photos by romana machado

(Watch for Journal No. 4 and how L.A. RECORD’s #OCCUPY desk fared in Tuesday’s LAPD swarm! Thrills! Adventure! Fireworks! More cops than a Buster Keaton movie!)

You may as well say, that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.
- Henry V, Act III, Sc. 7

Even a gloomhag like Eddie Poe would’ve muttered “Lo, it was a gala night” the morning after last the police fiasco at City Hall. By dawn I was nearly convulsed with laughter at the sight of truckloads of LAPD riot police in inglorious retreat up First Street. My professional brief as rock critic had run out over a dozen hours before, but the invite made it plain that coming for the show meant staying for the cop standoff.

But we run ahead of ourselves.

Nineties punk heroes NOFX was slated for 3 p.m. of a gloriously fair Sunday afternoon in what was supposed to be the last day of Solidarity Park. Mayor Villiagarosa decided last week he wanted the movement he once welcomed out by 12:01 a.m. Monday morning, obviously hoping to bring to an end mounting media criticism over the “soft hand” approach he and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck were allegedly taking against the nearly two-month old occupation.

Fox and other fringe-weirdo outlets have been greasing the skids for brute suppression for weeks, but all the (alleged) adults in the media room realize Bill O’Reilly and the cuckoo-bird right aren’t likely to blamed for ill results. Meanwhile, the hard core of weary occupiers was submerged inside a crowd of slicked-to-the-nines punk rockers, church activists and labor unionists, but the sympathetic and the curious answering a heavily Facebooked call to party lifted the number to the upper hundreds, all bouncing with joyous energy you just can’t replicate in places with a cover charge.

Eric Melvin and Fat Mike Burkett of NOFX (plus John Carey of Old Man Markley) loaded in the south steps with a minimum of fuss, not even stopping to roust a heavily sleeping occupier crashed out on a nearby mattress. The setlist favored a ska-heavy minimal punk ‘n blues that couldn’t have better captured the dominant crowd vibe had it been improvised by Prez ‘n’ Mingus-level masters on the spot. The party vibe swelled into the sidewalks, pulling in strolling couples from downtown and Little Tokyo and proceedings resolved into a punk rock dance party as the sun went down. “This,” said Fat Mike Burkett gesturing at the happy throng crowding the steps, plaza and camp, “is public acknowledgement of a corrupt system.” The band did a run at the movement’s Country Joe-style anthem “Occupy.”

Meanwhile, a speaker on the west steps was urging the obvious- “If you don’t have concrete space to occupy, there is no metaphorical space for you to seize!” – while other, less theoretical folk were busy using the last squeezings of daylight to tear down tents and offload belongings. A fine tension began to rise, as my girl and I began touring the encampment, where more people seemed anxious over staying than eager to leave. LAPD choppers circled overhead and the occasional groan of defiance went up against the pale stabbing of their searchlights. The endless cycle of committee meetings scarcely abated as the clock ticked toward zero hour while, on the north steps, others spoke of the “spiritual discipline” of nonviolence, the kind of talk that always has me prospectively eyeing escape routes.

A Burner artist and her two costumed male companions displayed an overdone nude painting of the ghost-fleshy school while explaining to a pair of bemused General Services cops the pacific and healing properties of the yoni. Others gave away food or swapped gossip while one veteran downtown panhandler collected money for ciggies: “That way, we’ll have ‘em when the cops close off the streets,” he explained over stumps of yellow teeth. The fellow apparently proved as good as his word, for I saw him later that night handing out coffin nails.

By then, the crowd had grown to well over two thousand. At GA, Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild promised his organization would stand foursquare behind the occupation and would labor mightily on its behalf before this night was out. Veteran activist Ron Kovic spoke, detailing his many arrests for Vietnam-era protests as inspiration for what was to be faced tonight.

A call for those willing to be arrested went up and a knot of resistors sat crosslegged in the middle of the plaza. Most of them were young and some looked a little scared. My girl and I occasionally joined the circling vigil to visit them several times over the course of the long night. Thoughts of these brave, defenseless ones manhandled and pepper-sprayed were never far from my mind and I doubt very much being alone in this sentiment. Musings like these spread throughout a large, sympathetic crowd likely contributed heavily to what followed.

Soon the number of helicopters jumped to five and the night air was smeared with more propwash than a Stockhausen string quartet. There’s a lot of media talk about drugs around #OLA (the po-faced tone of which beggars belief, since this city’s press corps is no stranger to serious dissipation), but the mainline buzz of occupiers has always been their sense of big-H History and that high was quite palpable tonight. There was a steady trickle out of the park as the minutes ticked away to midnight, but a horde of punks, music fans, movement sympathizers and ex-bystanders about a thousand strong remained for the showdown.

In a town where every last thing of any interest closes by 1:30 a.m., scheduling this raid for midnight Sunday was no doubt the dumbest tactical move since Burnside’s Bridge. In one stroke, authorities guaranteed both a media circus (there already in the form of twenty news-vans, a swarm of my colleagues, my girl and myself) and massive reinforcements for the occupiers. I was beginning to wonder if even official stupidity might have a limit when cops in helmets and riot gear began to block off Main and Spring streets at First and Temple, right around midnight.

No order to clear the streets was immediately forthcoming and the curious crossed First to gape at the cops, admiring—perhaps skeptically—their weapons and stonefaced demeanor. All was as cool and congenial as circumstances could allow until the guy in the Prime Time Concert party truck drove up.

The gaudy vehicle sported rolling messages pleading for peace and good vibes while its speakers blared the 1971 Marvin Gaye classic “What’s Goin’ On.” People on the park side of First looked at each other, blinked in amazement for a few beats, and then started dancing.

This delightful only-in-L.A. freak occurrence lasted almost an entire verse and chorus before a fierce, bull-like cop charged up to the driver, ordering him gone in terms that threw a plainly evident scare into the latter. He slowly made off, music trailing groovily behind as scores of people piled onto First to see him away. Hundreds followed, gently chanting “Whose street? Our street!” Hundreds more flooded the wide avenue and both intersections, a great many of them young people practically skipping with glee in this harmless defiance.

Soon after the truck cleared away, more cops suited up in riot gear closed off Broadway at First, effectively penning us all up, lest whatever contagion we stood for pollute Hill Street and Disney Center. It was one AM and I was near the news vans scribbling notes while my girl snapped pics over my left shoulder when we heard a KTLA report that police had gone on tactical alert.

Oh, goodie! Here was a game-changer for the cops—what began as a ritual sacrifice of passive protestor meat was now inexorably turning into the kind of non-violent street confrontation OLA had been training for. Non-violent they were by credo and deed, but scarcely passive and totally non-cooperative about leaving the asphalt or taking cop authority seriously. Since this was the dominant spirit of the party already, organizers had a ready-made army of the night, the punk contingent of which already knew what it was like to be harassed by authorities over subcultural prejudice and visibly delighted at this rare chance to take it out on the watch commander’s ass. Add hundreds of cameras recording anything that moved, and the result is a long and lousy night for the LAPD.

We were coming down the hill from Broadway after watching a tense confrontation with cops when I saw an occupier scouting the middle distance up Spring Street. “Didn’t bring enough guys, did you?” he snarled like a crazed Jeb Stuart counting bluebellies and I craned my own neck to see what he meant. In the middle of the street behind the wall of officers were sixty-odd riot cops in column formation. There were enough police arrayed there and on Main Street to start a riot but nowhere near enough to contain one. Someone’s rosy scenario about how this would all go down looked to be shot to hell.

It was about then when ill-received “orders” began going around protestors’ ranks to abandon the street and “guard the camp,” like police officers “wanted us” to do. It seemed a little odd, since this whole brouhaha was over a 10:30 PM closing of the park, that cops could just rewrite the municipal code on the fly this way and stranger still that everyone be expected to unthinkingly obey such obvious bullshit on this night of nights. Those on the street began openly arguing with these self-described “organizers,” pushing back with cries of “What side are you on?” and “You get outta the street, bro.” One weaselly looking brother with a bullhorn shoved himself between milling protestors and immobile cops to shriek “Don’t provoke the police! They have weapons! Go back to the park!”

Most of the sneakers on the asphalt rejected such Mugwump counsel, since it was plain the shut down street was everybody’s best protection against arrest that night. Too few police were sent to shut down a block party the mayor had effectively thrown by announcing the time of the raid on the encampment. It looked like police were forced to change plans in mid-operation, as their objective was forcibly altered from clearing the park to reopening the streets and it was simply beyond their moral and physical authority to do even that for quite a while. The police were no so much flouted as ignored as the hours wore on, though the cry of “Whose street? Our street!” must’ve burned, given police actions later on. Another chant of “You’re sexy!/You’re cute!/Take off that riot suit!” was hurled at sorely tried officers, who were widely commended later on for their heroic restraint in not attempting to do what they’d never gotten away with under the circumstances.

Finally, LAPD loudspeakers announced this short-lived, ad-hoc Occupy First Street movement was an unlawful assembly and the peace of the people of Los Angeles required all present to vacate. That part of the people still in the street were of a different mind, but cheerfully agreed to do as told, though with great slowness hampered still further by media attempts to document everything that happened. Inside the park, sage burned by the handfuls and drums pounded from every side as reality was suspended in favor of carnival. Some loon up in a tree was yelling that the “Son of Man” had arrived, trailing clouds of glory and one of the would-be martyrs thanked the both of us for staying through the night. We didn’t see any police or protestor violence that night and the only arrest we witnessed was a lightning-quick bust of some kid who was sitting on the curb on Main when cops wanted the street completely clear.

For many, the object of this whole loopy exercise in street activism and guerilla poetics was to buy time for the NLG to file a federal injunction against the city that very morning, a point finally conceded by the LAPD when police settled for clearing First street for through traffic just before dawn. The sun was turning the sky over Boyle Heights the usual Maxfield Parrish hotdog pink when traffic began to move at last, the first of which being the aforementioned truckloads of L.A.’s Finest as they careening off toward Broadway.

Leftie radicals rarely see victory like this and the assembled media knew bemusement at seeing the story they were sent to cover preempted in favor of something completely different, courtesy of a thousand freaks, geeks and punks. It was an honest-to-Vladimir revolutionary gain, however short-lived and farcical.

Of course, on Tuesday night, it would all be different, but, at that moment, I was practically doubled over with mirth, tears streaming from my eyes and ribs threatening to bust through my hide. All yesterday’s warehouse parties I saw raided by these very guardians of a dullard’s dream of civic order crowded my mind and partiers actually turning cops away instead of the other way around was something I thought I’d never see.

Occupiers chanted “We won! We won!” and a pack of wiseasses began to sing Steam’s deathless ballpark anthem “Sha Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)” at cop tail lights as they faded from sight. It was like the revolution as scored by K-Earth 101.

Punk as fuck, I tell you.

—Ron Garmon