Camps are getting bulldozed left and right around the country, but the movement may just be gearing up for more. Here's today's roundup.
Headlining this morning's news is of course the partial raid on the Occupy SF camp last night, but that was only for the spillover folks. The big news for the remaining campers is a scheduled meeting today with Mayor Ed Lee, who would like to calmly try to convince the encampment to move from their existing Embarcadero spot to private property.
Also, Lee made his first visit to the camp yesterday, wandering the perimeter, and he's "disappointed" with how the cleanliness has decreased. The SPCA has had reports of three Occupy SF camp dogs infected with parovirus, and there have also been reports of Giardia and a flea infestation. [SF Gate]
Meanwhile, the Examiner's Mike Aldax went undercover in the Occupy SF camp for 24 hours between Monday and Tuesday, and pens a great day-in-the-life. "We're here to party!" shouts one dude we'd probably want to kill at around 3 a.m. It sounds like a pretty miserable and chaotic scene (though fun for some), with factions of drinkers facing off with a faction of pot-smokers, and a few dedicated activists being forced to live side-by-side with a bevy of transient kids who want to party, as well as some rather violent, mentally unstable dudes who assault people, and pee on others' food. Even though there is a daily general assembly to discuss camp aims and issues, less than half the people there seem to participate, or care. "As about 70 people participate in the general assembly, roughly 130 keep up their usual routines. Habitués of the camp’s eastern side sit around drinking, smoking cigarettes and joints, and shouting." [Examiner]
Over in Berkeley, tents went up in Sproul Plaza last night despite repeated warnings against them. They had not been removed as of this morning. [ABC7]
And former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich spoke to the Berkeley kids last night and fired up the crowd. [NBC Bay Area]
The NYT reviews the happening at all these high-profile camps, including Seattle where demonstrators got hit by pepper spray last night -- including a woman who said she was seven months pregnant. [NYT]
And today we have a piece in the NYT debating the value of the physical encampments, and whether the movement will whither without them. Some say no, and it's just time to strategize about more direct actions. And others suggest that winter would have caused camps to disinitgrate slowly anyway, and police are doing the movement a favor by creating these dramatic endings to the camps with a lot of news coverage. [NYT]