Thursday, May 03, 2012

May 1st, 2012









I live in dtla and have a good sense of what normal foot and vehicular traffic is like for any given time. On May 1st, foot traffic was very light. It's as if people purposely avoided working or shopping in dtla. The first march down Broadway I would estimate at no more than 4 thousand people. The second march down Broadway I would estimate at no more than 3 thousand people. The people gathered at Pershing Square at no more than 2 thousand people.

Yet there appeared to be just as many street closures and police officers, maybe even more, as there were in 2006 when I saw 500,000 people march down Broadway. It prompts a rational person to ask, what does the power structure fear?

In 2006, undocumented people were not questioning the system, merely asking for a just solution for their situation. Whereas the Occupy movement is asking for more equitable distribution and control of wealth, which may or may not be radical depending on one's perspective.

I spoke to an activist who informed me that the LAPD works with Homeland Security and other federal agencies. I had a vague notion of this, and it prompts an interesting question: How much influence and control does the federal government have over the LAPD versus how much control do local authorities have, and how does this shape how the LAPD responds to Occupy L.A?

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