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OccupyLA Reacts Negatively To Monday Eviction Order

Staff Reporters |
November 25, 2011 | 7:16 p.m. PST

Protesters at the OccuplyLA camp around City Hall appear determined to resist the order issued by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to abandon their 56 day old site by Monday morning.  Though the camp's General Assembly was yet to hold its nightly decision-making meeting, a consensus prevailed among the campers that they would not pack up and leave as the mayor and LAPD police chief insisted at a late Friday aftern

oon press conference.

"We're going to challenge them. We have the right to assemble. At the very minimum we deserve a 30-day eviction notice," Chris Legal Sr., 55-year-old from Detroit told Neon Tommy. "If the police chief says leave, I will obey the law. But I will also ask a judge as soon as possible to invalidate his actions."

Most others interviewed among the 500 or so protesters camped out in the chilly downtown site were more adamant about staying. An artist who called himself Sirblu said he'll refuse to leave: "We're
going to stand in solidarity. This us our first amendment right."

No unusual activity or any preparation to start folding down the camp was noted a few hours after Villaraigosa's order to leave.  Here are scenes from Friday night right after the Mayor's announcement shot by USC Annenberg journalism prof Alan Mittelstaedt.

City officials and representatives of the OccupyLA movement have been negotiating on and off for several days after the mayor offered the protesters office space to get off the streets, reported The Los Angeles Times:

"Since the protest began nearly two months ago, city officials have held regular meetings with several Occupy protesters, including a representative from the National Lawyers Guild. But other protesters have complained that those representatives don’t speak for everyone and have dismissed the meetings as going against the demonstration’s democratic principles and “horizontal” organizing structure.
"

But on Thursday, the OccupyLA movement released a statement rejecting the city's offer.

As a collective, Occupy Los Angeles would like to express their rejection of the City of Los Angeles’ alleged proposal that we leave City Hall by November 28th, 2011, in exchange for an apparently now rescinded offer of a 10,000 square foot building, farmland and 100 SRO beds for the homeless.

Occupy Los Angeles believes that as part of a global movement advocating direct, participatory democracy, and challenging economic and social injustices, our position is such that we cannot, in all good faith, accept further material benefit from City Hall at the taxpayer’s expense without seriously compromising our beliefs, our desire for global change, and our commitment to our inherent human rights to free speech and assembly protected in this country by First Amendment Rights. The 1 percent should be paying for any services used by the Occupy Movement, not taxpayers.

 

During Friday's press conference, Mayor Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck vowed they would take every step possible to avoid confrontations and violence. Villaraigosa warmly lauded the movement's goals but said that continuing the encampment around City Hall was "unsustainable." He said he would do everything possible to avoid arrests but if they were necessary to enforce the law they would be carried out.

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