Occupy Long Beach, Night 34 – Photo by Greggory Moore
11:30am | It’s a dance of dozens of partners on either side of a divide that isn’t always as clear as it seems to be.
In one camp (literally), we have Occupy Long Beach, a mixed bag of leaderless, arguably quixotic political action based in discontent and without any clear goal or strategy except asserting our First Amendment rights to speak out about the egregious wrongs inherent to at least the current iteration of our politico-socio-economic system (call it Capitalism Run Amok — which is, as far as this reporter can tell, exactly what has happened).
On the other team (a more apt term than “camp” for this side of the dance routine) are the members of the Long Beach Police Department, probably more uniform (ha) in their makeup, certainly more conservative on the whole, certainly with a clear leadership (Chief McDonnell, the mayor, the city council), and with a nebulous (because sometimes not clearly coalescing) set of goals: enforce the law, keep the peace, aid public safety, avoid public-relations snafus, execute the chief’s orders, please the mayor and city council, deal with budget cuts, etc.
Each group is, of course, formed of individuals, individuals who do not always see things like their groupmates do. This was apparent on the OLB side of the divide even before the first day of their Occupation, when some group members pushed for civil disobedience right out of the gate, while the majority ruled it out — only to be contravened by certain individuals the following day.
Over on the Thin Blue Line things aren’t all that much different. From October 15 right on through to the present OLBers have reported inconsistency in the way they’ve been treated by officers: some are respectful, others bullying; some don’t care about “other temporary shelters,”1 while others have yanked tarps off them when it rained; some leave them to sleep in peace, others roust them.2
And while it’s pretty rare to find a police officer who will openly talk about disdaining a group of people,3 certainly my own discussions with and witnessing of LPBDers bears out a variance of feeling about OLB. Some officers — most often older ones — shake their heads in bemusement while trying to wrap their minds around the idea that these crypto-anarcho-socialists4 are protesting against the U.S. of A., that they care only about their own First Amendment rights and not anybody else’s, that they should go home and do something productive and stop breaking the law.
Then there are others who are openly sympathetic to the cause. “Most of us support them,” I was told one evening. “We [i.e., the LBPD] get told things by the City, and then we have them taken away, and we have to deal with it or else. They [i.e., city government] sit up there in that building [nodding toward City Hall] and they judge us. So we understand what [the OLBers] are doing.”
As some OLBers have enjoyed contact with such officers — a familiarity that most citizens never have with police — you can just about see a burgeoning understanding that the Boys5 in Blue are like me and you. It’s not always easy to keep that in sight if all you know of cops is that they’ve got guns and are ready to bust you at every turn. But get enough face time with a random sampling of police officers, and it becomes hard not to hold at least somewhat of a nuanced take on what’s behind the badge.
On Tuesday night I got about as close-up a look at the police/protestor two-step as a body could get.
After a city council meeting in which OLB got heard but didn’t yet get anything else they’d asked for, there was a split in the OLB camp concerning what to do over the next two weeks. One OLBer, Jonathan Allen — one of Night 2’s civil disobeyers — took to heart some advice from Occupy Los Angeles and decided he would erect a tent at the corner of Pacific Avenue and Ocean Boulevard in an effort to bait police into clarifying via action where they stood on such behavior, since officers do have some discretion in how and when they enforce the law.
Police telling OLBers Jonathan Allen to take down his tent. Photo by Greggory Moore
Sure enough, eventually two police cars rolled up, and out stepped officers telling Allen to remove the tent. As Allen and the officers talked — the officers waiting on Allen to comply, Allen not refusing to do so but very deliberately discussing the matter with them — a third police car arrived, then a fourth. Nearby protestors came down the sidewalk, and a dozen or so humans were facing each other, some talking, some just looking on.
Among the police the variance was subtle. Some looked quietly annoyed, others seemed indifferent; one was conversant, one downright friendly. The difference among the OLBers was more pronounced. One young protestor hassled the cops about everything from why they left their cars running (“In case we need to respond to an emergency,” she was told) to why they’re not supporting the Constitution (“I do support it,” said an officer. “I defend it with my life”) to whether they had anything better to do (“We do. We just want him to take down his tent and we can go”).
Meanwhile, an older, friendlier OLBer had engaged the friendly officer in conversation, articulating OLB’s beliefs about their need to speak up and their right to do so — and how they intended to do so peacefully even when they resisted police orders, putting the “civil” in civil disobedience.
“We want it to be peaceful, too,” the officer replied, nodding enthusiastically. “Because we don’t want it to turn into anything more than it has to be. We understand that you guys are going to stand up for something, and we’re going to do what we have to do. And like I said, we certainly don’t want to do that in a manner where someone’s going to get hurt or injured. We want to take care of it, [but] we also understand that there’s times when you’re going to say, ‘This is a time when we’re going to stand up. We’re going to draw a line in the sand.’ And we totally understand that.”
“And that’s not in your face,” said Person O. “It’s just that we have to do what we’ve got to do.”
“No no, we understand that’s part of it, and we’re okay with that,” answered Person P. “Like I said, we don’t want to get to a point where it’s any more confrontational than it has to be, because we understand why you guys are here and what you’re trying to accomplish. … We’re good with it, but we also have a job to do.”
What is that job next time there’s a mass showing of civil disobedience? That same officer said it has been intimated to him that orders are to arrest the disobeyers, with no option for citations only. He also said, without trying to mask his disapproval, that from “way above my pay grade” comes the directive that the use of tarps by OLBers is disallowed.
The young hassling protestor was not in on most of this conversation, having drifted back up Pacific Avenue. “This is what a police state looks like!” she half-yelled at one point. “Not even close,” an officer muttered.
Despite trying to do my best neutral-observer thing, the young woman’s comment gave me a chuckle. There’s no doubt that at times we’ve seen some police-state-seeming tactics around the country in response to the Occupy movement. But as this unchoreographed routine played out during the earliest hours of Wednesday morning, it was on a patch of Long Beach didn’t much resemble any police state I’ve seen.
Instead, it was a glimpse of what democracy looks like, with individuals agreeing and disagreeing, testing the limits of the law and measuring its enforcement. It was American citizens dancing our nation’s political-protest and law-enforcement histories ever forward.
And the beat goes on.
1 The City interprets this phrase from Long Beach Municipal Code Sec. 9.42.110 to include sleeping bags, blankets, and (now) tarps.
2 The LBPD is interpreting LBMC Sec. 9.42.110 as prohibiting sleeping on the sidewalks, while the City Attorney’s Office disagrees with that reading.
3 Excepting rapists, armed robbers, and the like.
4 No, no officer has explicitly used that phrase. But pretty close.
5 They are, of course, mostly boys, though police officering is (or is supposed to be) gender-neutral.