Some 1,000 police officers raided the Occupy Los Angeles encampment in a park outside City Hall over night, arresting scores of people and evicting what has been the largest Occupy camp in the country. Meanwhile Occupy Philadelphia protesters vacated their encampment this morning after more than a thousand police moved in and warned them of mass arrests. We get eyewitness updates on both raids from National Lawyers Guild legal observer Ken Montenegro in Los Angleles and Occupy organizer and activist Jeff Rousset in Philadelphia. “[Philadelphia’s history of free speech and democracy] changed this morning at around 1 am. The city shut down the subways; they barricaded all of city hall, about two blocks in every direction; and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cops poured in. They forced everybody off the plaza,” Rousset says.
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