Huntington Beach Civic Center Plaza at sunset. (Warning: plaza is near Huntington Beach High School.)
(This is Part 1 of a series, and is relatively light-hearted. Unfortunately, Part 2, appearing later today or tomorrow, won’t be.)
This post was originally to be entitled “Why does the Mayor of Huntington Beach want the Occupy protesters near a High School?” Thankfully, that take on events is now obsolete — but an interesting story lies behind it.
Disclosure: both I and my Esteemed Publisher Vern Nelson are involved with the Occupy Orange County movement and have been involved to various extents with the events of this story, primarily as liaisons with the city government. (We’re also role models, of course. We accept that burden.) I’m a Civic Liaison, meaning that I negotiate as needed with the city government, police departments, and the like — and as I’ve been doing this the longest and am now being solicited by AARP, I think that I’ll now decree myself the Senior Civic Liaison!
When last I wrote about Occupy Orange County a week ago, the encampment that had moved from Irvine to Fullerton was preparing to leave its second home. It spent until last Wednesday morning in the Brea Dam campsite, with an advance group already dispatched to the third municipal target — Huntington Beach. If you’re already familiar with the background and just want the news, go ahead and jump to the third subtitle.
The Mysterious Structure of Occupy OC
For those of you who are confused, Occupy Orange County has had three components. (It wasn’t planned that way; it just happened.)
- There’s the permanent group in Occupy Santa Ana, which on October 22 was the first one to try to establish an overnight presence, by civil disobedience, and was broken up by police. It continues to plan on civil disobedience as necessary, focusing on the county seat and the “capital of Orange County homelessness.”
- Then there’s the continuing encampment — which probably should be but hasn’t been called the Occupy Orange County Encampment. From what I can tell it is literally the longest continuous Occupy camp in the nation — and possibly the world. (Chew on that!) It has taken the name of the city that houses it, so for its first 88 days is was Occupy Irvine, then for the next 56 days was Occupy Fullerton, and now since March 7 has become Occupy Huntington Beach. (Some of us have started to speak of this odd creature, which today at 10 a.m. finishes its 150th consecutive day of 24/7 occupation — that’s 3600 hours without a gap, if you haven’t done the math — as the “traveling carnival” or the “road show.”Its purpose is much like those sorts of institutions — to bring entertainment and edification to the masses where they live. This sort of thing is just not supposed to happen in staid and conservative Orange County, yet here it is and there it goes, bringing hope — and a reminder that others share the same concerns that many people covertly do about the direction of the country — to residents who aren’t used to seeing more than single-day protests (if that) in their neighborhoods. Judging by the car honks, people appreciate it.
- Finally (and often forgotten), there are little Occupy groups who appreciate and want to emulate what the original Occupy Wall Street protests were doing in their own communities. I have been told that there is (or has been) at least an Occupy San Clemente, an Occupy Laguna Niguel, an Occupy Villa Park — OK, I made that one up — and … an Occupy Huntington Beach, the nose of which I hope is not out of joint at the new kids on the block. The true course of activist nomenclature is never smooth.
Our Fullerton Days
The theory is that we’re supposed to work out where we’re going next before we leave one city and make contacts for a smooth transition to the next one. On that score, we are now 0 for 2. We just showed up at Fullerton, where a few of our most active members had ties, on Wednesday, January 11 — having decided (against my recommendation) that that would be our target only the previous Sunday night. This had precipitated a call from me to Fullerton Mayor Sharon Quirk-Silva that I think started with something like “I have some interesting news for you….”
That call ended up with our being placed in a meeting with City Manager Joe Felz, Acting Police Chief Dan Hughes, and Assemblyman Bruce Whitaker. (I read complaints sometimes about Felz and Hughes on blogs such as FFFF; all I can say from personal experience, without commenting on anything else, is that they took what could have been a difficult situation of a bunch of strangers showing up and demanding the right to protest for weeks and they simply defused it. They were serious, professional, and a pleasure to deal with. Then again, we were not exactly the worst thing that they’d had to deal with this past year; maybe we were a nice change of pace.)
They had gotten word from Irvine that it we were treated gently we were not likely to break anything, and so they worked out for us to go to the Brea Dam, for which I fronted the money, which after a while turned into an extended stay in the Duck Pond at the corner of Harbor and Brea, part of Hillcrest Park. This led to a pretty happy camp, a good amount of outreach to the community and the local colleges, and a great party as a send-off. But we had said we wouldn’t be there more than two months and we try to keep our word, so it was time to leave.
Again: we tried to figure out where we were going next, and that was not going well. Some people had ties to Huntington Beach. I again said “no, I think there are better choices” — and I was again ignored. This seems to be a developing tradition, but so far it has worked out OK.
Arriving in Surf City
The advance team that marks a new host city with the invisible Occupy special sauce that means that nothing they do can turn us away from arriving made its initial foray on Monday the 5th (or so). We first head to the City Hall area; it’s just what we tend to do. (Blame the influence of Occupy LA.) Our goal, however, is to create a agreement with the City to tolerate our presence so long as we act legally (as we do.) By Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the rest of the Occupy protesters had arrived — with the exception of a few break-off stragglers who chose to stay in Brea Dam without paying, the general consensus about whom among the rest of us was that we could not forcibly move them to Huntington Beach but that we were unclear on what they thought they would accomplish there, and so adieu.
Unless we quickly come to an arrangement with the new city, as happened in Fullerton, our practice is to just stand up all night and follow the law until we come to an agreement that it’s better for us to be planted on the ground overnight rather than walking around. So that’s what we did — except for the first few nights Occupiers were also not sleeping during the day, a combination of sleepless hours that eventually may lead to hallucinations, dementia, and death. (The things we do for you people!)
One game we get to play in this situation is called “Who does anyone know on City Council?” In my case, Joe Shaw is a friend of a friend. (We’ve met a few times and I enjoyed his extremely funny speech at a OC Young Democrats event last summer. The next part of this recap will be from memory; for reasons that will be clear, I don’t have time to reconstruct a timeline. So I got a message to him letting him know to feel welcome to contact with me if there were difficulties.
Saturday morning, I got a call: there were difficulties. The problem is that the City Hall is across from a high school. That creates all sort of problems for parents and others — and an opportunity (or so they think) for politicians who want to score points against the Occupy movement. Huntington Beach Mayor Don Hansen seemed to be in the latter category, whipping up antagonism towards Occupy by using our (unintended) proximity to the high school as a rallying cry.
There seemed to be a simple solution: move. Joe suggested a potential extended-term site, if things could be worked out, though it would cost us something. In the short term, he suggested that we relocate from the City Hall area to someplace mutually agreeable along PCH. This made a lot of sense — and it was good to be in touch with someone on the City Council who wanted to de-escalate the situation rather than stoke the fires of conflict. We would, after all, want the votes of the City Council to allow us to stay lawfully in any weeks-long encampment — and we pretty clearly weren’t going to get the Mayor’s vote, so that meant that we’d need 4 out of the remaining 6.
I got a call later in the day from Mike Anderson, our Civic Liaison in Huntington Beach. Two sites were being discussed on PCH. Occupiers liked the idea of being right at PCH & Main Street, at the HB pier, where there’s a free speech zone (during the day) and an amphitheater. But Mike said that the City preferred for us to be at PCH and Beach, where there was still good traffic flow but where we would not be as much in the face of the beloved tourists.
I spoke to Joe briefly on the phone and asked him point blank: how important would it be to the City for the Occupiers to be, even temporarily, at Beach rather than at Main? His answer: VERY important. It would be the sort of show of good faith that might show the Council that we recognized their concern with the tourist trade and did not want to create problems for the City. As with Irvine, as with Fullerton, we wanted to be good neighbors and to get along with the City.
On Monday, I got the word from Mike. We had moved off from near the High School on Sunday and were now on PCH — and people had agreed that, in a show of good faith and willingness to cooperate, we’d be at Beach Boulevard rather than Main. The prospect for a mutually agreeable long-term stay looked reasonable. We were on a path towards peaceful coexistence, yet again.
Trouble brews
And then, the next morning, after sunrise people the HB Police arrived at PCH and Beach gave everyone there misdemeanor citations for (I’m told) “lodging” — an offense I couldn’t find by that name based on a quick check of the HB municipal code, though I did find lots else there that looked unconstitutional. I’m told by Mike and others that the City Manager, Chief of Police, and City Attorney all seemed to have been reasonable to that point, so I still don’t know who was behind this amazingly stupid decision to arrest people — that’s what a citation is, a non-custodial arrest — in what was to have been the safe haven to which they had been directed, especially given the alternative (used in Irvine) of using discretion to give people a warning first.
It was too late. The “first shot was fired” — and then things started going quickly to hell. Whoever the person was who directed the arrest of the encampment had wanted a fight with Occupy — and will have gotten it. The people who were most reasonable were driven off, and the people who remained — largely ones from out of town who were not steeped in or committed to the “Occupy OC” way — were the least reasonable.
People who want aggressive conflict — on either side — usually get their way, although Occupy OC had lasted for almost five full months without it. Now the people — me among them — who had promised safety to campers had failed to deliver; it was no real surprise what would happen next.
The mistake of whoever in the City provoked the fight was thinking that it would end soon. I’ll still work towards that, as will anyone on the City Council and in City Government still willing to talk to me. More on that in Part 2.
“Occupy Irvine, Occupy Fullerton, Occupy Huntington Beach which today at 10 a.m. finishes its 150th consecutive day of 24/7 occupation”…….. Hmmmm
It is nice to play musical chairs, in my first grade it was very entertaining, but until the Occupy movement arms itself and follows the footsteps of the world’s pronoun freedom fighters including, but not limited to: Lenin, Fidel, Che, Marcos and Osama – the Occupy remains the musical chairs.
Marcos is occupying Chiapas since 1994 – I gather you have no balls for that or you are still in your puberty.
Have nice dreams Gröfaz:
Thank you for offering me the public opportunity to reject your advice, regardless of how dearly you (as a conservative opponent of the movement) wish it would happen.
Unfortunately I am not an opponent of the movement nor am I conservative.
Please be advised Esq. pinhead that you are gravely erring so inform yourself by Gröfaz.
I am free spirit sovereign person with unalienable rights.
So I do not wish anything!
I am student of the history, not a demagog like you, so I know that first thing Hitler did was to disarmed public so he can play with your people like with a children.
Somehow the movement must gain power or it will be relevant.
The constitution gave the people that power until you liberal leftist progressives have violated the constitution by disarming the public.
As the old cliché goes: Be Careful What You Pray For…You Just Might Get It.
And you did!
I should add, ironically it wast the leftist liberals and progresives who banned all guns in the California and now they would be handy.
Next time follow the constitution!…… you moron mongoloids!
“I should add, ironically it wast the leftist liberals and progresives who banned all guns in the California and now they would be handy.”
Maybe they took your guns, because you’re a nut job, but I’ve still got mine.
keep up the good fight stanley , lenin , fidel , che , marcos , osama is what is this movement ,
Yes, the man who not only failed to lead on the public option in healthcare reform, but never put single-payer on the table is a leftist radical.
Yes, the man who ordered the assassination of Anwar Awlaki is a leftist radical.
Yes, the man who ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden is a leftist radical.
Yes, the man who has ordered a dramatic increase in drone attacks on terrorists is a leftist radical.
Yes, the man, who included one of the largest tax cuts ever in the stimulus package is a leftist radical.
Yes, the man who led the bailout of the auto industry is a leftist radical.
Yes, the man who put cuts to the biggest entitlement programs on the table last year in the debt ceiling negotiations is a leftist radical.
Should I go on, who would you prefer to just wallow in your ignorance?
OK Onan, I got you that you are willing to rearm yourself!
yes the man who wants to turn this country into sau linsky philosy yes he is lefist radica l
the man who hung around bill ayers a terriorist =leftist radical
the man who went to the church of a racist and said for 25 years he never heard him say those things ;
the man who put a comi van jones to run his green left radical thinking
should i go on or do you just wallow in your ignorance .. hhha the word wallow must be a diamond post .. hey what does this word mean$^%##
I’m talking about the policy decisions Obama has made while President, dope. Read it again.
Would you care to address that?
when you have nothing the far left calls people names oh i forgot you guys are so smart – yes look at calif run by lefties , its sinking ..
It isn’t me that has nothing. It’s YOU who doesn’t want to debate the points I made. When you have nothing, you evade.
As for the ridiculous Van Jones example, Obama also appointed Jon Huntsman to be Ambassador to China. Does that make Obama a moderate Mormon Republican?
You really need a class in basic logic.
to paraphrase robert duval: “occupiers dont surf”
No, no — it’s “Occupiers don’t Serf.”
So what do you think about my response to Napolitano’s aka Capital One Bank’s Motion?
Response To Richard A. Napolitano’s Motion To Dismiss Claimants Stanley Fiala’s First Amended Complaint:
http://capitalone.ocsatire.com/JAMS/Response.pdf
Richard A. Napolitano’s Motion To Dismiss Claimants Stanley Fiala’s First Amended Complaint:
http://capitalone.ocsatire.com/JAMS/Motion.pdf
This is my Occupy of the Capital One Bank (USA), N.A.
If you want legal advice you have to dig up Geoff Willis!
It must be good if you have invoked GW.
Fiala, we have an Osama in Occupy Santa Ana. He is drafting a resolution denouncing AIPAC. You would love it/him. He claims he is not anti-semitic, you claim that you are. So which is it?
“He claims he is not anti-semitic, you claim that you are.”………. Hmmmmm
There is no anti-semitism!
If there would be one, there would have to be anti-gentalism too.
The only left-liberal-progressives like Gröfaz and Esq. Pinhead claim such a crapola to shut your first amendment same as they shut your second one.
I just can’t wait when Obama will slaughter them Syrian stile, not because I am against the movement but because I am against left-liberal-progressive moron mongoloids who believe that they can drive car on algae as Obama believes.
Maybe by then they get some guns from Eric Holder fast and furious to defend themselves.
I’m sorry, did you mention anti-genitalism? We’re not talking about the Santorum campaign in this thread.
I’m glad that there is no anti-Semitism anymore. What a relief! Sadly, that concern is replaced by Obama slaughtering us “Syrian stile.”
START MAKING MORE ALGAE, EVERYONE, WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO RUN!
Well, no offense but it has been alleged that socialist Hitler was vegetarian, did not smoked, did not drink and was green energy prone like Obama is by making soap from human bones, fat and skin of the deceased.
May be the socialist Obama should rethink his green energy options.
Right, Stanley — to you, rendering humans into soap is “green energy.”
Visitors to the site, it is the policy of this blog not to drive Stanley off for saying things like that, out of our respect for freedom of speech and for the benefits of our seeing what “no anti-Semitism anymore” really means.
Do you do requests? I’m sure that there are lots of Cambodians in the area who would love to see your riff on Pol Pot’s piles of human bones.
Folks Diamond is a typical lawyer who will twist and restate every statement for his own political purpose.
I have simply point out allegations made by the LA Museum of tolerance and now it is I, according to Diamond who who made such statement.
Obviously he also added lot of his crapola to make his political point.
Remember that when you are casting vote for Diamond…… he is liar!
Please define anti-Semitism.
What must one do, at minimum, to be anti-Semitic.
If you will not define minimum standard that you should not be taken seriously only as an another moron mongoloid.
I’ve been to the “Yad v’Shem” memorial in Jerusalem and seen the lampshades made out of skin and soap made out of rendered human fat, Stanislav. It should be undisputed that all of that horror did happen.
What is noteworthy, to use a wanly neutral word, about your comment is your reference to engaging in such horrors as being “green energy prone.” I don’t think that the Museum of Tolerance uses that term, nu?
Here you have it folks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_from_human_corpses
Always be students of the history and never believe demagogs who are publishing this blog.
Only the Socialists have done it!
Right: there was no Nazi human-fat soap production “on an industrial scale” — thereby refuting a claim I did not make. But:
I take it we can agree that (1) no industrial scale soap production, (2) yet apparently some small-scale soap production, (3) Holocaust-deniers used the argument you just made to minimize the Holocaust, and (4) your reference to “it has been alleged that socialist Hitler .. was green energy prone like Obama is by making soap from human … fat … of the deceased” pretty much opens to door to this rebuttal.
No offense, of course, Stanley.
In other wards you agree that it is a typical unfounded Jewish propaganda…… Huh?
Here is dictionary definition:
an·ti-Sem·ite (²n”t¶-sµm“ºt”, ²n”tº-) n. One who discriminates against or who is hostile toward or prejudiced against Jews. –an”ti-Se·mit“ic (-s…-m¹t“¹k) adj.
On what bases am I discriminating against you?
On what bases am I hostile against you?
On what bases am I prejudicial against you?
In you capacity as Jew in comparison to any other moron mongoloid here at this forum?
Why should you be treated differently from Gröfaz?
It is getting boring to talk to stupid people.
I’II be back!
Ever heard of “Occupy Ball Street” check it out on Urban Dictionary.
Semi- mongoloids agree, Fiala is a useful Master Bater.