Pre-Occupied in Oakland

Shields made out of trash cans
protect Occupy Oakland warriors

Occupy Oakland is back in the streets an up against what is arguably the most vicious police force in the USA.And O.P.D. is once again up to its old tricks.

Saturday's march was called "Move-in Day and the plan was a takeover of a deserted commercial space to convert it into a community center where all sorts of activities like workshops, films and meals could take place. Granted, it was a bit of an overreach but a center of this kind would be a wonderful opportunity for outreach to the various communities of Oakland.

The march atmosphere was more animated and festive than most political protests. Seasoned Occupiers held makeshift shields made of garbage cans with peace signs or anarchy symbols painted on them. The sight of them under a  mobile row of Tibetan prayer flags gave the whole event the air of a fiesta in Latin America.  

Many marchers, including myself and my partner, had no idea where the chosen building was located. It was kept secret to prevent the police from interfering with the plan. The problem was that many police actually knew more than the marchers did.

There were quite a few logistical errors associated  with the selection of the mammoth Henry J. Kaiser convention center building as a move-in target, the biggest one being the construction occurring on the roadway beside the building along with the cyclone fences in front of it. The two rows of cyclone fencing created a trap for those of us directly behind the police line and in front of the building. When the cops started throwing flash-bang grenades and announced that we had one minute to disperse, there was nowhere to go.

Some folks had pulled apart the fencing as far as it would allow, creating a triangular hole that one person at a time could squeeze through. The young people were very thoughtful and courteous and let their aged comrades (Deborah and I) through almost at once. Fortunately for all of us, the cops held off on resorting to stronger weapons on their captive audience and after some sound and fury everyone was allowed to move on.

Just around the corner a few minutes later, the larger confrontations began and some of the trash-can warriors not only held their ground, but actually began advancing on the police. That is when the smoke bombs and teargas canisters began exploding and all hell broke loose.

The mass arrests didn't occur until later in the evening and I can't report on them first hand because we departed in the afternoon. On Sunday at a gathering in Oscar Grant Plaza, I learned that nearly four hundred people were surrounded by police and arrested outside of the Oakland YMCA in direct violation of their first amendment rights although the YMCA did help quite a few folks escape through their back door. Police claim their intentions were illegal ones, i.e.: the intent to take over a building. So, I guess it's official: thought crime is now against the law.

The mainstream media is making much ado over a flag-burning inside Oakland City Hall. It's helping Jean Quan  acquire much-needed political capital by championing her motherly protection of the city from wild and crazy radicals.

Supervisor Ignacio De La Fuente wins the award, hands down, for scariest politician. He has called the Occupy protests "domestic terrorism." Now you know how they're planning to use the National Defense Authorization Act. Indeterminate detention with no right to trial. I see a bleak image is appearing in my crystal ball...

This is What Authoritarianism Looks Like

The repression is coordinated, systematic. The rulers are small and centralized, often comprising an elite body of the privileged. There is massive and widespread corruption and free speech is actively discouraged, often with inappropriate and disproportionate displays of force. Subjection and submission to authority is its key premise designed to silence all vocal opposition to the status quo.  

Whether or not this repression emanates from the Homeland Security Department or more locally at the city, county and state level, this is authoritarianism we are witnessing in both the highly orchestrated destruction of Occupy encampments throughout the country and the brutal force martialed against unarmed, non-violent demonstrators.Oakland mayor, Jean Quan admitted to being part of a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities. This systematic effort to quash a nacent political movement doesn't have to be federally mandated to qualify as the machinery of organized suppression. Authoritarianism isn't quite fullblown facism but it is a major way station along that slippery slope.

Police brutality is steadily increasing in response to the growing Occupy Movement. The pepper spraying of UC Davis students followed closely on the heels of the baton beatings on the UC Berkeley campus. Countrywide the police response is intensifying in its brutality. The viral video of police pepper spraying young students sitting in a peaceful row on the quad at UC Davis is just another appalling example of this trend. Watching the students with linked arms huddled in the onslaught of this totally unprovoked chemical attack is a radicalizing experience in and of itself. Learning later that those who refused to separated their  were sprayed in their faces and down their throats, causing people to cough up blood and be hospitalized, is simply a horrifying scenario in which Guantanamo Bay comes home to roost.

The footage of this travesty is strangely moving as well. It harkens back to sit ins in the American South during the Freedom Rides when simply by sitting at a lunch counter, protesters were subjected to coffee and food being poured over their heads. They sat still. They endured. And ultimately they triumphed.

In the recent uprisings in Cairo, CS gas, a potent form of teargas that induces vomiting and possible coma with prolonged exposure,  and rubber bullets are the main weapons of choice by the police and military. A number of protesters have lost eyes to rubber bullets, including one man who lost an eye in a battle but returned only to lose the other one in a subsequent street incident.

In the USA, we haven't arrived at that level of repression in this round of protests. I was a student at Ohio State University in 1970 the year the National Guard fired live ammunition at anti-Vietnam war demonstrators killing four. That same year two students were murdered by police in a women's dormitory at Jackson State College in Mississippi. So, not only can it happen here. It has.

After the pepper-spray incident when UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi walked out to her car, the path was lined with hundreds of silent onlookers bearing witness to one of the many knowing and naive accomplices who are institutionalizing oppression by claiming ignorance or just following orders. Either way, it is our constitutional right to democratic expression of dissent that gets sprayed, beaten and trampled upon.