[News] Occupy Oakland and State Repression

[Anti-Imperialist News]

January 31, 2012
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/31/occupy-oakland-and-state-repression/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=occupy-oakland-and-state-repression 


Militancy and Counter-Insurgency


Occupy Oakland and State Repression

by MIKE KING

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 get shelter for the 
winter.  This was in keeping with what Occupy 
Oakland has always done, a goal that is simple, 
though not simple enough for the mainstream media 
to understand and honestly report.  As in 
Argentina, Oaxaca, or Egypt, when society makes 
life unlivable for some and miserable for others, 
we will come together, decide what we need to do 
to meet our own needs in a directly democratic 
fashion, and do it.  It is not surprising that 
people meeting their own needs outside of the 
control of the various forces that maintain the 
existing social order is going to be 
attacked.  When people attempting to fill their 
own needs and the needs of the community are seen 
as socially unacceptable, the need for an 
entirely different social order becomes 
abundantly clear.  From the diverse group of 
people who came out to take that space on 
Saturday, that understanding is not just held by 
a small group of militants.  Despite the fact 
that the city government is run by corporate 
profiteers and liberal charlatans, and the 
federally coordinated police apparatus often 
looks far less intelligent than we usually give 
them credit for, the State knows the threat that 
exists in Oakland.  They are responding 
accordingly.  Saturday’s attacks are part of an 
ongoing counter-insurgency campaign to attempt to 
strip the movement of its substantial legitimacy, 
to intimidate, to harass, to divide, to contain, 
to co-opt, and to eventually destroy Occupy 
Oakland.  The lines in this ongoing conflict are 
clear.  The City’s overwhelming use of force and 
mass arrests, firing less-than-lethal weapons 
into marches with many children, the violent 
beatings, and the trumped-up charges in response 
to a peaceful attempt to make social use out of 
an unused building makes the State’s position 
clear.  What is not clear is who will eventually win.

With all of that said, we are fighting them where 
they are strong with actions like 
Saturday’s.  Oakland is known far and wide as the 
home of the Raiders, the birthplace of the 
Panthers, and the stomping ground of one of the 
most violent gangs in the country – the Oakland 
Police Department.  We need to think about how to 
build a movement that is not just militant, but 
smart.  Occupy Oakland is both of those things, 
but we need to be honing our strategic smarts 
rather than calling out the town bully in his 
backyard, on his terms.  This should not get read 
as an effort to add to the mass media echo 
chamber shamelessly apologizing for the actions 
of the police; I’m bailing out good friends while 
I write this.  Oakland is the birthplace of the 
Panthers, it is also, not coincidentally, a place 
that has a long history of counter-insurgency 
against social movements and communities of 
color.   The police response Saturday; the media 
analysis; Mayor Quan’s call for people to support 
non-profits over mutual aid and to politically 
divide people by race in the process; Quan’s 
attempt to call on people in the US Occupy 
movement to condemn Oakland; trying to keep 
organizers going back and forth to court rather 
than organizing, etc. – all of this is 
counter-insurgency.  Militancy alone will not win this war.

“Whose Legitimacy? Our Legitimacy!”

Oakland Occupy Patriarchy’s assessment and 
analysis illustrates both the public support the 
action received as well as the tactics of the 
police.  The police used rubber bullets, tear 
gas, bean-bag munitions, at one point on a crowd 
that had an organized group of children in 
it.  The police kettled a march at 19th and 
Telegraph, where protesters were able to escape, 
and kettled them again at 23rd and Broadway in 
front of the YMCA.  YMCA workers opened their 
doors to protesters being violently attacked by 
police.  Some people who allegedly took the 
shelter that the YMCA workers offered are facing felony burglary charges.

The Occupy Patriarchy article speaks to an 
instructive moment that took place as they were 
leaving the Traveler’s Aid building which is 
currently being renovated and that protesters 
unsuccessfully tried to re-occupy on 
Saturday.  As the protesters were leaving, the 
renovation workers shouted their support, while 
full solidarity on that day was thwarted by cops, 
managers and financial obligations.  Over 300 
people are in jail and the occupation was not 
successful, but the “battle for hearts and minds” 
is up in the air.  Mayor Quan responds by blaming 
protesters for the lack of police response to 
crime in Oakland over the weekend, a tactic she 
has used in the past and has since had to 
retract.   A city that lays off city workers to 
fund an enormous police budget, and closes 
schools and cuts social services in order to 
spend millions on crooked bank deals or to fund 
housing foreclosures will try to patronize the 
people of Oakland while stealing their 
future.  The people of Oakland are not 
stupid.  The fact that there is an open, 
democratic movement trying to fill the 
innumerable political and economic holes of the 
neoliberal city, scares the hell out of the 
Mayor, Homeland Security and everyone in between.  As well it should.

Counter-Insurgency: Oakland’s Iron Fist – Velvet Glove Combination

The goal of counter-insurgency is to employ as 
many tools as possible to destroy a movement – 
through misinformation and disruption, through 
discrediting and breeding conflict within the 
movement, and through employing various 
mechanisms of harassment, surveillance and 
force.  It is a broad strategy that draws on riot 
cops, but it also draws on ministers, the media, 
non-profits and others to bolster the legitimacy 
of the State, while attacking or undermining the 
movement.   It uses a combination of what they 
call “hard” and “soft” power, utilizing the both 
the State’s “legitimate use of force,” but also 
its power to control knowledge and communication, 
as well as the capacity to grant concessions in order to retain power.

Before Saturday’s violent repression of the 
attempted building occupation, the City released 
a statement laying all the counter-insurgency 
cards on the table.  They drew on the “outside 
agitator” trope, trying to portray the Fuck the 
Police marches that have been happening, called 
for by the Tactical Action Committee (a group of 
young black men from Oakland), as mainly people, 
not just from other cities, but other regions and 
states.   The release also argues that Occupy 
Oakland is a major reason for the city’s budget 
problems.  To put this in context, the City of 
Oakland over-pays Goldman Sachs on their debt to 
the tune of $5 million every year (about $38 
million total), while the Alliance of 
Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) 
reports in a modest estimate, the city has spent 
$224 million foreclosing upon working class 
families in recent years, contributing to 
Oakland’s black population shrinking by 25% in 
the last 10 years.  The city will have a budget 
deficit of about $50 million this year, after 
massive cuts to everything but the police last 
year, official unemployment is almost 10%, and 
the Mayor argues the $5 million dollars they have 
spent attacking Occupy Oakland in the last 4 
months is not only justified, it is the primary 
reason the City finances are a disaster.

The City’s statement goes on to argue that they 
have a long lineage of addressing inequality, 
while, according to the US census, the 
metro-region has the 7th highest level of 
inequality in the entire country (Gini 
coeffecient).  The city says it has a commitment 
to helping the poor, addressing the housing 
crisis, and creating employment – and then points 
to non-governmental organizations that provide 
social services, asking concerned citizens to 
support a range of non-profits, and reject Occupy 
Oakland.  Non-profits are getting used by the 
City, here, to undermine the movement, offering a 
“legitimate” way to create social change.

One of the non-profits, Just Cause, participated 
in the Occupy National Day of Action Against 
Foreclosures on December 6, 2011.  After the 
cameras left and Just Cause had stepped away, the 
house was eventually occupied by the Tactical 
Action Committee and others who were transforming 
the space into a community center, with community 
survival programs in West Oakland.  The house was 
eventually attacked by the police and now lies 
vacant.  When Just Cause was involved the house 
received little harassment, unlike Occupy 
Oakland’s re-occupation in the same neighborhood 
that same day.  When black organizers who grew up 
in that neighborhood tried making it a vehicle of 
community empowerment and self-sufficiency it was 
promptly attacked by OPD.  Non-profits mostly 
serve to fill the social services vacuum left by 
budget cuts, keeping people alive in an era of 
neoliberalism.  At their best, they are still 
neither a structural solution to inequality or a 
political threat to the existing structures of 
power.  This is the reason they are being called 
upon to serve as a political buffer that will try 
to claim ownership of legitimate community organizing in Oakland.

This is counter-insurgency. The ‘outside 
agitator’ argument, trying to paint the movement 
as violent, using certain non-profits as a 
buffer.  For weeks the police have been raiding 
groups of people in Oscar Grant Plaza and giving 
them stay-away orders that prohibit them from 
being in the Plaza.  This is the same type of 
technique the city has been using in North 
Oakland and the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland 
to harass communities of color (gang 
injunctions), and it is likely a civil rights 
violation.  The second raid of Occupy Oakland’s 
camp, along with 17 other cities, was coordinated 
by Homeland Security.  Mayor Quan’s Block-by 
Block “grassroots organization” has meetings they 
now call General Assemblies and some of its 
members attempted to set up a 
Mayor-Quan-sanctioned “peace camp” in November, 
before the second raid of Occupy Oakland’s camp. 
Yesterday the Mayor said she was going to call on 
the “leaders of the national Occupy movement” 
(whoever that is supposed to be) and ask them to 
condemn Occupy Oakland for not being 
non-violent.  Corporations and labor law have 
threatened the ILWU with lawsuits if they 
collaborate directly with Occupy.  The media has 
made committed efforts to drive wedges between 
unions and the movement.  The mass media also 
focuses on property destruction or harp that the 
movement is dying, while never mentioning or 
covering our actions at workplaces or in the 
community reclaiming foreclosed houses.  The 
Mayor, the City, the OPD, Homeland Security and 
other federal “political police,” selected 
non-profits, the media, union leaderships – this is modern counter-insurgency.

All of this seeks to drive wedges on tactics, 
race, politics, etc. and create further mistrust 
and hostility between non-profits, individuals 
and communities not largely involved in Occupy 
Oakland and Occupy Oakland – to breed conflict 
between people not in communication with each 
other to make future communication and 
collaboration impossible. The State wants to 
discredit, marginalize and destroy this movement 
and have it seem like it tore itself apart.  The 
movement must come to terms with the 
counter-insurgency it faces and strategically 
navigate the trap-filled maze that has been put before us.

Militance, Strategy and the Quest to Beat the Bully

“We do not support people who are anarchistic, 
opportunistic, adventuristic, and Custeristic.” – 
Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton, about 
Weatherman, after the Days of Rage in Chicago (1969)

In the Fall of 1969, Weatherman had militant Days 
of Rage protests in Chicago.  Despite much 
outreach and planning, 2000 cops outnumbered 
street militants 2 to 1.  With little to no 
reflexivity, Weatherman concluded that everyone 
was bought-off by imperialism and soon left to 
pursue more militant action underground.  The 
movement, today, should not commit itself to 
non-violence and doom itself to repeat the 
generations-long cycle of pacifist failure within 
the US Left.  We need to learn from history, and 
our mistakes.  We also need to see the nature of 
the strategies being used against us and 
strategically act accordingly.  If we simply go 
directly at the State, making threats we have no 
capacity to back up, the State will keep coming at us until we are gone.

If the movement is a school-kid who just had his 
lunch stolen and the State is the bully that took 
it, if you go up and try to take it back he will 
likely punch you in the eye.  Is it 
justified?  No.  Is the bully right, does he 
deserve your lunch?  Of course not.  Is the 
lunch-less kid somewhat responsible for his 
swollen face?  Unfortunately, yes – because the 
bully’s behavior is thoroughly predictable.  So 
does the State just get to keep eating our 
lunch?  No.  We could have a friend distract the 
bully and then take back our lunch.  Or, better 
yet, we could go find all the other kids who have 
had their lunch stolen, meet up, come up with a 
plan – and then overrun him.  That is a social revolution.

Revolution is about strategy more than 
militancy.  Sitting with undocumented workers in 
the Fruitvale, sick people without healthcare 
Downtown, grandmothers who have lost their 
grandkids to police violence East Oakland, 
parents who are seeing their kids’ school closed 
near Lake Merritt, or families who have lost 
their home in West Oakland – and seeing what 
their realities are and what they want to do to 
change those realities through the Occupy 
movement is a bigger threat to the State than 
street militancy, not that we likely won’t need a 
bit of street militancy along the way.  Pulling 
people together in a democratic movement to meet 
our collective needs, building relationships and 
solidarity, and then activating it – that is what 
it will take to take the bully down for good.

The State, through counter-insurgency, will do 
everything in its power to thwart our rage 
against the existing order, it will also stop at 
nothing to smother the love and solidarity needed 
to create a new world.  Our love and our rage are 
our two greatest weapons.  We have to find a 
balance between the two in our organizing and in 
our strategy, that takes into account likely 
responses from our enemies.  If we simply want to 
box with the police in the middle of the street, 
we might go more rounds than some people expect, 
there will be cool videos to put on YouTube, but 
we will lose.  And the media will be out front 
every time to whittle our ranks for the next 
fight.  Instead of rehashing a de-contextualized 
and non-dialectic debate about non-violence 
versus a diversity of tactics, we should be 
debating the strategy that is going to take us 
from where we are to where we want to go.

[Critique aside, a primary obligation of any 
social movement is to take care of those targeted 
by the police.  Occupy Oakland’s bail-fund is 
depleted and many people are facing serious 
charges.  The link to donate is 
<file://localhost/x35uob0/donations/occupy_oakland_bail_fund>here.]

Mike King is a PhD candidate at UC–Santa Cruz and 
an East Bay activist.  He can be reached at mking(at)ucsc.edu.




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