Louie Rodriguez (in orange jumpsuit), earning Occupy Long Beach’s first citation. Photos by Greggory Moore

10:09am | Well, that didn’t take long.

On the second night of Occupy Long Beach’s occupation of Lincoln Park and environs, four group members defied police orders to comply with the park’s 10 p.m. closing time (and the Long Beach Municipal Code prohibiting against camping there in general), remaining in the their tents until the police opened the flaps and said the jig was up.

Many of the 100 or so OLBers present remained in the park long after 10 p.m., stepping down to the sidewalk only at 11 p.m., when roughly 10 police officers arrived bodily to clear the park, which was effected without incident.

Then police gently dismantled the 10 or so tents OLBers left standing, first the ones that were unoccupied, then the remaining three.

Louie Rodriguez, sporting an orange jumpsuit and a shock of gray hair, will forever be the first OLBer to have been cited for civil disobedience — specifically, for violating LBMC 16.16.010 (a misdemeanor) — led away from his tent sans restraint to a police van waiting on Pacific Avenue, where he was given the choice of arrest or citation. He chose the latter, as did Jonathon Allen.

A member who identified himself as Jonah Quest, however, arrived on this evening in a smart three-piece suit with every intention of being arrested.¹

Quest, a mere 19 years old (or so he said)² and with no history of civil disobedience, says he joined OLB a week-and-a-half ago to be part of “[a] movement that is trying to expose and correct some of the inequalities and corruptions that have happened in American society within the past 30 years. … We feel there are certain individuals [and] groups in our society that exert an abnormal influence on the political spectrum through the influence of money. And we want to change that.”

But his reasons for opting for civil disobedience to the point of arrest (of which he admitted an understandable fear) are far more local.

“The police last night harassed us,” he said when I spoke with him 15 minutes before the park closed. “It was a cat-and-mouse game that was played. First they told us that we couldn’t have tents [in the park], that we had to move them onto the sidewalk. Then they kept [adding prohibitions], ’til eventually at 6 o’clock in the morning we weren’t allowed to sleep at all — not in the park, not on the sidewalk, nothing. … If the police had been honest with us in the beginning, we would have been much more cooperative.” ³

Quest said he doesn’t blame the police for this behavior (“They’re doing their job; they’re representatives of the City”), so much as he does “a coordinated effort by someone in a position of power to harass this group. … The way that we were manipulated last night was clearly planned.”

Rodriguez, almost a half-century older than Quest and with a resume of civil disobedience that dates back to when he was 14 in and still in his native Argentina, told me after the police had cited and released him that if he had not taken such action, “I can’t sleep tonight. My conscience would be bothering me. … We follow too many rules that don’t make any sense. … This way we demonstrate [for] things we’re supposed to have. … What kind of future are we going to leave to our kids if we continue like this?”

¹ Police have identified the other arrestee as Jason James.
² From an LBPD press release issued early this morning: “A minor, whose identity is being withheld, was also arrested and booked for the same city ordinance violation in addition to obstructing a police officer.”
³ Several OLBers reported similar vagary in police instructions. A forthcoming Long Beach Post story will discuss the interpretations of the municipal code pertinent to those instructions.

“The park is now closed.”

Young Jonah Quest before he had an arrest record