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Occupy L.A. takes eviction fight to court
Los Angeles Police officers order anti-Wall Street protesters off the street at the Occupy LA camp in Los Angeles on Nov. 28, 2011. / AP Photo/Jason Redmond
LOS ANGELES - For now, Wall Street protesters camped out on the Los Angeles City Hall lawn still have their tent city after defying a deadline to pack up and clear out. "Still occupied," read the sign of a protester up in a tree.
Hours after emerging from a possible confrontation with police largely unscathed Monday, demonstrators turned to the federal courts to keep officers away.
They are arguing that the City Council had passed a resolution in support of Occupy Los Angeles and that the city's mayor and police did not have the authority to evict them.
The chances that protesters will get an injunction appear slim, constitutional experts say.
Occupy L.A. protesters ordered out
L.A. cops move in after Occupiers defy eviction
The motivation behind Occupy L.A.
Until there is a decision, the tent city's inhabitants are left to wonder if and when police will push them out, and if there will be the kind of violence that has engulfed evictions in other cities when they do.
City officials said they will only move in on the camp when conditions are safest not just for protesters and officers but also the roughly 100 homeless people who had joined the encampment.
"There is no concrete deadline," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said after hundreds of officers withdrew without moving in on the nearly 2-month-old camp.
The effort should come "with as little drama as possible," Beck told reporters.
Police and protesters have clashed elsewhere in recent weeks, most notably in Oakland, Calif., as officers cleared away camps that officials say have grown more dangerous for public health and safety.
Marine Corps veteran Scott Olsen, whose skull was fractured during an Oct. 25 clash between police and Occupy Oakland protesters, said in his first interview since being injured that he still has trouble speaking but expects to recover completely.
"I am doing much better than when I look at myself a month ago, which was two days after the attack," Olsen said in a video interview posted Monday on Indybay.org. "I was not doing good. But now I'm doing a lot better."
In Olympia, Wash., three people were shocked with Tasers and at least three others were arrested Monday as police tried to empty the state Capitol after a day of protests. Earlier, a group shouted down lawmakers on the first day of a special session over $2 billion in budget cuts with chants favoring taxes for the wealthy.
Nine people were arrested in Maine after protesters at an encampment took down their tents and packed their camping gear after being told to get a permit or move their shelters.
Some of the encampments had been in use almost since the movement against economic disparity and perceived corporate greed began with Occupy Wall Street in Manhattan two months ago.
With each passing week, it seems a city moves in to close a camp. Like Los Angeles, Philadelphia officials imposed their own deadline for protesters to move to make way for a construction project.
On Monday, however, the camp was still standing.
In Los Angeles, protesters had prepared for police action since city leaders announced last week that the camp would be cleared. Campers had packed up about half of the nearly 500 tents.
Some protesters carried gas masks and one person had even fashioned one out of duct tape and a plastic bottle.
Some activists had built a tree house out of wooden pallets in a clump of palm trees to make it more difficult to be arrested, while others just sat in a circle with their tents in the plaza.
"I definitely expected to be in jail by 3 a.m.," said Sean Woodward. "I'm happy we're still here."
Protesters chanted "we won, we won" as police left after only four arrests during a largely peaceful, six-hour demonstration against the eviction. The arrests were on charges of failure to disperse.
Instead of moving in to clear the camp, as had been expected, police concentrated on clearing several hundred protesters who had spilled into the street so morning rush-hour traffic would not be affected.
Hours later, several demonstrators asked a federal judge for an injunction against the city.
The civil rights complaint contends that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa usurped the City Council's authority when he set a deadline of 12:01 a.m. Monday for the tent-dwellers to disband.
The council passed a resolution of support for the occupiers in October that effectively allowed them to remain on the lawn despite a city ban on overnight camping, the complaint argued.
"The City Council welcomed them with open arms and said they could stay as long as they want," said Jim Lafferty, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
"The mayor simply does not have the authority to do this," he said.
The city attorney's office had not been served with the complaint and could not comment on it, spokesman John Franklin said. However, he said the city was prepared to oppose any injunction.
"We'll be in court," he said.
Constitutional law experts were skeptical of the injunction's chances.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that while public parks can be used for protests, they are for the use of all people, not just one group, and that governments can restrict how a park is used for free speech purposes.
"Parks are open to free speech, but that's not a place they can authorize as their own home," said Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.
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Liberal mayors and city councils across American are sick of these morons eating up their budgets for police hours baby sitting them.
They are as welcome as a plague of locusts in our cities.
FOR PROTECTION OF JUDGE JED RAKOFF, WHOSE LIFE IS LIKELY IN MORTAL DANGER
("How dare he spoil our easy, locked-in, cash flow party?"
say the banksters, the Wall St fraudsters, financiers, corporate executives, and other crooked business leaders)
Let's cultivate this honest New York judge's principles until we drive away the deeply-ensconced culture of dishonesty in our;
business
politics
Law
social
psychology
education
and even in our personal and Love relationships!
May U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff be honored and exalted for his integrity, for his courage, and for his standing up to an enormously-corrupt, and all-consuming monster!
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff should be drafted for The U.S. Presidency.
He may be "ONE OF THE RARE FEW" who is able to straighten out America's "Systemic Corruption" and lead us to honesty and integrity!
There is no legal justification for them being allowed to stay. Trying to say otherwise just shows that you are completely ignorant of the law and hte Consitution. And it is always hte worthless ignorant ones who try to act like the experts the most.
Good reason, free food, free shelter (tents and bedrolls), in some cases healthcare and other ammenities. Money is being donated, police are being restricted, unlawfull assembly and vagrancy are being tolerated and I for one hate the 'occupy' usage. When someone occupies something, they are denying me my rights to use these same facilities, i.e. parks, public roads, bridges, courtrooms, banks, ect.Definition for vagrancy:Web definitions: the state of wandering from place to place; having no permanent home or means of livelihood.
The current Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration to date
of what President Barack Obama's America looks like. It is an America
where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and incompetent rule. It is
an America where those who have sacrificed nothing pillage and destroy
the lives of those who have sacrificed greatly.
It is an America where history is rewritten to honor dictators, murderers
and thieves. It is an America where violence, racism, hatred, class warfare
and murder are all promoted as acceptable means of overturning the American
civil society.
It is an America where humans have been degraded to the level of animals:
defecating in public, having sex in public, devoid of basic hygiene. It is an
America where the basic tenets of a civil society, including faith, family, a
free press and individual rights, have been rejected. It is an America where
our founding documents have been shredded and, with them, every person's
guaranteed liberties.
It is an America where, ultimately, great suffering will come to the American
people, but the rulers like Obama, Michelle Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi,
Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, liberal
college professors, union bosses and other loyal liberal/Communist Party members
will live in opulent splendor.
It is the America that Obama and the Democratic Party have created with the
willing assistance of the American media, Hollywood , unions, universities, the
Communist Party of America, the Black Panthers and numerous anti-American
foreign entities.
Barack Obama has brought more destruction upon this country in four years than
any other event in the history of our nation, but it is just the beginning of what he
and his comrades are capable of.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is just another step in their plan for the
annihilation of America .
"Socialism, in general, has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual
could ignore or evade it."
Thomas Sowell
so by your own introduction of the author you have discredited the very person you are attempting to honor