During Tuesday’s Los Angeles City Council meeting, where the most scintillating item on the agenda was a proposal to increase ticket prices at the L.A. Zoo, a speaker stood up and told lawmakers they were ignoring an obvious fact: “You are surrounded by tents.” He was referring to the large group of protesters camped a few hundred feet away, on a grassy lawn outside City Hall. The group, which calls itself Occupy L.A., has been there since Saturday in a demonstration against economic policies that benefit corporations and the wealthiest Americans. The speaker, a well-known political gadfly named John Walsh,...