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The Day After the Occupy Berkeley Eviction

by Mary Ann Uribe (lothiriel_rohan [at] yahoo.com)
The Day After the Occupy Berkeley Eviction
It was after 10:00 p.m. last night and Berkeley Police Department had not shown up at Occupy Berkeley to enforce the Eviction Notice handed to Larry Silver the afternoon before. Mr. Silver is a leader at the Occupy Berkeley camp located at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park.

After Silver read the Notice he told the officer who had handed it to him “This is our Christmas present?”

Prior to the Eviction Notice there were 70 tents set up at the site. By this morning there were 15 tents remaining. Everyone else had packed up and left.

The Christmas tree Berkeley’s police department had donated to the people in the encampment could be seen in the distance still glimmering from all the decorations people had put on it. It was ironic the members of this same department would be coming to arrest those in the park after 10:00 p.m. on December 21st and confiscate all there property including their tents. The police were enforcing a city ordinance prohibiting any person from being in the park after 10:00 p.m.

Occupy Berkeley was the last large encampment in the Bay area after the police dismantled Occupy Oakland and San Francisco. In a similar move after taking down the other encampments, the remaining protestors relocated to a new location. They set up in front of Bank of America on Shattuck Ave. This location was the place Occupy Berkeley started at back on October 17th of this year.

The Eviction Notice came after a series of phone calls to the police department regarding incidents of drinking and theft. Having built their own community the Occupiers found it difficult to develop and enforce a standard of conduct within the camp and, as in any society, there are always a few people who cannot conduct themselves in a manner that is beneficial for the entire community.

While it has been said many of the people in the camp were homeless, the Occupy Movement has embraced these individuals and families as being part of the 99% who have lost their homes and possessions to banks, the economy, lack of jobs, America’s over concern with Wall Street profits rather than its own people and foreclosure schemes.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness there are 643,067 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the United States. Of that number, 238,110 are people in families, 404,957 are individuals and 100,000 are children.

12 percent of the homeless population, 67,000 are veterans.

It is estimated most "middle class" families are 1-2 paychecks away from homelessness themselves.

So who does Occupy kick out of the camp? The veteran? The child? The senior citizen?

Occupy Wall Street is going through growing pains but eventually should be able to work out the kinks in their idealic communities designed to benefit all of its members without the exploitation of the 99% the United States has done to its people up to now.
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Thu, Dec 22, 2011 5:53PM
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