Occupy Long Beach Deadline Passes

Occupy Long Beach members remained today at Lincoln Park next to Long Beach City Hall in defiance of a police order against anything except sleeping bags and blankets after 10 p.m. Sunday.

About 10 protesters sat in a circle eating and awaiting arrest. Internet video of the site showed that there were no police in sight at that time. An unidentified Occupy Long Beach official said at 10:45 p.m. that they had ``45 minutes of victory.''

The protester showed tables positioned around the park in defiance of the order to take them away.

One of the earliest organizers of Occupy Long Beach, a Belmont Shore resident who uses the name Sonny because he is an L.A. college professor, called Patch from the park at about 12:40 a.m. to report no arrests were made.

"We're actually still on the grass, there is one police car across the street, and she announces for us to leave about every hour," said Sonny. "We had a non-violent stand-off at 10:20 p.m., when they told us (by loudspeaker) that the law was that we'd have to leave the park. We said we were going to link our arms together, and they left."

Just then, a voice could be heard over a loud speaker. It was 12:35 a.m. "There's no camping allowed in the park," the officer warned.

"What we've said is we're not camping we're exercising our constitutional right to free speech and that supercedes municipal code," Sonny said. There were 50 or 60 people earlier but about 20 or 30 of us are left.

He said that the group, in an almost nightly general assembly meeting, decided that members were not going to get arrested. This was so as not to reduce their might and remove them from efforts underway with Long Beach city officials (to explore how other cities have faced the right to assemble dilemma.)

City News contributed to this report.