Occupy Long Beach – Photos by Greggory Moore

3:40pm | As I sit here looking down on Ocean Boulevard while I poke at the keys of my Macbook and listen to the Sirius/XM satellite radio (paid for every year with a cash transfer from my checking account with one of the Big Bad Banks), I’d love to be bringing you observations of the thriving Occupation at Lincoln Park.

But that is not the reality on the ground.

On Thursday I made a rare-for-me trek into Los Angeles, spending a large portion of the day in and around City Hall, and I saw first-hand what Occupy Los Angeles looks like. And let me tell you: damn.

There’s a soup kitchen of sorts, a full library, a first-aid tent, a theatre company in the making. KPFK 90.7 FM maintains a permanent on-site presence. Amplified performances take place on the City Hall steps. Bakery and beverage vendors have set up on the grounds. And then there are the tents, dozens of them, everywhere you look. Under those trees? Tents. Over there on the dirt? Tents? On the side of that incline? Tents. Around the corner? You guessed it: more tents!

And who wouldn’t want to camp there? The whole deal has a bit of a Burning Man feel (“Free Hugs,” reads a tent-side sign), the celebratory and communal atmosphere infecting you as soon as you begin to wander about.

Except that Burning Man is only seven days, and Thursday was Day 27. And while the City of Los Angeles has proven tolerant thus far, these folks are clearly in violation of the law. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich is calling upon police to enforce that law, and Mayor Antonio Villariagosa is looking to move the protestors to another site, like, tout de suite. But Occupy Los Angeles is unlikely simply to go along with that plan. One protestor told the Los Angeles Times that if police attempt forcibly to remove the protestors, “it will be violent.”¹

In Long Beach, however energetically and well attended the Occupation was when it began October 15, things quieted quickly, to the point where lately you tend to find about 30 souls hanging tough.

No tents, though, day or night. On Night One the consensus of the 250 or so OLBers in attendance was to abandon the park at its 10 p.m. closing time and move the tents to the sidewalk. The next day the tents went back up on the grass, with four protestors deciding to defy Long Beach Municipal Code Section 16.16.010 and take the citations and/or arrests. Then OLB decided there would be no more civil disobedience for the nonce, not only giving up the park when it closed but also ceasing to use tents at all.

Pass by on Pacific Avenue now and you’ll probably count more homeless than OLBers, one easy-up, sleeping bags, blankets, and a few signs. The dedication is there, the conviction — it’s just not being exemplified by a whole lot of folks.

“I think a lot of people wore themselves out after the first week,” Demos said when I stopped by upon my return from Los Angeles. “And a lot of people find it hard to come out here because of their jobs and the things they have going on in their lives. And with the weather [i.e., getting colder, etc.], I don’t know how people are going to deal with it. People are too preoccupied to occupy, maybe.”

Maybe it’s that simple. And maybe I’m a case in point. Listen, the gods know I’m buried deep somewhere within the 99 percent, and I’m completely on board with the foundational ethos of the Occupy movement (even if its aims strike me as overly nebulous), and I truly appreciate both consciousness-raising and spectacle. And yet, have I even considered Occupying? I have not.

Instead, I’m up here, maybe not an ivory tower, but certainly in the comfort of my little apartment with my little Big Corporation comforts (you didn’t think I was mindlessly plugging in the first paragraph, did you?) and doing my little jobs, hopefully contributing in my own little ways to consciousness-raising and a future with a little less injustice. But I am not an Occupier. On that front of the battle for a better world, I am no soldier.

I don’t say that with pride, and I don’t offer excuses — nor do I think I need any. I’m just stating a fact: I am not an Occupier.

Knowing myself as I do, that’s not much of a surprise. What does surprise me a bit is that so few of my fellow denizens are. Here’s this movement that in a small way has swept across the country, and yet in the 36th most populous city in these United States, a city with considerable financial discontent and a strong streak of youthful liberal activism has Occupied at a level far below that which has occurred in Oakland (and I’m talking about before the recent, galvanizing clash with police), even though our northern statemate is home to about 15 percent fewer people.

I’m not criticizing anyone. I’m not saying the way it is now is the way it will always be. I’m not saying whether it matters. I’m just wondering about how things transpire in our little corner of the world.

Occupy LA