Following the police raid on the City Hall Occupy LA encampment, LA’s Democratic Party Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa the LA Times reported:
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he decided it was time to evict Occupy L.A. protesters from the City Hall lawn after learning that there were children staying there.
Given the smattering of assaults and other incidents reported at the camp, “the chaos out there could produce something awful,” he said in an interview with The Times.
Meanwhile Think Progress reports that there are an estimated 13,000 homeless children in Los Angeles.
An even more pertinent point is that Los Angeles already has thousands of children on the streets. A 2011 report estimated that there were 13,500 homeless students in the area. One would hope that if the city of Los Angeles was willing to send thousands of riot gear-clad police officers to evict an encampment of nonviolent protesters supposedly out of concern for children, that it will be making an even more intense effort over the coming days to alleviate the situation of the thousands of homeless children in the city. Perhaps the city could even team up with a broad-based social movement protesting economic injustice to do it.
Fred Klonsky 