Missed Opportunity

The evening of November 30th Los Angeles was hit with what to some was a crippling wind storm. In some places sustained winds of 80mph and gusts of up to 100mph wreaked havoc on unprepared Angelinos. The next day the aftermath was everywhere. Fallen trees, broken branches, palm fronds strewn everywhere was the scene and no power was the condition in many parts of the city. A week later, from Hollywood to Westwood and from Lake View Terrace to City Terrace the streets are still littered with fallen tree branches, mountains of palm fronds and the occasional palm tree mounted on the curb, but hey, power was finally restored a day or two ago.

While I am marginally upset that this stuff hasn’t been cleaned up yet and fractionally more upset that a City Hall staffer told me to look at it from the bright side that mother nature just did a lot of tree trimming for us, I’m mostly upset that the Mayor and Councilmembers didn’t take advantage of this opportunity to talk about disaster preparedness. While many sections of the city were out of power, I saw how distraught some of my fellow Angelinos were because they couldn’t charge their laptops or cellphones or how impacted some people were because they had just bought groceries that day and they didn’t want their food to spoil and had to buy bags of ice to store in their refrigerators to keep the temperature down. At least these people could go to the Starbucks down the street and plug in or go to the market and buy ice.

Had this been a major earthquake where the whole city grid was cut-off, 7-11 isn’t going to have ice for your fridge and Starbucks isn’t going to be able to charge your laptop not to mention charging your cellphone will be futile because all communications will be down anyways!

The least our City leaders could have done was talk about how that same Mother Nature that just “trimmed our trees”, gave us that 10 minute order to disperse LAPD supposedly gave the City Hall Park occupiers. So what if National Preparedness Month was three months ago, the reality is this town sits on some pretty seismically active land and preparedness should be preached whenever possible. Once again our leaders show the kind of foresight that got us into this budgetary mess we’ve been in for years.

On August 13, 1846, early in the Mexican-America War, U.S. naval forces under Commodore Robert F. Stockton sailed into Los Angeles and raised the American flag without opposition. A small occupying force of 50 Marines, under Captain Archibald H. Gillespie, built a rudimentary barricade on what was then known as Fort Hill overlooking the small town (Los Angeles).
The harsh martial law of Captain Gillespie soon ignited a popular uprising among Californios and Mexicans led by General José Mariá Flores beginning on September 22, 1846. Known as the Siege of Los Angeles, Californios assembled a force to retake Los Angeles. Gillespie’s 50 marines were able to resist an initial attack on the government house in town and regrouped on Fort Hill, where they strengthened the fortification with sandbags.

As time passed, the Californio forces opposing the U.S. takeover grew to just over 60 men, with several Californio citizens voicing opposition. General Flores offered an ultimatum: leave within 24 hours or face attack.

Today, a mere three blocks away from a monument erected to honor those AMERICANS who fought to “Occupy Los Angeles”, Americans who have been Occupying LA on the City Hall Lawn, AMERICANS who have been fighting for what they believe in were offered an ultimatum by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; leave by midnight Sunday or face a forceful eviction. The similarities here are unmistakable.

While I’ve never been one to march, strike, protest or otherwise, I do believe that these people have a right to their peaceful demonstration and should not be removed. I don’t know why the Mayor decided to evict these people and I’m sure given his track record for corruption there is something in it for him, I won’t speculate and won’t allow others to speculate until there is hard evidence of such. I will however there Sunday night to document the forceful eviction of an otherwise peaceful demonstration with a handful of friends armed with our cameras.

This eviction goes against everything our nation was built on and everything Americans have stood for dating back to the founding fathers and exemplified by the 50 Marines who once, so long ago, held their ground against a hostile force. The Occupy LA movement on the City Hall Lawn exemplifies that very fire raging inside every American starting with the 56 men who on July 4th 1776 defiantly declared a nation’s independence.

The US Government has lost its noble way… Mayor Villaraigosa, you never had a noble way to begin with.