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Archives by Tag 'Occupy Oakland'
As the Occupy movement around the country begins to get more involved in immigrant struggles, or around the struggles of people of color more generally, complicated questions of race and risk, tactics and differential legal consequences for people of color are arising. ...
“The Bay Area Occupy Movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground,” said Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking at a press conference Saturday evening after a day of demonstrations called by Occupy Oakland that saw approximately 400 arrests, multiple injuries...
The Bay Area has always been the outlier in American politics, often for the better and occasionally for the worse. In the case of Occupy, the Bay Area’s unique situation highlights the challenges facing the movement from both its relative “left” and “right” ...
The Sonoma County daily’s Press Democrat Feb. 1 editorial “Occupy Movement in Ashes” is wishful thinking. Our phoenix will rise during this month. You wait. You watch. You see.
Occupy is still an infant, having been born in New York Sept. 17 with Occupy Wall ...
The night of January 28th in Oakland left me feeling angry. I felt anger toward police for brutalizing people in the streets, illegally kettling protesters, and collectively punishing the entire march with indiscriminate use of chemical weapons and projectiles. I felt...
A crowd of several hundred quickly swelled to a couple thousand, as Occupy Oakland attempted to occupy the vacant Kaiser Convention Center. The goal was to use it as an indoor base for Occupy Oakland – a place to have General Assemblies and meetings, share food and ge...
As winter sets in, the Occupy Movement nationwide confronts a new series of challenges. Conspiring with the weather, however, is the threat of a shifting policing model currently being tested out in Oakland.
Coercive Attrition
The Italian Co...
Throughout the first several weeks of Occupy Oakland’s existence the analysis and discussion at the General Assembly and elsewhere has been about the need to construct an entirely different social order. It is not so much that “the system is broken” but that it is...
On November 16 about two-hundred and fifty Oaklanders convened a general assembly in the city’s central square, Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant Plaza. It was yet another experiment in direct democracy, one of many public meetings held since the city’s encampment was e...
For the Occupy movement, as in battlefield of the narrative, whose story is being told, whose perspective is the dominant frame, who are perceived to be the heroes and villains, the criminals and victims, is crucial.
Remember when the stock market crashed in late 2...
Despite the recent series of brutal and highly coordinated military-style police crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country, protestors, activists, students, and workers have boldly geared up for a new round of what promise to be furious political bat...
What a welcome relief the Occupy movement’s trend of “leaderless” groups! True, this seemingly contradictory concept is difficult to absorb in a culture the promotes a leadership style that models the strongest, loudest, most persistent, and most vocal monopolizing ...
A young man was shot dead outside Occupy Oakland in a dispute with a group of men Thursday afternoon. At a vigil for the young man Thursday night, on the one month commemoration of the occupation, nerves are frayed both by the violence many witnessed earlier and the lik...
Even if a full General Strike and shut down of the city did not happen, the sheer audacity of Occupy Oakland’s reach drew international media attention and inspired activists around the world, spotlighting the imaginable if the not-yet achieved.
The Occupy Genera...
As an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley in the late 1980s, I did not visit the nearby city of Oakland very frequently. For the most part, I was ensconced in my own student circles and, to the extent that I got involved in politics, it was the local ca...
“Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children….”
These were Father Daniel Berrigan’s words when he was on trial in 1969 for a draft board raid in Catonsville, Maryland. He and eight others had...
On the morning of October 25, police from nearly twenty law enforcement agencies descended upon the Occupy Oakland encampment located outside city hall. They removed its occupants using chemical weapons, and arrested nearly 100 people before destroying the encampment. The...
In a heavily armed pre-dawn raid, on Tuesday, Oct. 25, with back up from armored vehicles and helicopters, the Oakland Police Department in conjunction, with over 15 other police departments from Northern and Central California, stormed the sleepy Occupy Oakland Encampmen...
The 1946 Oakland general strike began with a dispute at two downtown department stores, Hastings’ and Kahn’s, where 425 clerks (mostly women) were on strike for union recognition.
The strike, a landmark event in Northern California labor history, was also a sig...
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Oct. 25, the heavily armed Oakland Police Department in conjunction, with 16 other police departments from all over Northern and Central California, stormed the Occupy Oakland Encampment, fully dressed in helmets, and riot gear, and ...
Occupy Oakland won a resounding Oct. 26 victory by mobilizing 3000 people to respond to a police riot. They took down the police fence that exiled them from the plaza in front of city hall, set up tents again, and returned to dancing and receiving massage and acupuncture ...
“…or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
-Amendment 1
This law that I believe all police swear to uphold has been vi...
[Mike is reporting from the ground in Oakland, former Oakland resident George contributed political analysis]
A major victory has been won. For only the second time in Oakland’s recent political history, mass action in the street has forced the hand of c...
Marine Scott Olsen made it through two tours in Iraq without an injury, but back home in the United States he was critically wounded by a police riot. Heavily-armed police injured Olsen and other unarmed citizens on Oct. 25 when they attacked the non-violent Occupy Oaklan...