I arrived at the front of the Laurel Street art around 9:30 am. Here is my assesment of the scene: Ther appears to be about 20 US Marshalls, some armed with guns, some wearing what appears to be bullet proof vests. They were generally being pretty mellow, just standing around... When they were going to take down the antenna, the Head US Marshall, a woman who did not identify herself at that time warned us that they were taking down the antenna in 5 minutes and that they would not be responsible if the antenna fell on our heads. She said she would be making a statement in 2 hours. This was about 10:00 am. This seemed like more of a power trip than anything else. Apparently only the sidewalk region was vulnerable to people getting knocked over the head via antenna. She didn't look at the antenna, and from my perspective, I couldn't see how the antenna could fall on our heads. The angle seemed inplausible..

Of course the antenna came down with no hitches nowhere close to anyone's head who may have been on the sidewalk.

There was a large crowd of Free Radio Supporters numbering around 100+ with a lot of people coming and going. A lot of community support was noticed with many cars, garbage trucks, buses, and city worker's honking in support of the radio station. I saw nobody there who was in favor of the FCC or it's action.

There were 4 FCC agents that I saw at one point going into their unmarked work truck to get out boxes and such to take the equipment. This was the only time I saw the FCC agents. There may have been more agents, but I didn't see them.

The head US Marshall, at around 11:00 am, came after one of the people in the crowd who fairly easily evaded her, she was heard saying "why are you scared of me", but then she quickly stopped persuing him and ran back into the property after the crowd of people got involved. That was really strange.

The warrant (issued by the US Disctrict Attorney) states that they are seizing the equipment for 101.1 and had the authority to search the house for the equpiment. The house is a large communal house, I've heard that many people's stuff was searched through who just lived in the house and some people were really disturbed and upset by this.

As far as I could tell, the US Marshalls were allowing people who lived in the house to come and go, they seemed to be escorted to their rooms.

I saw many local TV stations there as well as most local media.

Word on the street was that Free Radio Santa Cruz would be back on the air within hours! We can only hope that that is true!! This is such an assult on such an important and innovative source of information, entertainment, and experimentation. It's an assult on a community-accepted legitimate form of expression, the only radio station that talked about local politics, with local politicians and community members. Maybe you didn't agree with everything they said. I certainly did not! But I'd rather hear an opinion and disagree with it than to not hear that opinion at all. That's how opinions change, that's how dialog happens, that's how new things come about. It's called free speech. It's free! It's our right!