They claimed it was a protest, but as soon as the City of Tucson gave them their eviction notice members of Occupy Public lands carted off their wooden “dream pods” and tents leaving no one behind to carry the torch.
The down town Tucson Veinte de Agosto Park is now empty.
Since the problem of homelessness did not end when the eviction notice was served, many question the legitimacy of the protest.
Earlier this month, Jon McLane, the force behind the pod people occupation was arrested for dealing drugs. As a condition of his release, he was restrained from returning to the park. Without McLane, the mostly addled homeless pod people he left behind were squatting – not protesting.
Because the Tucson City Council lacked the political will to recognize the squatting for what it was, they sought the assistance of federal Judge David Bury. The City Attorney Mike Rankin asked the judge to order the pod people out of the park. The judge refused and told Rankin that it was the City’s job to protect it’s citizens from squatters. The judge advised Rankin that nothing in his recent ruling on the constitutional rights of the pod people forbade the City from evicting them from the park.
The City, without any more excuses to do nothing, did something. Officials gave the pod people until last Friday night to vacate the park. A local church stepped in to help and is providing space for the pod people on its property. Volunteers showed up in trucks to remove the pesky pods.
Shortly after his drug arrest, McLane told the ADI, that as the “Chief Executive Organizer of Occupy Public Land, originally a working group of Occupy Tucson and a City registered Political Action Committee turned 501(c)3 is an extension of an extension of the Occupy Wall St. movement,” the people living “in the dream pods” had the “ability to dream and live in my dream for them.”
And that is the crux of the case. The occupation was primarily about the promotion of McLane as a self-styled civil rights leader. McLane was interested in his “dream for them,” not the dreams of the pod people themselves.
As with any cult of personality, as soon as McLane was exposed, the cult fell apart. Unfortunately, it did not fall apart before it did extreme damage to the image of Tucson.
McLane’s stunt did accomplish something very important however. McLane’s stunt exposed the City Council as cowards and brought attention to the tragic state of Tucson’s homeless population.
McLane told the ADI that “houseless population,” was “large and growing.” Due to the City Council’s failure to facilitate job creation, that population could grow exponentially.