While the Occupy Movement energy seems to have dissipated in many cities, Oakland is keeping it alive. Yesterday a demonstration turned nasty.

In the video below, the cops seem to be enjoying themselves as they point their guns in the direction of the protesters. As the rifle-toting bulls laugh themselves silly, I wonder if they really have any idea as to who they are protecting and from what? These images remind me of the People’s Park demonstrations of 1969. I see the same arrogance and ignorance in the faces of the cops I saw four decades ago. And the kids on the streets protesting are as idealistic and determined as the cops are clueless. The only difference this time around is the movement will not be stopped.

Oakland Local reports:

Occupy Oakland organizers envisioned this weekend as a “move-in day” which would allow them to rechristen the controversial movement by occupying a vacant building and turning it into a “social center.” Flyers distributed Saturday at a noontime rally at Frank Ogawa (aka Oscar Grant) Plaza announced an ambitious schedule of musical performances, arts & crafts, workshops on foreclosure defense, gender dynamics, and bike repair, forums, and a film festival.

The Oakland Police Department, however, had other plans. As a crowd estimated at around 1,000 people marched Eastward from the Plaza, toward Laney College, more than 50 police officers in riot gear began to trail them from the rear. One woman was arrested when she fell behind police lines, and officers pushed an elderly man to the ground, though he was not arrested.

As the crowd massed at Laney and crossed a wooden bridge, more officers converged from other sides, blocking exits to city streets. Several tense stand-offs ensued, although the tension was broken somewhat by the humorous sight of a man sitting in a chair telling the police he wanted to revise the chant from “F—-the police” to “F—- police brutality.”

The march continued on to East 10th, where more police were sighted, then up 12th Street, near Fallon, close to the location of the move-in target, the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. A ring of riot police, some wielding shotguns, others with batons, guarded the facility. After a protestor moved a fence, police deployed tear gas into the crowd, then declared unlawful assembly.

After several tense minutes, the marchers moved West on 12th, then South on Oak Street. Another showdown ensued in front of the Oakland Museum. A line of police stood at 10th Street, and marchers with homemade shields began to advance on them. Before they could get close, however, OPD let off a fusillade of CS canisters, flash-bang grenades, and beanbag pellets into the crowd. The wind blew most of the tear gas back into the police line, but the demonstration of firepower proved effective, and the crowd retreated.

A cat-and-mouse-game then ensured for the next hour, as police slowly pushed the marchers back to the Plaza. There were several arrests as police advanced, but very few instances of violence and few if any acts of aggression against police. Unlike other Occupy Oakland marches, there were no projectiles or liquids thrown at police. By 4 p.m., the march, still several hundred strong, had returned to Ogawa Plaza, awaiting further actions.

Earlier in the day, organizer Adam Jordan outlined the vision of what Occupy Oakland had hoped to accomplish. “The move-in day is hypothetically and hopefully going to be a multi-use center with free school workshops, free food, free meals, and a meeting place to have for Oakland, for the people, by the people. We see the need to help other people. Going through the system has not been working for a lot of people.”

Occupy Oakland’s positive aspects, Jordan said, were often not looked at “because of the rhetoric from City Hall.” The movement, he said, was here “to make it better for everybody.”`

Moreover, he said, the movement is worldwide. “If anyone has an Internet connection, they’ll realize they now have an Occupy Nigeria, an Occupy Taiwan, and Occupy London, an Occupy Netherlands.I met a guy from Occupy Edmonton…this is a world movement. You think it might go away here, it’ll come back like a weed, because it’s everywhere.”

This footage just uploaded to YouTube by brettnchls captures just one skirmish on a day when there were many. At the 2:05 mark someone appears to be injured and protesters are calling out for a medic. If anyone thinks tear gas cannisters, smoke bombs, flash bang grenades or rubber bullets are relatively harmless, try getting hit by one in the face.
 

Poster by Chris Shaw.
 
“Revolution Über Alles” by The Who Boys mashes up The Dead Kennedys’ California Über Alles” and Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

This mashup is several years old but couldn’t be timelier. I put together some clips of recent police action during Occupy Oakland/Berkeley to further bring it into the moment.
 

 
Zennie Abraham, a blogger at Veterans Today, has lived in Oakland since 1974 and believes that the crowd estimate of the Occupy Oakland General Strike provided by Oakland police is way off. Abraham claims the crowd was much closer to 100,000 than the official count of 7000.

You can’t take a snapshot of an event like this, because of its time length; you have to think of it as a dynamic. In any population there are births, deaths, in-migration, and out-migration. For the Occupy Oakland General Strike, there were no births, thankfully no deaths, but a lot of in-migration and out-migration.

What was so amazing about the size of the crowd both inside the plaza and just outside of it, then marching to the Port of Oakland, was that it did not decrease in size; it increased. And that was with some people leaving it, and others coming in from BART and from around Oakland via foot or other parts of the Bay by car.

For that to happen all day long and considering the capacity of the plaza and the crowds outside of it points to 100,000 people. I’ve never seen anything like that in the entire history of this city.

And that is why it must be said that much of the media should be drawn and quartered for the most irresponsible coverage I’ve ever seen. Many outlets just waited for something bad to happen, or looked for it. But there were so many people more having a great time, that whatever happened was far away from downtown Oakland.

The Whole Foods Oakland Facility is on 27th and Harrison and outside of downtown Oakland, and a good mile away from City Hall Plaza. But to the media eye, the vandalism that happened there made headlines. Let’s just get this out of the way: it should not have happened, but that’s no excuse to get the whole story wrong.

The video below is all the proof anyone would need that the official numbers were way, way off, but 100,000? Oakland’s population is around 300,000, even accounting for the folks who came in from the rest of the Bay area (population 4.5 million) to march, that’s still probably too high a number to be realistic. Still, I’m willing to go along with a tally that’s several times higher than what the Oakland police—and the mainstream media—told us.

What’s important to remember as you watch the size of these marching masses, is that less than two months have passed since Occupy Wall Street began. It’s only going to get more interesting from here on out.
 

 
Above, a bird’s eye view of a static crowd of 90,000 people at the Rose Bowl posted by redditter BdotTS.
 

 
Via reddit

 
The footage in the video below recalls some of what I was witness to and part of during the People’s Park protest and riots in May of 1969 in Berkeley, California.

I’m a pacifist but I understand there comes a point when the destruction of the symbols of oppression and exploitation that represent the institutions that have robbed us of our freedom and human rights becomes an inevitable part of any political insurrection that has as its goal radical social change. We need to pour some sugar in the gas tank of the fascist limousine. Systems need to be derailed. You can start by dropping a steaming turd in the night deposit box at your neighborhood Bank Of America. Consider it customer feedback.

Insurrection is the unwelcome guest at the party none of us were invited to but we all intend to crash. Revolution wears a tank top and shows up at your door with a chainsaw and a peace sign.

Revolutions are vital but unpredictable.They’re in a constant state of updating themselves and we never know just what form they’re gonna take. They’re human and in constant flux. Change changes. And revolution is change. It can come as an organic spontaneous eruption hitting as much as it misses or as a mystical constellation of galvanizing points of energy that no one comprehends but everyone understands. Perhaps it will come in the form of methodical, precise, surgical strikes that cripple the components that animate the machinery of tyranny. However it comes, its intent should be to send a clear, uncompromising and fear-inducing signal to the powers that be that we will no longer tolerate injustice or continue to feed the insatiable appetite of the greed-driven 1% as they systematically corporatize our planet, consume our resources, and control our lives.

It is important to recognize that the attention violent actions generate, even when the targets are inanimate objects, is not automatically the kind of attention that benefits a protest movement in its infancy.

Finding the balance between fucking the system and fucking ourselves is the art of revolution. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing regimes topple with minimal damage done to the activists who put their lives on the line to restore the vestiges of what is left of our dwindling humanity. Martyrdom may be the stuff of myth but it’s no substitute for the liberating joy of being alive and dancing on the graves of the dictators and tyrants we’ve toppled. I’d rather live in a tipi on the front lawn of the former White House than have my dead face silk-screened on a t-shirt. 

Berkeley/Oakland has a long history of “taking it to the streets” and with that activist spirit comes the risk of non-violent demonstrations turning into riots. In my own experience of almost 45 years of being a political activist, I’ve seen protests escalate into riots when cops, working in tandem with undercover agitators planted among the protesters in carefully orchestrated scenarios, incite violence to discredit and demonize legitimate non-violent protest movements. Add to that volatile mix a bunch of shit stirrers claiming to be “anarchists” and you have the chaotic situation that occurred on November 2 in Oakland.

Abby Martin of Media Roots was on the front lines of the war in the streets of Oakland during the aftermath of the Occupy Oakland general strike and shutdown of the port on November 2, 2011.

Over 10,000 peaceful protesters successfully shut down the Port of Oakland, the fifth largest port in the country at 8pm earlier that night. About two hours later, the anarchist “Black Bloc” came to downtown, smashing windows of banks and setting trash cans on fire.

The Oakland PD in full riot gear lined up and marched toward the now out of control rally. They started firing smoke grenades and tear gas into the crowd of people, to which people starting throwing bottles and other objects back to the police.

After the crowd scattered, the police lined up and starting to close in and arrest the remaining protesters at the Occupy Oakland camp.

The OWS movement is getting to that point where mere words and picnics in city parks must and will be replaced by militant action. Those actions need to be well-thought-out, organized and the product of a democratic process. We need to apply steady and continued pressure on our so-called government to either align itself with the people or get the fuck out of the way. It is also essential that we realize there are systems in place that are just waiting to crush this movement. One critical thing that is working in our favor is that while the cops may have the guns I think they’re starting to realize they don’t have the power - they’re on the wrong side of history. When they start seeing their neighbors, children and parents standing in the front lines of the OWS movement, their loyalties will shift and shift swiftly. Pigs are the most intelligent of the barnyard animals.

And to the “anarchists”, I say “fuck off!” You’ve never figured into any successful social uprising at any point in history, now or ever. You are to the revolution what porn is to sex.
 

 
Watch in amazement as a privileged asshole in a Mercedes deliberately hits two pedestrian protesters in Oakland last night with his car after he loses his patience with being caught up in the action.

The two people who were struck by this jerk were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. Incredibly, the police let this guy get away! Via Pythatgoreanism:

Eyewitnesses say that after hitting the pedestrians, the car accelerated, but was unable to break through a wall of other #occupiers, who were at critical mass. The angry crowd slowed the car to a stop, encircled it, coffee was thrown on the roof, and the driver of the white Mercedes (a white male, 18-24) switched seats with the passenger (white female, 18-24) in an apparent effort to disguise who was driving.

Once the police arrived, the crowd told the police of the drivers’ deception, and the pair sheepishly switched back to their original seats. After a moment, the driver took off. The crowd was surprised and immediately livid, shouting at the police officer, who left without addressing the crowd. Every single person at the scene was stunned that the driver could get away without being arrested. Why wasn’t the driver arrested?

Wouldn’t this be considered assault with a deadly weapon? Why was this creep allowed to leave the scene of his crime?
 

 

 
Two videos of the event, below:
 

 
Via Wonkette/Think Progress

 
Posted on reddit by lazed_and_confused with the title “The view from my Oakland office.” According to local media estimates, the crowd was approximately 12,000 strong.

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

—Bob Dylan, “Ballad of a Thin Man”

 

 
Above, the Oakland branch of Chase bank, via Diane Jenkins on Facebook.
 

 
Above, protesters gather at the Port of Oakland.
 

 
Nice banner! (via Wonkette)

There are some more evocative photos of the Oakland General Strike in a gallery at the Silicon Valley Mercury News.

 
This is a pretty incredible bit of “you were there” style video. The camera was quite near the epicenter of what was happening at Occupy Oakland on Tuesday.

You can see Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen just moments before, and after, he was felled by a projectile.

Video by Raleigh Latham.

Via Business Insider

 
Look familiar? After the horrifying events Tuesday night at Occupy Oakland that saw Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, 24, severely injured in a clash with police, this short documentary clip about 1932’s fabled “March of the Bonus Army” seems like particularly timely viewing.