You can smell it from across the street. It’s not overpowering, but it’s there, the smell of human funk. It’s a smell common to most of the world’s cities, though the suburb-o-tropolis of Los Angeles tends to keep its funk dispersed, sun-bleached, harder to wrap your nose around. But not here. Not now. Not along the line of sidewalk port-o-potties on the outer apron of the Occupy Los Angeles encampment. Nearby steps rising to City Hall are marked with chalk graffiti in protest of corruption and greed. A large cement planter is marked with the imploration to “Revolt.” An Oscar Wilde quote is etched along risers, “We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” One wonders if protestors in Italy or Spain would have been so kind as to have made their human-rights demands in wash-away pastels.
It’s Friday afternoon, two weeks into the L.A. occupation. The movement will go global in less than 24 hours, with huge Occupy protests rising up in nearly every major city across the planet. There will be mass gatherings, and mass arrests, worldwide, with violence and fires breaking out in Rome. The space here will fill with thousands of protestors for Saturday’s march under the banner "Global Day of Action." But it’s quiet now, cool under the canopy of tall trees, though the downtown mercury reads 98-degrees. Occupiers mill about, going through the newly established routines of life on city hall’s south lawn, which hundreds now call home.
The tent city’s residents are mostly in their 20s and 30s, given to sport tattoos, backpacks, mohawks and skinny jeans, with a few shirtless dudes donning slim-wear that we'll graciously term "European." Though the mix does include older occupiers, parents toting protest signs with toddlers in tow. There’s a smell of incense burning throughout. Bicycles abound. Laptops are everywhere, in tents, on the cross-legged knees of occupiers across the lawn, lined up in the media tent that offers free wi-fi. Two large solar panels provide power. A few budding female journalists, college students in sun dresses, conduct interviews with occupiers, recording into iPhones. A fire-department medic stands away from the community hub, lazily checking his phone. A hammock hangs between trees. A handmade sign offers services like life-coaching, chokra adjustment and the Japanese healing art of Reike.
A class on the basics of banking is being held in a standing semi-circle by the central fountain. The teacher is a tall young man, in a collared knit shirt and camouflage shorts, whistle around his neck. He invites the gathering of a few dozen to call back fundamentals like, “Banks are investment firms.” His Socratic questions about corrupt-banking practices draw a call-out from an enthusiastic occupier who circles on a bicycle. “Let them answer,” the teacher laughs with a head nod to his freshman class, continuing with a lesson on moving one’s money out of the hands of big banks. Class end with an announcement that a Spanish-language march is gathering at one end of the tent village.
Signs hang everywhere throughout the mini city, sending out a multitude of messages, from a general call to retake democracy, to the need for public housing, and the dangers of chem-trails. The one unifying theme is that the “99-Percent” has had it with the corrupt financial tactics waged by the uber-wealthy one-percent. A few names are named. A rogue’s pumpkin patch is on display for pedestrians and passing cars, under the banner “Bring Me the Head of…” Pumpkin heads ripe for the carving include former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, among other accused banksters in the pumpkin patch of shame.
A lively troupe arrives to bring some noise. They’re cartoonishly bedecked in black-tie evening wear, cash literally spilling from their pockets, brandishing signs in support of Wall Street’s plundering. A ringleader in a top hat takes to a megaphone to call for stiffer measures against the insufferable poor, harsher treatment for the country’s undeserving 99-percent. A slim, shaggy madman, pounding a native drum, swoops in to fight the fat cats. “Whoa! It’s satire! It’s parody,” occupiers cry, stepping in to stop the lunatic’s advances. No matter, the drum-beater fights on. There will be no comedy, no sarcasm and certainly no satire in any protesting as long as he’s around. And he’s been around a while. An Occupy organizer later sighs that she’s spent hours trying to talk some sense into his senselessness. One is reminded of the maxim to never argue with a crazy person -- other people won’t be able to tell the difference.
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