Who knew that the People’s Republic of San Francisco would be more advanced than New York in the sweet science of rousting protesters? Martha Bridegam of Lodging in Public, that’s who.

San Francisco Police Department and Department of Public Works are using the same tactics toward the protest encampment that they do toward all encampments: property sweeps, second-day cleanup property sweeps, repeat property sweeps wherever the “swept” people next set down, all punctuated by actual or threatened citations for offenses like littering and lodging in public…

I don’t find it “mystifying” at all why San Francisco’s municipal attitude toward the “occupy” protesters is meaner than in, say, Los Angeles or Seattle. It’s because San Francisco is institutionally accustomed to cleansing the appearance of disorder from all of its public spaces. This isn’t about politics, or rather, it’s not about party politics though it is political in a deeper sense. The city has just put its usual cleansing machinery in operation. The particular people being cleansed today are organized, at least partly middle-class, and intentionally making a political a point. That, and I suppose the scale of the rousting, are the only differences from every other damn day of the year…

SFPD reportedly took the Occupy SF demonstrators’ tents and sleeping bags last night. When the police were beginning to bear down, the demonstrators put out a call on #OccupySF to the public to express concern. I was one of, apparently, many who called. The officer on the line at Southern Station was unfailingly polite but also clearly busy with other calls. He was very much aware that the station’s phone number had “been tweeted.” As he got me to admit, it’s true SFPD is better than many police forces when it comes to crowd control.

But—

The demonstrators report the police really did take all of their camping gear, even, they say, homeless people’s possessions. And we were between rainstorms at the time. We had torrential rain all the earlier part of this morning after daybreak. Also, briefly, hailstones.