<html>
<body>
<font size=2>October 26, 2011 <br>
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/26/the-razing-of-occupy-oakland-at-sunrise/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/26/the-razing-of-occupy-oakland-at-sunrise/<br>
<br>
</a>1000 Strong March at Sunset<br><br>
</font><h1><font size=4><b>The Razing of Occupy Oakland at
Sunrise</b></font></h1><font size=2>by MIKE KING<br><br>
<i>Oakland.<br><br>
</i>In the early morning on Tuesday, starting before 5 am, the police
temporarily destroyed Occupy Oakland, sending in a riot squad of over 500
that outnumbered protesters almost 3 to 1. Oscar Grant Plaza
(officially Frank Ogawa Plaza) was too geographically large and open to
be adequately defended against the armed tactical operation.
Despite swallowing a lot of pride in watching the space get torn apart
and dozens submit to arrest, Occupy Oakland made big strategic steps by
picking our fights, beginning to define the terms of our struggle,
preserving our forces, and maintaining the moral high-ground against a
‘Socialist’ mayor who is now wedded, however abusively, to the Oakland
Police Department. Twelve hours later 1000 people marched against
the police as stuck commuters cheered them on. Whatever the former
communist Mayor once knew about dialectics, she apparently quickly forgot
when she took office.<br><br>
The formerly leftist Mayor succumbed to OPD pressure by raiding Oscar
Grant Plaza and signing on to support a youth curfew in the last few
days, after Police Chief Batts stepped down two weeks ago due to tensions
with the mayor. The City Attorney left for similar reasons earlier
in the year. In a progressive town with a vibrant history of
resistance, where Occupy Oakland has broad support, the Mayor has
succumbed, without much visible struggle, to the forces that truly run
this town – the police, the fear-mongering media that thinks ‘Oakland’ is
simply a synonym for ‘murder,’ and the wealthy and upper-middle class
that clamor for more and more law and order. The ruling class and
political establishment do not much care that the cost of that law and
order is the gutting, not only of peoples’ rights, but also schools,
libraries, health clinics, jobs programs, after-school programs and more
that the ruling strata don’t personally need to survive, unlike a large
and growing number of people who are slipping from struggling to
desperation.<br><br>
The fact that a Mayor who is seen as ‘ultra-Left’ could preside over such
a budget, one that cedes roughly 2/3rd of total city funds to the police,
and then bend to the police when they ask for full control of the city,
tells us a number of things. The real enemies of the majority of
the city’s residents – the working class, working poor and dispossessed –
are the people who run the city. Electing more ‘radical’
politicians is an utter waste of time. When the State destroys our
occupation, or smears us, or race-baits white radicals, or sends
undercover cops into our space, or tries to intimidate us, they draw
lines that they cannot erase in the minds of the Occupiers. A chant
of ‘shame’ directed at police who beat and arrested a man simply for
taking video quickly turned to a resounding ‘Fuck the Police.’ They
are the enemy, they made that point clear to everyone who didn’t already
know. Now what?<br><br>
<b>“Every hour, every day, occupation is here to stay!”<br><br>
</b>As the sun was coming up in downtown Oakland Tuesday morning, many of
the evicted Occupiers snake marched through downtown, out-maneuvering the
police, as workers made their way to their jobs honking and yelling their
support. One of us apologized to a white working-class man, in his
30s, in worn overalls whose old pick-up was blocked by our presence in
the street; as he hooked a u-turn, he said with a smile that there was no
need to apologize and that we should keep fighting. There was a
controlled anger and an overwhelmingly clear look of determination in the
eyes of the evicted that we would come back stronger. Not next
week, but in a few hours. And we did.<br><br>
A 4 pm re-convergence was called that became a march of over 1000.
I believe that is the biggest number of people to come out at one time
over the whole vibrant two weeks at Occupy Oakland. Early, after
the main raid Tuesday morning, the Occupy movement re-took a
smaller park in Oakland, Snow Park near Lake Merritt, that had also been
held and was lost in a police raid earlier Tuesday morning. There
are no public plans, but several Occupiers expressed a strong desire to
re-occupy Oscar Grant Plaza. A few people I spoke with said the
police would need to put up a fence, barbed wire and have 24-hour patrols
to keep us out – at which point we would occupy something bigger and
better. Tuesday morning was the end of the beginning. Tuesday
night is shaping up to be the beginning of something more as police fire
tear gas amidst their own periodic retreat.<br><br>
<b>Who Occupies Oakland?<br><br>
</b>The order of the day is to decolonize, transform, and liberate
Oakland. This means being real about who actually occupies
Oakland. Politically, economically, discursively, militarily – the
Oakland police run this town. At one point Tuesday morning a
phalanx of riot cops blocked us from the scores of other cops tearing
down free schools, medical clinics, a kitchen, dozens of tents, our
abandoned barricades – a whole mini-township and community that had been
built over the last two weeks. A young protester yelled at the
police line that they had brought a ‘fascist police state’ to the
city. The truth is that all that happened was a geographical
redeployment of an already existing militarized police force from the
Deep East, Fruitvale, and West Oakland into downtown for the night.
What the racially and politically diverse Occupy Oakland encampment faced
in the early hours of the morning was a glimmer of the daily, lived
experience of black and brown working class people in this city.
From racial profiling gang injunctions to recently fast-tracked curfews,
and ongoing killings of unarmed black men, there has been a police state
here for many years – that means more than evictions, but life and
death.<br><br>
Oakland has long been occupied by a police force that lives largely
elsewhere, in comfortable suburban homes bought and furnished by
exorbitant salaries that start at $90,000 per year, for rookies, before
overtime. The police are not part of the 99% – that goes without
saying. They are obviously not in the top 1% of earners either, no
matter how hard their Chief and union have been trying to get them
there. Furthermore, the whole ‘99%’ language glosses over
contradictions, erases oppression and paralyzes us, in a similar sense
that consensus does. While we shouldn’t shun populism, we erase and
reproduce a whole lot of inequality by using this frame. While the
percentage may not be 99%, most of the people who live in this city not
only want change – they need it. The first part of destroying
inequality is shedding light on it. The first step to undermining
it is recognizing privilege and oppression in a way that builds
solidarity and trust through engaged political work all over the city.
<b> </b>That work has begun and will continue.<br><br>
<b>From Speaking Truth to Power, to Becoming Our Own Power<br><br>
</b>We are in the initial stages of what will be a long series of
struggles. We shouldn’t be wedded to any static plan or draw from
outdated blueprints or de-contextualized (or unintelligible)
theories. The inequalities we seek to destroy are primarily
political – about power and self-determination – or the lack
thereof. The general sentiment of the Occupy movement is about
transcending existing political institutions, about ridding ourselves of
politicians, not replacing them. I think that those of us who
hadn’t come to the conclusion already are beginning to see that speaking
truth to power is not a strategy, or even a logical impulse.<br><br>
The movement from the occupation of public parks to the occupation of
private property, workplaces, universities, shuttered public schools in
many cities, foreclosed homes, etc. is a likely scenario in the coming
months. Tactical escalation will necessitate political and
organizational development to broaden our bases and begin to gain the
active and engaged support of larger and larger segments of the broader
society. The movement needs to align itself with the struggles of
the most oppressed – making issues like police brutality and occupation
in communities of color, persecution of immigrants and acute joblessness
central – while also linking with university student struggles over fees,
student loans, and cuts, and with workers inside and outside of
workplaces. The State’s biggest fear is the coalescing of these
populations and the existing movements around these issues. We saw
this in the non-profit/police/media/politician mantra of outside
agitators when anarchists joined the Oscar Grant struggle. Their
biggest fear is in our solidarity, in our collaboration and potential
cohesion. We need to figure a way to be their waking, spreading,
ever-present nightmare.<br><br>
The idea that 99% of the population in this country is going to support a
just social order, here and now, is more than a little naive, but
believing that simple protest and activism alone will transform this
society is even more naive. We need to build our own political
structures and our own politics, rooted in participatory and accountable
democratic processes at the local level.<br><br>
I am not proposing a vanguard party or even a platform. I am simply
trying to push the conversation. We shouldn’t misread the Zapatista
call to ‘make the road by walking it’ as being synonymous with the old
deadhead slogan ‘Not all who wander are lost.’ We don’t have to
march in line, but we don’t have time to wander.<br><br>
If we, in fact, ‘want everything,’ lets figure out how to get it.
And then get on with getting it.<br><br>
<b><i>Mike King</b> is a PhD candidate at UC–Santa Cruz and East Bay
activist. He can be reached at mking(at)ucsc.edu<br><br>
<br><br>
</i></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>