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Massive Police Attack on Occupy Oakland
By Steven Miller
October 26, 2011
The massive police attack on Occupation Oakland, Tuesday, 11-25, at 430 am, has big significance for the movement nationwide. Perhaps as many as 500 police from 17 different policing agencies and local cities were deployed to roust less than 200 campers. Police used tear gas five times, fired off flash grenades and shot bean-bags into crowds.
Occupy Oakland had renamed the area in front of City Hall as “Oscar Grant Plaza.” This validates the experience of Oakland youth with the police, who understand that the murder of Oscar Grant could have been the murder of anyone.
Later that afternoon hundreds of protesters gathered and marched through downtown Oakland. Police again used violent tactics and shot Scott Olsen in the head with a blunt object, either a tear gas canister or a wooden dowel. Olson, a two term Iraq Veteran and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, got a fractured skull and is currently on life-support systems
You can hear some great radio journalism and analysis about this on the “Morning Mix” from Davey D and Dennis Bernstein. The URL :http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/74522. Move the cursor forward to the 15:00 minute mark. The “Letters and Politics” show from the same date is also worth listening to: http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/74530
Ten days ago, Saturday, October 15, Danny Glover made his scintillating speech at Occupy Oakland, calling on people to carry forward the task of Re-imagining Everything! Oakland’s mayor, Jean Quan, was smiling and picturing and mugging for the camera.
On Tuesday, strangely Quan was out of town. But she did release a statement commending the police for their non-violence. Quan also lied and distorted the situation by claiming that there was nothing else she could do. The cost of the police raid will run high, perhaps several million dollars. Now the city budget will have to make more cut backs on programs for the 99% to cover the costs.
Please don’t say that this money couldn’t have been invested in Occupy Oakland to pay people to maintain and ever-improve the public forum for exactly what the Occupiers demanded – a learning center to plan for a new world. We can envision a different way forward! Once you get used to it, it’s not so hard!
Oakland’s local government was out to send a message to the 99%. The police violence was a choice, a well-organized campaign: Oakland cops are in the house, baby! They are trying to generate a ripple effect across the country: if we can stop it here, we can stop it everywhere!
The police response is an eerie reflection of the great HipHop chant that came out of Occupy Oakland: If we can transform Oakland… …we can transform the world!
The violence in Oakland reflects a national effort out of the city to dominate and control the Occupy Movement. Three weeks ago, Van Jones and Robert Reich, both Democratic Party honchos, both based in the East Bay, hosted as conference in Washington DC to “Take Back the American Dream”. On October 22, Berkeley Law School held the “Making Cents Conference – Forging a New California in a Time of Crisis” (makingcentsca.org). The conference featured, among others, prominent supporters of charter schools and privatizing education.
The attack was not just the same old police brutality that happens in Oakland streets (and every other city) at night. We are witnessing the New Police in action. A society that doesn’t have money for basic human needs authorizes billions of dollars through the shadow state of the Homeland Security Agency. The goal is to set up national structures that allow to coordinate local police departments to protect the system.
The militarization of the police was obvious to all in Oakland last summer. The police dealt with peaceful protests, against letting the police murderer of Oscar Grant go free, with massive new types of equipment, armor and armament that had never been seen before.
Wednesday night, more than 2000 people joined Occupy Oakland’s General Assembly at 6pm in Oscar Grant Plaza. Over 1400 voted to call a general strike in Oakland next week on Wednesday, 11-2. Occupiers have regained the moral initiative and now want to take the issues to a higher level.
Efforts to build this strike will continue over the weekend. The last general strike in the US was in Oakland on December 3, 1946.
In Oakland, the microcosm reveals the macrocosm. Never forget that the theoretician of fascism, Bernardo Mussolini, stated that fascism is the merger of corporations and the state. It’s the job of the police to protect the state of the 1%. This perhaps is lesson number one.
*********************
The Oakland attack reveals that the needs and interests of the 99% are completely irreconcilable with those of the 1%. No local politician has yet been able to articulate how the Occupation was a threat to public safety.
No one needs further proof of how the system is failing, both economically and politically, than the concurrent Oakland School Board vote the same day as the attack. The School Board, noting that it is deeply in debt, voted to close five elementary schools and merge some ten small high schools into two large ones. Charter schools were already submitting proposals to take-over the property and resources.
When the state of California seized Oakland schools in 2003, they tripled its debt. Then it was securitized, sliced and diced just as just like mortgages, and sold off for a profit. Yet the School Board cannot envision refusing to pay even the usurious interest on this scam.
Oakland Public Schools has its own problems with Oakland Police. A special force is delegated to control the high schools. Last summer, the head of this force went on a prolonged, drunken, racist rant that lead to his immediate dismissal. So who did OPS propose to take his place? An officer who shot a unarmed man last year in front of a high school dance and then beat his girlfriend unmercifully.
It all goes back to an economic and political system that is ruining itself before our eyes. It cannot provide jobs to people, because the power to define jobs has been turned over to corporations. It evicts people from their homes in the name of bank profits. It massively denies people health care. Then blames people for their poverty and evicts them from the Occupation site that has become the new safety net.
The Occupations are contradictory; so is life. Occupy Oakland includes the homeless people who sleep in downtown Oakland – separately - every night, just as it includes young people who work and are homeless at the same time. Many people under 40 may never work at a decent job, if they work at all. These groups have been working in mediation at Occupy Oakland every day.
Some Occupiers believe the movement is about social and economic justice; others believe that the system is in the process of destroying itself. The Occupation Vision has gone way ahead, but the politics are still wrestling with the fundamentals. There is yet no basic agreement on issues of class, capitalism, how to move society forward, whether we even need the 1%, what does strategy mean today and what is the role of the state and who it is designed to protect. Many different assumptions about what we are actually up against in America lead to many different ideas of what to do next.
Ultimately the goal of the police violence is to defend the capitalist economic system. This is the job of the state – the police, army, Migra, courts, prisons, etc. The government is simply the apparatus that collects and spends public monies. You can woof at the government all you want; you still must deal with the state.
The attack in Oakland was designed to end the discussion of the capitalist system and the ways to re-imagine a different way of life. It is an attempt to force peoples’ thinking into the barren debate of violence vs non-violence – as if a single tactic could ever paralyze the actions of a rapidly militarizing state. It was an attempt to force people back into the passive incrementalism of the last 40 years and to rely on “our friends in the Democratic Party”.
One debate is tied to the single-issue, single-tactic mode of politics that has defined politics in America for two generations. Are we going to liberate society, issue by issue, one at a time? First win the decades long battle to control the police that is far from over, then move on to the next issue? Or are we going to liberate society as a whole and fix all the issues right away?
This debate has just begun. As one protest sign in Oakland read, “The Beginning is Near!”
October 26, 2011
The massive police attack on Occupation Oakland, Tuesday, 11-25, at 430 am, has big significance for the movement nationwide. Perhaps as many as 500 police from 17 different policing agencies and local cities were deployed to roust less than 200 campers. Police used tear gas five times, fired off flash grenades and shot bean-bags into crowds.
Occupy Oakland had renamed the area in front of City Hall as “Oscar Grant Plaza.” This validates the experience of Oakland youth with the police, who understand that the murder of Oscar Grant could have been the murder of anyone.
Later that afternoon hundreds of protesters gathered and marched through downtown Oakland. Police again used violent tactics and shot Scott Olsen in the head with a blunt object, either a tear gas canister or a wooden dowel. Olson, a two term Iraq Veteran and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, got a fractured skull and is currently on life-support systems
You can hear some great radio journalism and analysis about this on the “Morning Mix” from Davey D and Dennis Bernstein. The URL :http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/74522. Move the cursor forward to the 15:00 minute mark. The “Letters and Politics” show from the same date is also worth listening to: http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/74530
Ten days ago, Saturday, October 15, Danny Glover made his scintillating speech at Occupy Oakland, calling on people to carry forward the task of Re-imagining Everything! Oakland’s mayor, Jean Quan, was smiling and picturing and mugging for the camera.
On Tuesday, strangely Quan was out of town. But she did release a statement commending the police for their non-violence. Quan also lied and distorted the situation by claiming that there was nothing else she could do. The cost of the police raid will run high, perhaps several million dollars. Now the city budget will have to make more cut backs on programs for the 99% to cover the costs.
Please don’t say that this money couldn’t have been invested in Occupy Oakland to pay people to maintain and ever-improve the public forum for exactly what the Occupiers demanded – a learning center to plan for a new world. We can envision a different way forward! Once you get used to it, it’s not so hard!
Oakland’s local government was out to send a message to the 99%. The police violence was a choice, a well-organized campaign: Oakland cops are in the house, baby! They are trying to generate a ripple effect across the country: if we can stop it here, we can stop it everywhere!
The police response is an eerie reflection of the great HipHop chant that came out of Occupy Oakland: If we can transform Oakland… …we can transform the world!
The violence in Oakland reflects a national effort out of the city to dominate and control the Occupy Movement. Three weeks ago, Van Jones and Robert Reich, both Democratic Party honchos, both based in the East Bay, hosted as conference in Washington DC to “Take Back the American Dream”. On October 22, Berkeley Law School held the “Making Cents Conference – Forging a New California in a Time of Crisis” (makingcentsca.org). The conference featured, among others, prominent supporters of charter schools and privatizing education.
The attack was not just the same old police brutality that happens in Oakland streets (and every other city) at night. We are witnessing the New Police in action. A society that doesn’t have money for basic human needs authorizes billions of dollars through the shadow state of the Homeland Security Agency. The goal is to set up national structures that allow to coordinate local police departments to protect the system.
The militarization of the police was obvious to all in Oakland last summer. The police dealt with peaceful protests, against letting the police murderer of Oscar Grant go free, with massive new types of equipment, armor and armament that had never been seen before.
Wednesday night, more than 2000 people joined Occupy Oakland’s General Assembly at 6pm in Oscar Grant Plaza. Over 1400 voted to call a general strike in Oakland next week on Wednesday, 11-2. Occupiers have regained the moral initiative and now want to take the issues to a higher level.
Efforts to build this strike will continue over the weekend. The last general strike in the US was in Oakland on December 3, 1946.
In Oakland, the microcosm reveals the macrocosm. Never forget that the theoretician of fascism, Bernardo Mussolini, stated that fascism is the merger of corporations and the state. It’s the job of the police to protect the state of the 1%. This perhaps is lesson number one.
*********************
The Oakland attack reveals that the needs and interests of the 99% are completely irreconcilable with those of the 1%. No local politician has yet been able to articulate how the Occupation was a threat to public safety.
No one needs further proof of how the system is failing, both economically and politically, than the concurrent Oakland School Board vote the same day as the attack. The School Board, noting that it is deeply in debt, voted to close five elementary schools and merge some ten small high schools into two large ones. Charter schools were already submitting proposals to take-over the property and resources.
When the state of California seized Oakland schools in 2003, they tripled its debt. Then it was securitized, sliced and diced just as just like mortgages, and sold off for a profit. Yet the School Board cannot envision refusing to pay even the usurious interest on this scam.
Oakland Public Schools has its own problems with Oakland Police. A special force is delegated to control the high schools. Last summer, the head of this force went on a prolonged, drunken, racist rant that lead to his immediate dismissal. So who did OPS propose to take his place? An officer who shot a unarmed man last year in front of a high school dance and then beat his girlfriend unmercifully.
It all goes back to an economic and political system that is ruining itself before our eyes. It cannot provide jobs to people, because the power to define jobs has been turned over to corporations. It evicts people from their homes in the name of bank profits. It massively denies people health care. Then blames people for their poverty and evicts them from the Occupation site that has become the new safety net.
The Occupations are contradictory; so is life. Occupy Oakland includes the homeless people who sleep in downtown Oakland – separately - every night, just as it includes young people who work and are homeless at the same time. Many people under 40 may never work at a decent job, if they work at all. These groups have been working in mediation at Occupy Oakland every day.
Some Occupiers believe the movement is about social and economic justice; others believe that the system is in the process of destroying itself. The Occupation Vision has gone way ahead, but the politics are still wrestling with the fundamentals. There is yet no basic agreement on issues of class, capitalism, how to move society forward, whether we even need the 1%, what does strategy mean today and what is the role of the state and who it is designed to protect. Many different assumptions about what we are actually up against in America lead to many different ideas of what to do next.
Ultimately the goal of the police violence is to defend the capitalist economic system. This is the job of the state – the police, army, Migra, courts, prisons, etc. The government is simply the apparatus that collects and spends public monies. You can woof at the government all you want; you still must deal with the state.
The attack in Oakland was designed to end the discussion of the capitalist system and the ways to re-imagine a different way of life. It is an attempt to force peoples’ thinking into the barren debate of violence vs non-violence – as if a single tactic could ever paralyze the actions of a rapidly militarizing state. It was an attempt to force people back into the passive incrementalism of the last 40 years and to rely on “our friends in the Democratic Party”.
One debate is tied to the single-issue, single-tactic mode of politics that has defined politics in America for two generations. Are we going to liberate society, issue by issue, one at a time? First win the decades long battle to control the police that is far from over, then move on to the next issue? Or are we going to liberate society as a whole and fix all the issues right away?
This debate has just begun. As one protest sign in Oakland read, “The Beginning is Near!”
"We, the poor, jobless, downsized, uninsured victims of welfare reform and others abused by the institutions of domination are no longer silent. We are moving forward with the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many freedom fighters to improve the lives of Americans."
-Portia Anderson, WEAP
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