Cops in San Fran took out an “Occupy ICE” encampment yesterday night. Nearly 40 protesters were arrested, and their tent-city was removed.
The encampment had been blocking part of San Francisco’s Washington Street, which was preventing emergency vehicles from getting through. San Fran has laws against camping out on the sidewalks, and cops say they gave demonstrators “frequent admonishments”, which were ignored, before moving in to arrest and disperse the protesters.
Occupy ICE activists were camped out on the street outside the San Francisco ICE building as part of a “nationwide” “movement” to protest against the federal immigration agency. Anti-ICE protesters are angered by President Trump’s zero-tolerance policy against illegal immigration, and many are even calling for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department to be abolished or otherwise shut down.
Protesters had shut down the road for several days by the time SFPD swept through. Most of those arrested were from the Bay Area. 39 were taken into custody for “lodging in public,” and 10 of these were also collared for “resisting arrest.”
Just like the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, this protest is sure to be a flash in the pan as well. The thing about protesters in a wealthy 1st world nation like America as that they almost universally have better or more entertaining things to be doing with their time. Nobody in this country is desperate or angry enough to keep coming back day after day, especially in the face of police resistance.
You compare these protesters with the protesters in places like Venezuela, and the difference is clear. Those protests were very serious. The consequences were dire. They lasted months. Dozens of people died across the country.
And they still kept marching day in and day out because they had legitimate grievances. Their country was -and still is- falling to pieces around them. They had nothing to lose, and nothing to do with themselves, and nothing more worth their time or more entertaining.
So they marched into the gunfire of the government thugs.
The same can hardly be said for America. These “Occupy ICE” people are disillusioned and deluded, but they’re not ready to die for what they say they believe. They’d rather be sitting at home watching Netflix than out on the streets being beaten and arrested.
So their “national movement” will wither on the vine, and dissipate, like so many leftist “movements” have before.
