On Sunday, Alma and I heeded the warnings on television and went down to the
Venice Boardwalk rather than going to the 1-Year Anniversary proceedings
of Occupy Los Angeles downtown. (Forecasters were predicting
dangerously high temperatures inland and even unseasonably high temps
along the beaches. They were wrong about the latter.)
To honor Occupy, I wore my 99% T-shirt (generated by the t-shirt
operation at the original Occupy Los Angeles that screen printed many
t-shirts and distributed them for free). Alma and I walked on the
boardwalk for almost 4 hours and not one person had anything to say
about the '99%' prominently displayed on my t-shirt. Not one person.
Wow!
Oh yeah, and Alma and I saw two separate instances where the
destitute were eating discarded food scraps right off the pavement of
the boardwalk and one instance of a person fishing through a trashcan to
retrieve someone's discarded beverage to drink. This all within
spitting distance of beachfront residences that start at $2 million and
go up from there.
And to think I actually thought Occupy was going to change things
for the better. I actually thought it was going to be my generation's
1848 or 1917. Doesn't look like it. Charles Dickens is spinning in his
grave.
Oh yeah, and the LAPD drove their patrol cars up and down the boardwalk (and bike path!) with lights flashing. Who knows why?
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