SF mayor seeks 'dramatic changes' at Occupy camp

[alp227]

Source: SF Chronicle

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee on Wednesday demanded "dramatic changes" at the mushrooming Occupy SF encampment on the Embarcadero, a compound of more than 200 tents and larger communal structures that he called a public health nuisance.

Lee stopped short of saying he would order police to shut down the around-the-clock demonstration at Harry Bridges Plaza across the street from the Ferry Building, but all indications are that time is running out for the encampment.

City officials reissued a set of 11 conditions they expected to be met, including that no more than 100 small tents can be erected at specific spots in the public plaza and that no alcoholic beverages or illegal drugs can be distributed or consumed at the site.

"We'll see what happens," said Lee, who met for more than an hour behind closed doors at City Hall on Wednesday with representatives of the Occupy SF encampment in an attempt to avoid a confrontational showdown, like the one that led to rioting two weeks ago after law enforcement officers dismantled the Occupy Oakland encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/16/MNDF1LVU6R.DTL

[Tx4obama]

1. The tent encampments need to down-sized and the focus needs to be put back on the issues

Too much energy and focus has been on tents, books, etc

The MESSAGE of OWS is being lost.

[EFerrari]

2. The tents and the encampments are the issues.

And the message is only lost on people who are looking to find some kind of mirror in OWS of our screwed up system, which it isn't.

[Tx4obama]

3. I disagree. The original GOAL/PURPOSE of OWS was not just to set up tents

and to create free library
to suggest such a thing is pretty ridiculous.

I stand by my opinion, OWS needs to focus on their original purpose
instead of tents and books.

[Limelight]

6. Whatever the original "purpose" of OWS was according to you...

The bottom line is it wasn't the purposes themselves that got the movement play, it was the movement's PRESENCE that got them play. Why do you think Bloomberg went on that "They'll have to let their ideas do the work" or whatever such nonsense he said.

An idea in this sense is really just words. Words? Please, they can handle that. Corporations are people and their money is speech. How long have our words been drowned out by their "speech"? They've been ignoring our words for years, thus nonsense about debt ceilings and deregulating an already dangerously under regulated market. Oh, but now? Now it's about income inequality and the wealth gap. Why is that? Was it our ideas?

Yes, but they didn't stop denying our ideas until we made it impossible to ignore our PRESENCE. Those tents are the issue, our physical presence is our power because it can not be denied. Even to remove our presence you must physically engage it, images of which only bolster our cause.

Naw, you got it all wrong. All the Obama propaganda you got plastered on your every posts prove that.

[EFerrari]

10. Setting up tents is not just setting up tents.

It's re-democratizing the commons in accordance with our own law, and the principles and values this country was supposedly founded upon.

"And the message is only lost on people who are looking to find some kind of mirror in OWS of our screwed up system, which it isn't."

[pam4water]

4. Sounds like you just want the unemployed to be move out of sight like the republicans do now and

Hoover did in the Bonus Army and Hoovervilles in the the early 1930s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville

Being in sight is part of protesting. If no one knows you're protesting. You are not protesting.

[Tx4obama]

5. The majority of the OWS protesters are NOT unemployed.

So, your theory is incorrect.

And to me your comment is quite funny since I am myself unemployed.

[oNobodyo]

7. I think perhaps you've already lost the message...

If you consider that every single issue from crooked bankers, corporations and wall street in general to economic inequality to jobs to unnecessary wars to health care to education costs to climate change...what have you, they all boil down to someone being poor and homelessness because of it...or in other words, they lose the ability to 'occupy'...and the response from our society, our government is very much the same as the response has been to the poor and homeless...

"Go away, we don't want to look at you!"

For a couple decades now, tent cities have existed around this country but they've only been allowed to exist out of sight of the public. I can tell you though that the people in those camps have been experiencing what the occupiers have been for all of that time. They've lived and died in those very same conditions, they've had all of their belongings destroyed, they've been arrested, beaten and pepper sprayed...not for protesting but just for trying to stay alive.

Is there any clearer message about the disfunction of our society, our system than making our greatest shame a public spectacle?

Tents, books...the attempt to have a even a few human comforts under the conditions that the system forces so many into and how difficult it's made to be when you try it, that's one damned important part of the 'message' and perhaps the only part that really matters, because that's the very situation that we could all find ourselves in, all too easily.

We learn to take care of each other or we learn to watch each other die...it won't remain hidden any longer.

[pam4water]

11. There is no moving on for OWS w/o a public presents. There hasn't been in the past

and there isn't now. And frankly fangirlish-ness of your post here, make me doubt the credibility of all your statements and much of what is posted on DU over all.

[Tippy]

8. I am thinking ...oh shit did I just say that?

OWS..still has potential, but with this all out push we are seeing I fear violence will erupt...and when it does the LAW and the lawless Republicans will get their way...then they will tell us "see we are/were right"

[Demeter]

9. Kent State: "They Can't Kill Us All!"

After all, who would fight their wars, pay their taxes, and take their shit?

[quakerboy]

13. Mercenaries, the complacent mass, and China

[quakerboy]

12. So they win one way or the other

At least we go down fighting, having exposed the rear wall of the theater just a bit.