Occupy Everything, Liberate Oakland!
Late last Tuesday night, October 25th, social media feeds buzzed with the story of a two-tour Marine veteran of Iraq, Scott Olsen, struck by a police projectile fired at close range and left unconscious with a fractured skull. By Wednesday morning it was the lead story on Berkeley’s Pacifica radio. A member for both Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War, the twenty-four-year-old Olsen had been on the front lines of the downtown Oakland march, protesting the dawn eviction of Occupy Oakland. Police from seventeen different cities and from as far away as Gilroy exercised their right to assemble long-coordinated strategies of repression on Tuesday night, shooting teargas and “fin-stabilized” rubber bullets at the crowd from behind shields and body armor (all courtesy of last decade’s Homeland Security grants). The cops even lobbed a “flash bang” grenade at the group of protestors who attempted to pick up the injured Olson, who now languishes, finally conscious though unable to speak, in Highland Hospital.
Hearing the news, I thought first of Rubén Salazar, struck in the head by a LAPD teargas canister inside the Silver Dollar bar in the aftermath of the East LA anti-Vietnam demonstration, the Chicano Moratorium, in 1970. I then thought of the several strikers shot and killed by Bay Area police in the 1934 Maritime strike. The workers’ answer to police murder in 1934 was to call a general strike in San Francisco.
The past ten days have been heady ones for the self-styled Oakland Commune. After almost two weeks of being camped out downtown, an eviction order for the occupation came on Thursday of last week. The exceptional situation in Oakland — exceptional even in this surprising moment, with something like the left now occupying plazas and streets nationwide — was suddenly under immediate threat. On Saturday, October 22nd, a joyous march (featuring two bands as well as the infamous Book Bloc) made its way from Frank Ogawa Plaza (now called Oscar Grant Plaza by the communards) to the Oakland farmers market, where the marchers’ roar was aided by the amplification of the freeway they paused below. From there they marched into a Chase branch, shutting it down, before circling all the way around Lake Merritt and back up 14th street to the Plaza. The 3 plus hours were captivating and exhausting, especially for those carrying the largest sign: a sail-like black banner with the slogan “Revolt for a life worth living” emblazoned on it.
Two days later, on Monday afternoon, activist listservs filled with chatter about a possible police eviction late Monday night. That eviction did come in the early hours on Tuesday, and, even with a planned retreat in place, over 110 people “got popped,” with many arrests later in the morning as occupiers attempted to claim their belongings from the site. The charges the occupiers face are the familiar ones: trumped up and unlikely to hold. The establishment might hope to deter the movement, but in the current atmosphere, arrests, attacks, and repression only seem to accelerate its development on a now-global media stage.
By mid-morning Tuesday plans were in place for a meet-up and march from the main public library back to the occupation and commune site. The cops broke the peaceful standoff at the corner of 14th and Broadway unceremoniously — harsh repression the eight PM order of the night. The atmosphere for a crackdown had been steadily stoked by those “who direct current economic production and the power of communication with which it is armed” (to quote Guy Debord). Claims about an occupation full of rats, sexual assault, drug use, defecation, urination, and violence saturated radio and TV. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan even had the audacity to repeat some of these fallacious rumors in public statements.
According to accounts, tear gas filled the air, and activists and protestors retreated a block, but upon hearing of an injured person, several returned to the scene of the initial confrontation, braving the chemical agents and projectiles. The tense standoff continued throughout the night, with snake marches creeping back toward the plaza before new rounds of tear gas were fired; undeterred, repeated regroupments saw the arrival of reinforcements (and some attrition), as the marchers dictated the confrontations — with the police now seeming more like “outside agitators.” Though the plaza was not retaken, and those arrested on Tuesday night faced tougher charges and higher bail for being at the scene of a riot, the momentum clearly seemed to be on the side of the left.
So You Want to Be a Real Revolutionary?
Occupy Oakland represents something of an "experimental field" for a variety of left tendencies thriving, subsisting, or languishing in the Bay Area today. Wednesday night saw the first nightly general assembly at Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza since the occupation’s eviction. I arrived at six with comrade Aaron Benanav (we roared up the 17 and 880 freeways from Santa Cruz) to find a crowd of at least two thousand posted up around the temporarily fenced-off plaza park grounds. Instead of the previous night’s enormous police presence, activists and folks of every sensible stripe were there: unionists, environmentalists, parents with kids, older couples, brothers and sisters from the hood, folks from the barrio. Some big exhalations of I-grade Oaksterdam weed filled the air. I counted at least four helicopters circling overhead.
But rather than luxuriate in the festival, the general assembly got down to serious business. As we circled around to the PA, the open microphone part of the affair gave way to the proposals portion of the meeting. There was only one: a general strike for November 2nd in the city of Oakland, including walkouts at local schools, with a general mass convergence downtown. Oakland, as several speakers reminded us, was the site of the last US general strike, in 1946. The sheer size of this general assembly tested the limits of consensus-based organizing as participants voiced several concerns: What we would do if the National Guard were called up? Are we thinking of what a strike at a hospital means? Have unions and community organizations been contacted?
Concerns of this sort were beyond the scope of the initial proposal format. Groups of 20 formed out of the GA for discussion. A comments period then ensued. The Coup’s Boots Riley spoke for many in the crowd when he argued for the strike as a way to build on the sustained momentum of the Occupy movement: a movement composed of distinct leading tendencies across a spectrum of the left, with participants from recent anti-police brutality campaigns, 2009’s anti-austerity campus struggles, as well as from the 2003 antiwar movement.
Friedrich Hölderlin wrote: “Where the danger is / Find the saving power.” Risking more than ever, the movement was finding its latent coordination suddenly activated. When the comments period ended people voted in groups of twenty. The count had almost 1500 in favor and fewer 150 abstaining or opposed. With restrained police presence all night, the mayor’s office seemed to be doubling back. As of this writing, Quan is suffering some serious political wounds.
Certainly the catalytic element of the movement will have to force this beautiful monster into being with some blend of a “flying picket,” a march, a street battle, or a blockade; a strong presence at the ports will be needed. (The tough-minded ILWU Local 10 shut down the port a year ago in the run up to the final sentencing of Oscar Grant’s killer Johannes Mehserle.) What will the transit unions do? On the same day as the police repression that cost the city precious dollars, the Oakland School Board announced the closure of five elementary schools. The teachers union in Oakland (OEA), a central mediator for the struggle in neighborhoods and active in the March Fourth Day of Action in 2010, may be crucial next week. The union provides a key channel for the anger of parents and students. The coming weeks will see planned actions for education in California on November 9th and 16th.
At the strike meeting last Saturday night (October 29th), it became clear that the unions would not call for a strike, though they will encourage members to support the call in every possible way. (Take a “personal” day!) Bus drivers will allow leaflets to be passed out on their lines. A motion also passed to picket jobs sites that might retaliate against any workers for not coming in. Public sector unions generally have no strike clauses in their contracts, making strikes possible only in expired contract situations. Boxed in union leadership need not call a wildcat action. As the case of the New York transit strike showed in 2005, right-wing judges will treat the leadership very harshly even in situations where the union has cause and public support. The ILWU, however, does not have to cross a picket line, and Friday’s strike meeting saw the passage of a resolution to march to the ports and attempt to create the conditions for ILWU members to leave the workplace. If neighborhoods mobilize, then many things are possible. The whole day may culminate in an enormous rally downtown, around quitting time.
And now the endless blur of weeks slows down. The days shift shapes, shed their regularity, and “imitate nature, which is changeable” (Machiavelli). Unprecedented horizons emerge by the late afternoon. At midnight the sun blazes. We have been largely subject to a permanent state of economic emergency these past four years. The November 2nd general strike will offer a historic demonstration against the crisis. It’s going to be an interesting month.
David Lau is the author of the book of poems Virgil and the Mountain Cat (University of California Press). He co-edits Lana Turner: a Journal of Poetry and Opinion. He teaches writing at UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College.
All photos: David Lau
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