Occupy LA Origins

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If this is a protest,

You'll be surprised that this is a revolution.

This is according to Heidi Sulzdorf, a leader who was there from the start.

"...I was upset that there was nothing going on in Los Angeles...so I was following twitter live..."

She was at a panel talk on the movement Monday, flanked by academics and community leaders.

And to understand just how big she is to Occupy LA, let's rewind to
Summer right when Spain is blowing up in protest. She's at home, trolling the Net and sees this post for a solidarity protest on Olvera Street. She's pumped and heads out.

But, as you can hear on Youtube...

...the protest she finds, isn't exactly Tahrir Square.

She goes home upset. Logs on, and...

"Saw someone else who was in Los Angeles who was frustrated that nothing
was happening here. And she had posted a URL to a 'TinyChatroom'."

TinyChatroom's a web site conversation between multiple web cams all at
the same time...

"And there were probably twenty or thirty of us there the first night. We
were really excited and...so we had two general assemblies in virtual space
in TinyChat."

But their boiling anger was silent on the web.

"...So we ditched that and the first night we met was the 21st of
September."

This is what's important.

As much as she relied on Reddit, Twitter, TinyChat, Facebook, Flickr and
Youtube to connect up, nothing connects people more than meeting face to
face.

And so they did.

"I think we spent ten days meeting every single night talking about what
we were going to do, how we were going to start our occupation. And from
there we made the decision to occupy October 1st at City Hall, did some
outreach and got on the ground."

Tomorrow, Day 40. The Occupation.

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