11:30am | “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” people scream in a better-late-than-never reaction to what they feel is the ever-increasing power wielded by the System at the expense of the common folk.
I have no idea if this iconic moment from the 1976 film Network inspired the originators of the Occupy movement, but Occupy Long Beach seems to increasingly feel this way about the City, and they plan to let everybody know at today’s city council meeting.
How many people will comprise the “they” in question and whether the City will care about what they want are two questions that undoubtedly will shape OLB’s future.
Since OLB began to occupy the general area of Lincoln Park on October 15, the group as a whole has been — let’s face it — relatively meek compared to many of the Occupy movements around the country (e.g., L.A., Oakland, NYC…). The mass of OLBers who showed up on Night 1 was nonetheless compliant with police orders to vacate the park at 10 p.m.; and while a few acts of defiance highlighted Night 2, since then OLB has not only voluntarily left the park every night at closing time, but has gone along with police insistence that they use tents neither in the park nor on the sidewalk. All this while at times the number of OLBers lining that small stretch of Pacific Avenue dips into single digits.
It’s not necessarily difficult to understand. Discouragement doesn’t breed momentum — and OLB is feeling discouraged by a variety of factors. The lack of one staple Occupier amenity — tents — is one of them.
“It’s very hard for us to hold our occupation without tents,” says Demos. “It’s getting colder, and getting rained on, it’s just hard.”
Demos says the OLBers feel their protest is political speech, and that therefore the City should temporarily suspend enforcement of the portions of the municipal code prohibiting truly occupying the park, since in pragmatic terms tents are tools necessary to facilitate the form of political speech they are trying to make. “Put another way,” says Demos, “we need the city to differentiate between a campsite and an encampment for political speech.
To that end, OLB is petitioning the City to grant the group
the right to peacefully assemble and have a public space for political speech 24/7. We are asking the city council and director of Parks and Recreation to honor our first amendment rights. An area set for political discourse will be a center to involve the community and change peoples actions. We are asking the city to distinguish between camping and an encampment meant for political free speech, where people can seek shelter in the rain and cold, to rest and continue to provide discourse throughout the day and night. There is much to catch up on over the last 30-plus years of vile economic policy, so we truly need this to be a 24-hour public free speech zone. Please support our efforts city council.
OLB hopes those “efforts at City Council” will pay off tonight, as they plan to address the council during the open public comment portion, hopefully with a large contingent of OLBers and other sympathetic parties to show support for the feelings the speakers will express.
“We’re hoping that the city council will tangibly support us and not just say that they’re supportive,” Demos says. “We need them to do more than just talk.”
Frustration boiled over a bit last week, as three protesters chose not to comply with the City’s restrictions, resulting in three arrests based on acts of civil disobedience.
One of those civil disobeyers was Jay Matthew, who decided to stand with a military veteran who had been part of OLB in the first days but had left when the consensus was to be civilly obedient — something that Matthew had also done. “‘Why aren’t there tents here all the time?'” Matthew quotes the vet as saying after he erected a tent and made it clear he wouldn’t be leaving at 10 p.m. “‘Why isn’t this happening every day?’ I was like, ‘Exactly.’ I just got swept up[…] If he was going to do it, and there was nothing we could do to change his mind, then I was going to stand with him in solidarity. There was no reason that he should be going to jail alone.”
Matthew feels his First Amendment rights were violated by the arrest, since what he was engaged in was not camping but political protest. “It’s not as though they don’t know what’s going on, that this is some new form of protest they’ve never seen before,” Matthew says. “They’re well educated about what’s happening.”
Some members are wondering whether more of the same is what’s needed to galvanize the movement here. But first OLB will take its case to city council.
And then we’ll see.
Today’s city council meeting begins at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 333 W. Pacific Ave. at Ocean Boulevard.