Tilden is a small town, and with 235 students in pre-K through 12th grades, the school is small, too — even after enrollment jumped 42 percent in a year and a half.

Outside, students can see the reason: drilling rigs in the distance. At recess, they run, slide and swing at a new playground built with corporate donations, a list brimming with names including Petrohawk Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Rush Truck Centers.

“I don’t know any of these kids, just the ones that are kinfolk,” said Arthur Villareal, 59, finishing breakfast with his son and grandson before a recent morning assembly. “A lot of them are new people that moved in.”

When he graduated in 1971, his senior class of 13 was the largest in the school’s history. His son’s class numbered 24. His grandson’s will be bigger.

“Our town is booming,” chimed fourth-grader Cotton Harris, 10, smiling at the passing trucks. “You just hear them roar by.”

The pursuit of oil and gas in the Eagle Ford Shale has picked up the pace in dozens of formerly quiet rural communities in a wide arc around San Antonio. But nowhere is the impact on schools greater than here, in one of the least-populated school districts in its path.

“That one that came in — it will have to be a bigger bus next year,” McMullen County Independent School District Superintendent Dave Underwood, 36, said over the noise. “Because it’s full.”

The district added a school bus last fall, bringing the total to seven. Some students take hourlong rides from other counties, like 10th-grader Sarah White, 16, whose father transferred her to the 1A district from the much larger Pleasanton ISD in Atascosa County last fall. She gets on a bus at 6:30 a.m..

“In a small town, everyone wants to be friends with everyone,” she said. “I’m also still getting used to more agriculture activities here. We just had a tractor race in the cafeteria. It was kind of strange, but interesting. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Most superintendents of the 22 school districts in the Eagle Ford counties closest to San Antonio point to a lack of housing as the reason their enrollments have grown only slightly, if at all.

An exception is the Frio County community of Dilley, where the school district saw a 7 percent enrollment increase in one year, to 992 students. City Administrator Melissa Gonzalez said contractors have made recent inquiries about building single-family homes.

But there’s a housing crunch in Tilden, too. A key reason more energy industry workers are enrolling their children here is proudly displayed on the school’s marquee: “EXEMPLARY SCHOOL DISTRICT,” the Texas Education Agency‘s highest rating.

Behind the school, McMullen ISD has built nine “teacheridges” over the years, employee cottages with as many as three bedrooms, including two added since 2010. It leases some to students’ families, and John Ray, 51, a pipeline inspector for Hatch Mott MacDonald, is one of the fortunate few.

After five months of house hunting, he was able to move his wife and third-grade daughter from West Monroe, La., into a teacheridge and thinks $600 a month is a good deal.

“It was just hard to find a place, but I didn’t want to live in a trailer for the next couple of years,” Ray said. “If there was more housing here it would probably be filled up as fast as they could build (it). But when this little boom is over, it’ll be a ghost town here.”

Others in Tilden share his assumption that busts inevitably follow drilling booms, but a University of Texas at San Antonio study estimates the Eagle Ford play will drive regional employment — and higher demand for housing and schools — through 2025.

Just 50 more students would max out the Tilden school‘s capacity, Underwood said. There are no immediate plans for new classrooms, but the board has asked voters to approve almost $12 million in bond debt on May 12 to address growth and safety issues, including connecting the school’s two buildings with an enclosed walkway so it can use a single entrance.

The drop-off point for school buses will be moved behind the school, away from traffic, operations manager Dale Patterson said.

Highway fatalities have increased with the traffic. McMullen County had only one in 2009, but there were four in 2010 and three in 2011. Driver fatigue has been the main factor, Department of Public Safety Trooper Clint Walker said.

Periodic sweeps with 22 extra state troopers are targeting commercial vehicle violations in counties affected by the drilling boom “to minimize tragic events happening,” said DPS Cpl. Charlie Ramirez, who oversees patrols in McMullen, Live Oak and Bee counties.

“No traffic accidents with students yet. We’ve been very fortunate, “ Underwood said, crossing his fingers and knocking on a wood classroom door.

The traffic is “crazy,” said Oralia Hasette, 76, a janitor who has worked at the school for two decades.

“There’s a lot of people in town now,” she said, adding, “I like it. At least you can sit down and see cars and trucks passing through.”

Even counting a couple of new restaurants, Tilden has only half a dozen businesses. The older ones have evolved with the times, like Max’s Cafe and Grocery, which offers eight motel rooms and a gift shop.

“Oil drilling is a great thing,” said owner Maximo Quintanilla Jr., 63, who also is a county commissioner. “Overall, it’s made ranchers a lot busier.”

“Gotta make the money while you can, because it ain’t going to be here long,” interjected lunch patron Josh Wood, 23, who works for Macy’s Rentals, which supplies generators to drilling rigs.

“Well, you’ve got to take the good with the bad,” Quintanilla said, glancing out a window at the trucks on Texas 16. “Eagle Ford is a good problem to have.”

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Leonardo De La Rosa, 25, imprisoned for an aggravated robbery when he was 16 and possession of drugs when he was 19, had a tray full of whole tilapias.

“Originally, I wanted to make asparagus-filled fish with peppercorn sauce, but they didn’t have green peppercorns, chives,” he said, dipping one of the fish in thick batter and gently dropping it head-first into a deep fryer. “So I had to think of something else.”

The Dallas native is one of about a dozen inmates escorted from the Torres Unit in Hondo before dawn Monday through Thursday to participate in the food bank’s Community Kitchen program.

The white caps and aprons they don over prison uniforms — and the gourmet breakfasts and lunches they whip up — make it hard to believe they have up to two years left to serve on their sentences.

Aside from good behavior, the dozen “trusties,” as they are called, must be top students in the six-month culinary training programs offered at various prison units, correctional officer Pernell Ross said.

“These are the valedictorians of their unit,” he said. “They have to get picked to come here.”

Watched by two correctional officers, they spend much of the morning concocting dishes like De La Rosa’s fish. But they also run the food bank’s Kids Cafe, which distributes 900 meals to agencies like the Boys & Girls Club so children from struggling families won’t go home hungry.

That’s not much of a culinary challenge — usually it means reheating Salisbury steak and green beans — but trustee Zachary Mayes of Baytown, 35, halfway through a four-year sentence for an aggravated assault, said he enjoys it.

“Sometimes I don’t feel like coming to work,” he said, catching trays in the assembly line. “But my motivation is feeding kids so they don’t get in trouble with their stomachs growling.”

Without the trainees, “we would not have the labor to be able to produce those meals,” said food bank president and CEO Eric Cooper. The Community Kitchen started in 2003 and began including inmates in 2006, after he approached Tony D’Cunha, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice‘s laundry, food and supply director.

D’Cunha is sold on it. Most employers are turned off by ex-convict applicants, he said, but hiring from this program has been “exceptional.”

“This can be a model for food banks nationwide, where the prison system gives back to the community by returning (inmates) to society as taxpaying citizens,” D’Cunha said.

A similar, six-week pilot program with Bexar County Jail inmates successfully wrapped up at Haven for Hope in December. Funding for the next round hasn’t been decided.

The Village at Incarnate Word’s dietary director Giovanni Laurel said the three graduates he hired from the Community Kitchen program to work at the retirement community “came in running.” They weren’t inmates, but he said he is open to hiring trustees with comparable skills once their criminal backgrounds are cleared.

“I’ve had lunch there and it was wonderful,” Laurel said. “It was great food that was cooked by the inmates — beautifully presented, flavorful.”

After six hours in the kitchen, trustees get to sit down and savor their own creations. That day, it was white rice with a sweet-and-sour sauce of red, yellow and green bell peppers, roasted potatoes, barbecued pork ribs and one other entrée — De La Rosa’s tilapia.

“Your piranhas are pretty good,” joked inmate James Thomas, 45, of Houston, in a compliment to De La Rosa. Thomas has been in the program longer and serves as a mentor to the others.

Already on to the orange cheesecake, De La Rosa smiled. “This is my first time cooking lunch,” he said.

“For his first time, he did great,” said Thomas, who is nearing the end of a 30-year sentence for burglary. “It’s 300 percent better than food at the unit. We go back and don’t eat.”

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Charged with interference with the duties of a public servant, the five, along with other occupiers, were near an open-air adobe structure close to the Tower of the Americas in HemisFair Park.

San Antonio Park Police officers informed the group about 8 a.m. that Downtown Operations workers were going to clean the area due to its “unsanitary condition,” a San Antonio Police Department report stated.

The occupiers, who were handed notices of violation of the city’s no-camping ordinance a week ago, were given 15 minutes to remove their belongings and then got a 10-minute grace period before Park Police officers surrounded the building with yellow caution tape, Commander Steven Baum said.

While most of the dozen protesters there moved their things and stepped away, Robin Canter, 42, a medic for Occupy S.A. since it started Oct. 6; and Kristopher Wettstein, 26, who had just joined the night before from out of town; refused.

They were arrested about 8:30 a.m. and also cited for camping, said Baum, who until Monday had commended the group for being well-behaved.

Lambert Campbell, 27, who joined a couple of weeks ago from Los Angeles, jumped inside the tape and was arrested on the same charge as well as disorderly conduct with language.

“He was outside and for some reason… came in and began to yell obscenities and ‘I’m ready to go to jail,’” Baum said.

Shortly before 11 a.m., occupiers Caleb Powell, 19, and Robert Wilson, 21, crossed the tape in front of half a dozen Park Police officers guarding the building.

“I’m inside the tape, I’m outside the tape,” Wilson said, jumping back and forth. The San Antonio College student and GameStop cashier was one of at least three occupiers ticketed Sunday for camping. He and Powell were arrested.

About noon, more occupiers surrounded the prohibited area and taunted police. Sharon Young, who has protested since nearly the beginning, was driven away in tears, arrested on a charge of interfering with duties of a public servant.

Police Chief William McManus said that as the police car pulled away, Carlos Villalobos, 35, a visitor from Occupy Houston, “threw himself in front of the police car as it was pulling up, but it did not make contact” with him.

Villalobos said the car clipped his leg and that police ignored his request to call EMS and file a police report, so a friend took him to Christus Santa Rosa Hospital for what he said was a concussion.

Hospital officials said he was in stable condition Monday afternoon.

Occupiers used the incident and complaints that restrooms no longer stayed open 24 hours a day to claim there was police wrongdoing.

But McManus said the restrooms had been left open “as a courtesy,” and damage to them, including a fire, resulted in closing them overnight, which was the practice before the occupiers arrived.

By nightfall, police had taken at least two other women into custody, and the enraged occupiers marched to City Hall and then around downtown.

“I sure hope a judge gives us an injunction to be here for six months — we will laugh every time the police try to come tell us something,” said John Meadows, 47. “It will just make the thorn at their side bigger.”

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Three Occupy San Antonio members got tickets early Sunday, two days after relocating from the entrance of HemisFair Park to a spot near the Tower of the Americas.

San Antonio Park Police officers approached eight occupiers around 8 a.m. where they had their protest material set up at an adobe building.

They issued camping without permit tickets to Jovanie Ortiz, 19, Robert Wilson, 21, and Steve Haskell, 43, with court dates in February.

“I was just lying down for a bit and I guess I kind of dozed off,” said Wilson, a San Antonio College student and cashier at GameStop. “I heard someone say, ‘Cops are swarming in!’ and … I didn’t even have time to get up.”

Wilson also got a ticket for failure to identify himself.

Police officers have maintained a 24-hour presence by the group since they were handed notices of violation of the city’s no camping ordinance on Dec. 12 and asked to move away from their original spot where New Year’s “Celebrate San Antonio” event is being set up.

The group’s lawyer, Roxana Orrell, advised a few dozen occupiers at their new location at the park Sunday evening to fill out a petition requesting a meeting with the mayor and other city officials. She also told them to fill out arrestee intake forms should citations occur.

“We’re probably going to expect more pressure come Monday morning,” Orrell said. “Don’t get behind the 8-ball trying to do survival stuff — keep up the political part of the protest.”

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]]> http://kwonglede.com/2011/citations-issued-at-occupy-s-a-site/feed/ 0 http://kwonglede.com/2011/protesters-nudged-from-park-by-the-city/ http://kwonglede.com/2011/protesters-nudged-from-park-by-the-city/#comments Sun, 18 Dec 2011 08:00:28 +0000 http://kwonglede.com/?p=227

For 2 1/2 months, the Occupy San Antonio protesters at HemisFair Park discussed the news — from the comfort of their sleeping bags and bedrolls — of police forcefully evicting and arresting occupiers in other major cities.

They prided themselves on being an exception. A sort of unwritten memo of understanding existed between them and police officials. They complied with traffic, noise and parade ordinances while demonstrating against inequality and corporate power.

Officers, for their part, tacitly allowed what San Antonio Park Police Commander Steven Baum called “temporary living quarters” for a group of permanent park occupiers whose numbers have dwindled to about a dozen.

Last week, however, city officials began preparing to remove them, citing a string of crime reports and complaints from neighbors. Baum and his officers handed out notices that they were in violation of a no-camping ordinance.

By Friday morning, the protesters had cleared out most of their stuff — tarps, bedding, food, a small library. Baum was satisfied. And once again, occupiers here had distinguished themselves from their counterparts nationally.

They had been in violation “probably since Oct. 6” when they began staying at the park, but back then “it was manageable, fresh and new,” Baum said. By December, officers were dealing with health and safety issues daily, and “it grew to a point where it had to come to an end,” he said.

The Police Department released 10 incident or arrest reports that it linked to Occupy S.A., among them theft, damage to restrooms, a break-in at an unoccupied building and a domestic assault.

“We discovered drug paraphernalia, syringes around the camp area, and that became a concern,” Police Chief William McManus said, although officers were careful to note those items could not be conclusively linked to protesters.

Occupiers, told to congregate away from the gazebo near the park entrance that had been their headquarters, will be allowed back after the Celebrate San Antonio event for New Year’s — as long as they don’t camp.

“We welcome them to be where they want to be, but they cannot break the law in their doing it,” McManus said.

He said complaints from businesses and the San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau stepped up a few weeks ago as clutter grew around the area.

“It’s a handful of complaints, but I normally don’t get any,” Downtown Operations director Paula Stallcup said.

The Magik Theatre, a youth education outfit near the gazebo, complained about the protesters using its commercial garbage pickup service, but its executive director, Richard Rosen, said his main worry was his teachers’ concerns about students seeing the eccentrically dressed group.

“This has nothing to do with political views — I find some of them right — but it does impede some of the things we do as a business, so I’m kind of conflicted,” Rosen said. “They’ve all been very nice. One guy said, ‘I’ve been a mechanic for 18 years and can I help you get your car started?’ So that was great.”

Across the street, guests at the Fairmount Hotel and its restaurant also have complained, sales director Jessica Vargas said.

“It’s just been obnoxious more than anything,” she said. “I just feel like these people don’t know what they’re protesting, and people are walking up and down the street and they’re in their face causing all kinds of craziness.”

But the activity has drawn more business, she said, with people inquiring about what was going on and then staying for lunch.

Occupiers debated the post-encampment future of their movement and decided to work in shifts to keep a 24-hour presence at the park while a committee looks for office space to house their operational side.

“It is making my world difficult because I am homeless, but in a way, I’m glad it happened because it brings up the fake occupiers,” said a 34-year-old protester who goes by “Joker.”

The turn of events “is following somewhat of an expected trajectory” because it’s difficult for social movements to maintain aggressive protests over time, said Gabriel Acevedo, associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“In six months, Occupy S.A. will be completely off the radar, or they could become well organized, well structured, and less of a protest movement and more of a political action group,” he said.

City Council member Diego Bernal said the city was forced to stop the camping because occupiers lost control of safety and sanitation at the park.

“They were unable to hold up their end,” he said, though he added that Occupy S.A.’s relationship with City Hall is “the best of any major city in the U.S.” where the movement has appeared.

Whether that continues “remains to be seen,” he said. Protesters, for their part, are wary of further city action.

Stopping by to watch them dismantle their camp at midweek, Baum, the police commander, said of the reported crimes: “Y’all are the ones who called in 99 percent of the incidents.”

“Sorry to make more work for you,” joked construction worker Joe Ballard, 27.

“If someone dozes off, will we be arrested?” asked Lewis Williams, 43, who is unemployed.

“We’ll probably do a welfare check,” Baum said, playfully shaking Joker’s shoulder to demonstrate. “And make sure you’re OK, not having a seizure or anything.”

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Monday afternoon, San Antonio park police – who have been permissive and in some instances supportive of occupiers’ activities – approached with notices foreshadowing what could be a different chapter for them.

Each occupier got a copy of the municipal code’s camping in public section. Printed at the very top, in bold, was: “You must dismantle and remove your shelters and structures; and collect and remove your personal belongings. Continued violation will subject you to citation and possible arrest.”

“Y’all can’t camp here anymore,” Park Police Commander Steven Baum announced. “You’re making this your temporary living quarters. That is in violation of the rules.”

Baum, who in the past had nothing but praise for the “very orderly, very compliant” protestors, didn’t give them a clear-out date.

“I would move them as soon as possible,” he suggested. “All I’m trying to give you is ample warning that you are in violation.”

Frustrations ran high but were kept in check as occupiers reminded themselves that they were not being evicted but simply asked not to camp. Their consensus was to stop sleeping at the park and instead take shifts to keep it covered 24 hours a day.

“Downsize,” advised a 35-year-old occupier who goes by the name Joker. “I’m going to make it so that in less than two seconds, I can roll up and move.”

By nightfall, occupiers were taking down tarps and loading piles of everything from first-aid kits to electronics into a few vehicles. Some occupiers offered to keep the group’s belongings – including dogs – at their homes for the time being.

“It just seems like it’s going in the direction of trying to kick us out,” said construction worker Joe Ballard, 26. “How do you occupy 24 hours without sleeping?”

Camping violators will be subject to prosecution for the class C misdemeanor and a fine of up to $500, the notice stated.

Occupiers took stabs at what may have led police to crack down.

Some brought up the lack of cleanliness in their area and the bathrooms. John Meadows, 42, who said he has no other occupation, thought it may have been a few members who had erected cardboard and plywood structures when rain fell and temperatures dropped to freezing.

“They said they’d put them up in inclement weather, but it’s not that right now,” Meadows said on the 50-something degree evening. “It’s aggravating because we’ve covered that in General Assembly – we’re here because cops have been nice to us. Period.”

Meanwhile, a 30-year-old occupier who calls himself Shadow didn’t see it as a turn for the worse.

“We need to restart our movement, start protesting again,” he said. “It isn’t that Occupy gave me a park to live in; Occupy was nice enough to let me stay here while I’m working toward the betterment of our country.”

Eddie Gall, 44, a newspaper hawker on Sundays, piggybacked on the need for more action. Having 30 people at the most occupying the park at a given time is unacceptable, he said.

“We ain’t done nothing yet,” Gall said. “It’s a movement, not a stagnant.”

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“You’ve got two Coca-Colas,” the protester, Shamus McWright, added casually.

“Anyone want one?” the officer said. “Whoever can get it first …”

A few occupiers got up and teasingly ran for the soda, but let McWright, 24, limping a bit from an all-day march, claim it.

It was just another night in San Antonio’s starkly different version of the nationwide movement against concentrated wealth and power.

In other large cities, Occupy encampments and marches have sparked confrontations and arrests, concerns about trash and sanitation, occasional crime and all-around civic frustration.

Here, the protesters have bent over backward to keep peace with the city and law enforcement.

“Police have been fully cooperative, so that is why we’ve been fully cooperative with them,” said Joe Ballard, 26, a participant since the local occupation began more than five weeks ago. “That is also why, when we have extra food, we offer them something to eat.”

The occupiers that night had feasted on donated leftovers from the Diwali San Antonio Festival of Lights across the park — Indian curries, naan bread and even pizza — whose remains lay on a table at the gazebo the group uses as its pantry and People’s Library.

A garbage truck drove by and stopped in front. Occupiers gathered to dispose of their trash bags.

“Thank you, thank you very much, gentlemen,” John Simpson, 53, said, handing workers on the truck some bottled water.

Simpson, who served in the Marines, stayed up until 3 a.m. sweeping the gazebo and picking up trash, even the litter outside their area. He was awake by 7 a.m. to set up fruit, oatmeal, hot water and coffee for breakfast, and spent the next couple of hours holding signs and getting cars to honk for the cause.

Meanwhile, everyone else sat around, “chilling.” Sure, they clean the bathrooms regularly and it was a Sunday morning, but, Simpson groused, he was tired of “people just raiding food, the way people sleep like bums. If I was a tourist walking by, I’d think, ‘What a mess.’”

Simpson has had his moments — he almost took off on a walk to Oakland, Calif. — but the group itself has also come close to losing its cool.

Irked by later-than-usual notice of an event that required them to move to the other side of the park, protesters last week almost reached a consensus to stay and risk arrest.

“All I see is San Antonio sitting on its ass,” cried a 30-year-old occupier who calls himself Shadow. “There’s 20 of us here every day out of the entire city. Let’s stand up and do something!”

An hour later, though, they began moving their belongings — a decision reached through their majority-rule system. The next morning, Park Police Commander Steven Baum visited and had a very civil exchange.

“They’ve been real good,” Baum said. “They don’t disrupt traffic, they don’t disrupt any events here. You can’t really complain about it.”

City Councilman Diego Bernal said city officials don’t want conflict and, for the most part, neither do the occupiers.

“One thing that really sets this group apart is, I think, they have the best relationship with city government of any Occupy group in any major city in the U.S.,” he said.

Individual flare-ups bother him — they’re not representative of the entire group, he said.

“They’re presenting a situation like impending war,” Bernal said. “If you want Oakland, go to Oakland. This is not Oakland.”

Since the near-encounter, police have been “a lot more lenient,” acknowledged occupier Jeremy Lockridge, 32, a medical assistant at Girling Health Care.

Temperatures down to the mid-30s have been bearable so far, Lockridge said, but with colder weather, the group may decide to tarp off the gazebo. City ordinances forbid camping there — meaning personal belongings, cooking, and yes, tarps — but Baum says “it’s a discretionary deal.”

But they’re not welcome everywhere.

When two dozen occupiers and veterans marched to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Friday, some vets who were already there, including Stan “Doc” Sellers, 64, who served as a U.S. Navy medic, didn’t want them around.

“You beat the drum when you come and we’re holding a quiet moment — you all are disrespectful!” said Sellers, raising his voice. “You all want to protest, go somewhere else!”

He flagged down a passing police car and Officer Trey Turner stepped in: “I don’t care, as long as we all get along. Why can’t we all just get along?”

The dust-up ended like others have. The Occupy S.A. delegation stood on the sidewalk quietly and finally left without a sound.

“We have to be able to have a strategy of calmness and peace — that is why you have mediators,” said one of them, G.M. Briggs, 63, a former military nurse who cooks for occupiers on weekdays. “You can’t do things without leadership.”

Since Oct. 6, the group has been led by “facilitators” who, for all their insistence that they are not leaders, have gotten things done.

But the core group has dwindled from a peak of about 80 a few weeks ago to half that number, said Andrew Duran, 21, who takes calls at a Pizza Hut.

“A lot of people left because of contention within the group, and because it’s disorganized,” he said. “We’ve had meetings about it, about getting organized, but the meetings themselves have been disorganized.”

Indeed, organization appears to be the biggest difference between Occupy S.A. and sister movements — aside from the obvious, size, said Gabriel Acevedo, a University of Texas at San Antonio associate professor of sociology.

Occupy S.A. is “much more grass-roots and seems to be less orchestrated” than the movements in New York and Oakland, he said.

“Most social movements start out small and if they’re successful in mobilizing, can have greater impact on social change,” Acevedo said. “History has shown us you can’t count them out.”

Occupy S.A. may have made history in one way, with a wedding last week. The bride and groom, both 19 and occupiers since day one, gathered the guests together in Occupy fashion: “Mic check! … Mic check! We’re about to cut the cake … we’re about to cut the cake.”

The newlyweds spent the night at their apartment, but came back the next day.

“We can’t stand to be away from everybody; everybody is like family,” said the bride, Victoria Rodriguez. “Family is going to have bumps on the road, but we get through them

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After a month of complying with law enforcement requests in the name of keeping their protest peaceful, Occupy San Antonio members came close to joining other movements nationwide that have a record of arrests.

In the end, most of the several dozen protestors decided to comply with an order by two San Antonio Park Police officers delivered around noon Monday to move their stuff from the gazebo area at HemisFair Park by 5 a.m. the next morning so it could be power-washed for an event.

Police usually show the occupiers an event permit and give them 48 hours to vacate. More than a handful of occupiers at HemisFair Park made a cry to stay put and risk arrest instead of move near the playground as they have a few times before.

“I’m only leaving in handcuffs in a police car,” shouted an occupier who goes by the name Shadow, 30.

By midnight, however, the group had reached a 90 percent consensus to move their things. A few occupiers still refused and the rest maintained a physical presence, prepared to confront police with signs and chants.

They grew more irritated when they found out the event, starting at 6 a.m., was an hour-long 5K run for the Texas Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers annual conference.

Nobody was arrested. Park Police Commander Steven Baum showed up at 7 a.m. to say there had been a miscommunication he hoped to avoid in the future.

“I have nothing but praise for you — you have been very orderly, very compliant,” he said. “When there’s an event, you respect the rights of others. I appreciate that.”

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Several generous globs of rice, Creole seafood gumbo, dipping biscuits, fresh salad and oh, don’t forget dessert — caramel-coated popcorn balls, a Louisiana delicacy.

Never mind that they’re served on disposables and utensils are scarce. Sitting cross-legged on the ground in HemisFair Park at Occupy San Antonio’s encampment, Marty “Mac” McMillan pronounced it “delicious!”

“It’s warm, home-cooked food made with love,” the 41-year-old disabled U.S. Navy veteran said, putting his lips to the foam bowl and scooping some up with a crab leg. “She wants to do this, and you can taste it, so we’re very lucky.”

“She” is G.M. Briggs, owner of Variety Fine Foods & Caterers, the self-appointed chief cook for the group that formed here one month ago as part of a nationwide wave of protests against America’s growing inequality of wealth and power.

The several-dozen permanent occupiers now expect Briggs to show up almost without fail on weekday evenings. They hustle to carry and help set up her two rice cookers and trays of Creole fare.

She’s hard to miss, but even so, they spread the word in their systematic way: with the words “Mic check!” cueing all to carefully repeat what is said so all can hear it.

“Mic check! … Mic check! If you haven’t gotten food … if you haven’t gotten food. Come over here … come over here.”

Clad in an “Occupy S.A.” apron and chef’s hat, Briggs, 63, said she was “here for the long haul.”

“They hug me, they kiss me, they treat me like gold and make me feel a part of this very important cause,” she said.

Dinner at the encampment, as a result, is often a gourmet affair. Breakfast and lunch, on the other hand, are rarely hot meals. The donations come mostly from nearby independently owned restaurants and occasionally from franchise operations, said John Simpson, 53, who’s taken it upon himself to coordinate food.

It might have something to do with the movement’s often-articulated fight against the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent, but Simpson said corporations tend to refer his requests to their central offices and so far haven’t donated a single ice cube.

“That is pretty much what we’re fighting against — the money doesn’t filter down to the people,” Simpson said.

Simpson will give a snack to stray homeless people, but he sleeps next to the food supply to keep gluttons out.

“I get up at 7 a.m. and don’t get to bed till 3 a.m. — and keep one eye open,” he said.

Always up for grabs, though, are items he puts out on the refreshment table, like peanut butter and jelly for sandwiches and produce from places like Green Vegetarian Cuisine.

“It’s better than what I normally would be eating at home because it’s fresh vegetables and fruit,” said Blake Markgraf, 21, unemployed since his seasonal job ended at 13th Floor Haunted House. Others, like retired electrician Julio Gonzales, 59, retreat to McDonald’s for comfort.

“If we were allowed to cook here, that would be great. I’d make egg benedicts for everyone,” he said, settling for a slice of vegan cake. “I just saw my doctor, and he said I lost eight pounds.”

What’s available in the pantry is a matter of concern for Briggs, a retired military nurse who is determined to upgrade the stock.

“I’m gonna make sure they get a bottle of multivitamins,” she said. “Because a lot of them are vegetarian, and I’m sure they’re not eating properly.”

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