminary date to end the OLA encampments on 11.28.11.
Yet, City Councilwoman Jan Perry’s downtown (her district includes the LA Mall, where protesters were offered office space). On Tuesday, she said had not been approached about the proposal by the city officials in charge of the negotiations, who include representatives from the mayor’s office.
Slr Lara, Historian and educator in Northern California, wrote the most sensible response to the protestors on OLA FB
Most occupiers I talked to had very unrealistic, overtop, or selfish goals. The only goal they had in common was ending corporate greed, but when asked “what do you want to see come out of this movement”? or “whats do you think the movements ultimate goal is? I got some very outlandish unrealistic answers…
You do not need to sleep in front of City hall to achieve your goals. Moving from city hall will also weed out those who were just taking advantage of the situation and camping at city hall instead of skid row. OLA has the city’s attention, now negotiate, organize, mobilize, and create unity with occupiers from other cities to make huge marches across the state or country.
I responded to OLA as follows.
Dorothy Anderson There, now. Paul makes excellent points. Oscar, Oakland is not Los Angeles. There has been horrific treatment on the part of authorities there and many more places across the nation. I’m with you 100% on that.
I still think we should take the offer. If enough of us Occupy the proposed office space, perhaps we would have more leverage to reinstate the South Central Farm. We would not have to stay solely in the proposed office space as some might assert.
None of us would have to be beholden to politicians, especially if our tax dollars are paying for the space anyway. Doesn’t that make the office public land also? The more of us who occupy the space, the less easy it will be to remove us.
If so, 10,000 sq ft at, for argument’s sake, at $2.50 per sq ft, the space, excluding public lands, make the space worth $250,000. That means, we will recoup $249,999 in tax for $1.00.
Yes, we have had a huge homeless population for decades. If any of you have been near Skid Row, it would break your heart. I know it breaks mine whenever I am down there.
The rapid expansion of homeless people is a direct result of wage inequity between the 99% and the 1%. The homeless are the bottom 1%.
We need a mobilization point. If not what we are being offered, then what is the alternative? Is there a way we can finance our own HQ? We need alternatives to create a HQ we refuse the City Councils’ offer.
My biggest concern is the rancor among us. If we fight each other, we lose all we’ve fought for.
This comment sums it up for me: “take it. camping season is over.”
Visit Occupy LA on FB.
If OLA leads to violence, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Here’s a perfect example of how the far-left becomes the far-right. Some remind me far too much of the tea party.