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Photo by AnkaKarewicz, taken on October 29, 2011.
Raw video of today’s melee and a preliminary report from KTVU local news.
For the past few weeks, the Oakland Police Department has harassed occupiers whenever and wherever they find us. After the last raid on the camp at Oscar Grant Plaza, they initially said we could re-occupy the plaza from 6 AM to 10 PM – which also happens to be legal, but legality often seems beside the point with OPD. For the past few weeks, they have steadily harassed occupiers during daylight hours, making up New Rules as they went along (Bill Maher would be proud). No food, no umbrellas, no bikes, no no no no no. Unless you are not an occupier, of course. Your garden variety homeless person not affiliated with OO is free to sleep in the plaza; your upstanding citizen picnickers are free to bring food; your Chamber of Commerce types can walk through with their umbrellas. Some day I hope the National Lawyers Guild or the ACLU will have a field day filing selective enforcement lawsuits.
This afternoon about a dozen cops gathered to ostensibly remove the tree-sitter who re-occupied the tree a couple of days ago. Another 10 or so cops advanced on the vigil and began dismantling the kitchen. What they weren’t prepared for is that about 100 of us DFHs had mobilized and were ready to defend our right to have a fucking card table with some fucking bagels and some fucking orange slices on it if we fucking wanted to – and to fucking gather around that table and talk without the fucking pigs interfering.
But OPD doesn’t believe we have that right. They came in and began randomly arresting people, to the point of chasing them and throwing them down. The video above starts after they had already arrested people at the vigil and then retreated to the edge of the plaza. This police-instigated melee eventually moved out into the street; a man whose van was blocked got out and became very abusive with occupiers. He did not get arrested; the person he verbally abused did. A total of ten people were arrested and nobody seems to have any idea why, with the exception of a news report that indicated one person would be charged with assault. Police finally retreated; I expect them to come back tonight after most people – and the local news – have left.
30 Comments
TEN FEET! TEN FEET! (see video)
I think maybe that should be our new chant when the police come around, instead of “go home.”
The art is fucking awesome, carol. Aren’t the skellybones making the General Assembly sign of ‘blocking’ as in: forget it! ?
With the rounded triangular buildings in the background, and the eerie light of the lamps…that one says a fucking lot, doesn’t it? And the poise; I kinda hate to watch the video and see the still shot take motion. Hard to take my eyes off of it.
‘Police finally retreated.’ Hmmm. Whew.
Shades of Alice’s Restaurant:
“What’er you in for?”
“Sitting in a tree.”
“Defending my card table.”
How much adrenaline is left in you? Thank you, carol, for being there for those of who can’t be. And love to you,
wd
I cannot WAIT until the spring, this shit is going to just get bigger and bigger. My court date is Jan 3, I will probably have to “be good” for 3 months, meaning no more arrests.
Random arrests for no apparent reason. Might that be the new tactic for the purpose of intimidation?
Yikes, the adrenaline just made me hit “flag” instead of “reply.” Hopefully the “unflag” worked. The photo is something I just found on flickr and although it was taken in Oakland, it’s something I have not seen before. It’s from way back on October 29, after an earlier round of police brutality. There is no shortage of that here. Can’t wait to see what sort of signs come out for tomorrow night’s march to the police station. We are having a “noise demo” to let those in jail know that we have not forgotten about them.
Thanks for the update, Carol.
Are those shields, or just signs? I.E., do they offer any protection?
Echoing Wendy, the graphic is awesome. I expect the city council to move at once to outlaw them.
Not to sound melodramatic, but you guys are heroes.
“Let them go!”
Absolutely. I need to research and see if a lot of these “charges” are being dismissed or if not, what people are being cited for. The cops seem to be using whatever means they can concoct to intimidate, harass and discourage us from assembling.
bgrothus, I wish you the best of luck at your court date. Can you expand a little on the “be good for three months” comment? I am curious because the cops are targeting people over and over and somebody on some thread somewhere mentioned not being allowed to go back to certain places. Do they make that some sort of condition for your release or probation or whatever?
Rec’d and recommended Carol. Stay the course spring is around the corner. It’s going to be a rough winter for Occupy IMHO.
I think those are shields but I don’t know if people ended up using them, since (if I remember correctly) the cops backed off for that particular march.
Let me tell you, it feels melodramatic to be that close to the chaos. I kept getting closer, than backing away – the whole crowd was always moving and it felt like any of us could get grabbed and arrested at any time. The cops are really aggressive without regard to anyone’s size or behavior and it makes you mad and scared and it’s really a trip. We didn’t have shields or any sort of protection this time. Frankly, I kind of thought it might be a false alarm because we get a lot of calls to come down and assist the vigil and usually the cops are already gone.
I was almost relieved to see in the video that all that happened in the daylight. The night can lend some extra fright, at least for me, given the eeriness of the lighting, the shadows enlarging but obscuring shapes and…actions, I guess is the term I’m searching for.
Well, you’re a brave one, and I’m proud to know you a little bit. Get some good sleep, and I’ll write in the mornin’.
The San Francisco Chronicle has cleared up all of the confusion. Turns out most people were arrested for resisting arrest (say what?) and others were arrested for resisting the city clean-up crew and one person was arrested for trying to climb a tree. OK then. That makes perfect sense.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/30/BA7J1MJAJC.DTL&tsp=1
Once again, a great report, Carol. Rec’d. Our mayor really has some stinking sense of what the city’s priorities are. What a POS she turned out to be. And I voted for her too, though she was my second choice in the ranked voting. No matter how poor the city’s finances are, there’s always money for the cops to crush the people.
I was downtown yesterday and went by the plaza in the late afternoon – nothing was going on as far as I could tell. I wonder if you have a good source for when things are going to happen.
Thanks, Louis. Yes, Quan is certainly a POS. And those waiting in the wings for her to be recalled are probably as bad or worse. Rebecca Kaplan has been totally quiet and with the exception of Nancy Nadel, the rest of the council is worthless too.
I’m not surprised that you didn’t see anything at the plaza; unless there is a GA or some other meeting, there are usually only about a dozen people at the vigil. That’s what makes this whole thing so ridiculous – OPD is there to harass this tiny group of peaceful occupiers every single day.
There are several OO Facebook pages that I follow and we also get text messages when police action is imminent. The main FB page is facebook.com/groups/occupyoaktown/ This one is the most straightforward because only admins can post and they try to keep it on topic and post mostly announcements.
Thanks for the info. I’ll make a point to stop by more often in general. I read your post to my wife and she got a real kick out of the last sentence in the second paragraph (with all the fucks). As did I :) You have a natural gift.
p.s. I’m disappointed in Rebecca Kaplan too, as well as Jane Brunner. Not surprised at Brunner – she only does anything when the whole neighborhood makes a lot of noise – very much an Establishment type.
Thanks, that was fun to write. I was feeling a little profane after jousting with the cops over those bagels.
I hope you and your wife both stop by. There is a calendar on the OO website (occupyoakland.org) so you can see what’s going on.
Best paragraph:
Apparently the police feel that they are entitled to a job and job security unlike you. Maybe they feel that they need to steal your bagels since they bargained away theirs?
Yup, mzchief, that’s probably right. Those pensions are such a sticky wicket. Back when they used to protect and serve the 99%, it probably seemed worth it to pay them the big bucks and give them good benefits, especially in a dangerous city like Oakland. Now their pensions are bankrupting the city. Former police chief Batts left with a $250K pension for life – and I think he’s pretty young so that’s a lotta dough. The City Manager makes around $250K a year too. So they can still afford their own bagels.
Edited to add: not sure I can actually remember a time when OPD protected and served the 99% but it’s a warm and fuzzy thought, ain’t it.
Yes, they bar people from going to the site of the arrest, for one thing. They also impose a general “3 months rule” that bars arrest for 3 months, or go to jail for indeterminate amount of time.
The plot thickens: one young woman arrested yesterday at the plaza has been charged with an obscure 1933 California law: 405a, “lynching,” which has been broadened to include “any participation in riotous conduct aimed at freeing a person from the custody of a peace officer.” Susie Cagle explains: http://susie-c.tumblr.com/post/15105973656/an-extrajudicial-execution
More videos and info here, including the one of us attempting to shelter the kitchen with the giant banner: https://www.facebook.com/events/317849544912906/
Are you in California, bgrothus?
I wonder why there needs to be “executives” in cities and why the “executive compensation”– which looks way out of line in yours. In the big Ponzi scheme of things, the point has been made that it can’t be proven that police prevent crime but it does appear that there is a systematic relationship with it from control fraud on down the line (Austin-Fitts is talking about cocaína [lampoon from Bedazzled (2000)]; a great article on a control fraud scheme by ProPublica.Org in its #MuckReads section is here).
@ hotflashcarol December 30th, 2011 at 11:30 pm:
Check out documentation on NYPD’s action tonight EST against marchers and the press shutout in Manhattan as police arrest first without cause then folks get to find out what they’re charged with. You can review TimCast’s Twitter stream first for any called out video sections (for example, tonight’s arrest of a minor for no cause) then review the video footage itself.
Oh dear, what can the matter be?
Carol’s so long at the fair…
(We can only hope she’s busy watchin’ the Raiders play that silly game in which ambulances figure prominently…)
I have it on good authority that carol is fine as can be expected, still fightin’ the good fight, and is writin’ up events from today at Oscar Grant Plaza. (for some background) (not to be a blog-whore, but…):
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/w/e/wendy_davis/2010/07/oscar-grant-is-dead-the-verdic.php
Thank you, Wendy. Your link provides a lot of good information. I did not link to all of that in my new diary because I felt like one diary can only contain so much sadness. But I would encourage anyone who doesn’t already know this story to read it, especially anyone with an interest in current events at Occupy Oakland. What happened to Oscar Grant necessarily informs protest and activism in Oakland. It is only the most recent, most egregious example of police brutality and repression in our fair city.
Mzchief, thank you for the links. I am going to read them as soon as the wine wears off. Today was good, and hard. Happy New Year. :)