Occupy San Francisco in danger of losing ground

[AsahinaKimi]

A worker with the city's Department of Public Works power washes a portion of the Occupy SF campsite in coordination with the campers on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011, in San Francisco. Protesters scrambled to clean up their camp after Mayor Ed Lee warned in ameeting Wednesday that police would move in if sanitation problems continued and the camp spread into other areas. Protesters said the city gave them a 4 p.m. deadline to cut the number of tents down to 100, from 200, and remove trash and other health hazards

The Occupy SF encampment is holding on by a thread. City officials, including Mayor Ed Lee, would love to have it gone. And it will happen, eventually.

Thursday was the second time that everyone - the media, protesters and Occupy SF campers - were sure the cops would march in and raid the tent city at Justin Herman Plaza.

For the second time nothing happened. And that's a good thing. After getting ultimatums from Lee on Wednesday about conditions at the camp and being declared a public health nuisance Thursday, the protesters surprised everyone by doing a major cleanup.

It didn't exactly turn into a KOA campground, but it was much improved. Large structures were removed, aisles between tents were open, and not only were the bocce ball courts cleared, some of the campers were playing bocce. Raiding the tents after that effort would have been in bad faith.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/18/BAB11M1802.DTL#ixzz1eA6LYMHa

[L. Coyote]

1. I was there yesterday afternoon, taking photos and talking to everyone

The major local media outlets were sitting in the satellite vans, bored and lamenting that there was important news to cover elsewhere. The camp seemed more like a homeless shelter than a political group. I stumbled into a meeting discussing someone who had taken a 15 minute shower and other petty bickering. I told them to focus on the amount of energy the military consumes in 15 minutes instead!