Last night, around 5PM, the Occupy Miami Facebook Page began posting about their impending eviction, along with pictures of the police strapping up and readying to move in. They had been given a sundown deadline to disband, but held firm.
The Facebook wall is like a veritable livestream of the action – the actual streaming video livestream was reportedly disallowed. As #Occupy evictions go, this one seems to have been rather low-impact; only three arrests were made. Even still, the Occupy Facebook Wall contains messages of support: in the early morning, the page updated with the status, “I hope some folks can get to the jail around 9 am. Our 3 will most likely be out between 9 and 11:30am.Someone PLEASE check on that. They’ll need some t.l.c. once they get out of that hell hole, lets make sure some of our folks are out there to take care of them.”
According to The Huffington Post:
The surreal scene unfolded several hours after Miami-Dade County’s sunset deadline to vacate the west lawn of the Stephen P. Clark Government Center passed. While many occupiers packed up and left, six occupiers determined to hold the ground settled in the middle of the lawn, linking arms to prepare for arrest while other demonstrators formed a circle around them and police forces massed at the site.
“All night, all day, Occupy M-I-A!” protestors shouted, as the six set to remain wrote down names and birth dates in case of arrest.
But instead, officers in riot gear formed lines on several sides of the park, pushing the other protestors off the lawn and then down the streets near Government Center. At least one demonstrator was struck with a baton and several others said they were assaulted, but police did not arrest the six protestors who remained in the camp behind a barricade of fencing and junk — instead, according to onlookers, they were given a last chance to walk away once removed.
“I was dying to get arrested and they just ignored us,” Alex Ramos, one of the six occupiers in the huddle, told Miami New Times.
The Miami Herald reports:
The police, wearing riot gear and banging batons on their plastic shields as they advanced, cleared demonstrators from within half a-dozen blocks of the camp site, on a lawn just west of the Stephen P. Clark Government Center. They also tore down tents and makeshift dwellings left on the site.
The operation was carried out almost completely without violence, though some of the demonstrators said one of their number was clubbed when caught up in an advancing police line.
This, of course, won’t be the end of #Occupy, and reports say that protestors already have new locations in mind. In fact, at 2PM today there will be a post-raid organizational meeting at the fountain at Government Center.
Were any of our Miami readers present at the raid last night, on either side of the barricades? If so, please contact us at tips@remezcla.com. We’d love to hear from you.