Police evicted the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Los Angeles late last night, and today, sanitation officials said that they expect to remove a total of 30 tons of debris from the site at City Hall. Granted, the LAPD did not provide protesters time to neatly pack their belongings, but 30 tons is an astonishing amount of rubble. According to the president of the city Public Works board, workers have already collected 25 tons that will be discarded at a landfill.
By contrast, when the OWS protesters at Zuccotti Park were unceremoniously evicted, the debris was taken to a sanitation facility at West 57th Street where protesters with “proper ID” could recover their belongings once waste was sorted from personal property. Why weren’t the L.A. protesters afforded the same opportunity?
The L.A. Times reports that items trashed at the L.A. encampment, by crews in hazmat suits, included: books and CDs, luggage and boom boxes, mattresses and dining chairs, cell phones, electric razors, a small red guitar with its neck snapped, protest signs, nail polish, and jars of peanut butter, all of it surrounded by dozens of collapsed and empty tents. Peanut butter is expensive these days.
“This looks like pure anarchy,” said one onlooker in Los Angeles, adding, “in a Hollywood way.”
Directed by Michael Bay.
